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Avatar 2 Delayed Till December 2020

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W

weshes195

Member
Bronx-Man said:
So now we're at the point where we admit Avatar had a bland & generic story but that's not a problem because Avatar 2: Electric Boogaloo is gonna change things up, maaaaaaaan.
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You mean the things people have said since day one? The thing people constantly have made fun for nearly a decade from the moment the movie came out?

People praise it for it being an entertaining movie and having amazing effects. Besides people getting caught up in the moment, I don't know how you would think that is the general reaction of Avatar.

Let alone in a place like Neogaf where people criticize it more than any other place.
 
A

Anth0ny

Member
ZeoVGM said:
You're being kind of ridiculous.

A Star Wars spinoff is not going to "shit on Avatar."
Click to expand...

If it's the Obi Wan movie, it would destroy Avatar, yeah. Not a doubt in my mind.

Avatar wouldn't be everywhere you go during the holiday season like Star Wars is.
 
S

Solo

Member
Anth0ny said:
Hint: That was before Disney took over December, never to give it up.

Hey Cameron,

rVZEejvVWEbug.gif
Click to expand...

Never to give it up? I'm pretty sure that there's only been 2 SW movies in December so far and that they are going back to May in 2018.
 
G

gamz

Member
Solo said:
At a point? It's been known since day one that Cameron stuck close to a tried and true plot line in order to help sell a $500M CG movie about 9 foot blue aliens who connect to trees and have sex via USB. The only story that is changing here is anyone who pretends like the film wasn't the biggest risk ever taken by Fox or any other studio.

So yes, Cameron's kept the plot familiar to tether down the fact that literally everything else about the movie was completely unfamiliar and alien. And a "generic" story isn't even necessary a bad thing if it's executed well. Which Avatar was.

For A2 he doesn't have any of those roadblocks. He doesn't have to sell the IP to Fox or to moviegoers. It's an established property now, so he can take the training wheels off and go nuts.
Click to expand...

Well said....Plus, world building.

A 500M, Anti-Military, Tree Hugging liberal movie is somehow not taking a chance?
 
E

elrechazado

Banned
Solo said:
At a point? It's been known since day one that Cameron stuck close to a tried and true plot line in order to help sell a $500M CG movie about 9 foot blue aliens who connect to trees and have sex via USB. The only story that is changing here is anyone who pretends like the film wasn't the biggest risk ever taken by Fox or any other studio.

So yes, Cameron's kept the plot familiar to tether down the fact that literally everything else about the movie was completely unfamiliar and alien. And a "generic" story isn't even necessary a bad thing if it's executed well. Which Avatar was.

For A2 he doesn't have any of those roadblocks. He doesn't have to sell the IP to Fox or to moviegoers. It's an established property now, so he can take the training wheels off and go nuts.
Click to expand...
So the boring generic plot was on purpose, by design? Ok
 
B

border

Member
It sounds to me like the studio is nervous, and wants to be able to shitcan Avatar 4 & 5 if the first two sequels don't go over very well.

This idea of shooting 4 sequels back-to-back always seemed way too risky to me. If the first sequel doesn't land, then you have no chance to course-correct or respond to what the audience didn't like. Matrix Reloaded had the same problem.
 
E

Ecotic

Member
Cameron has been crippled by perfectionism and a need to 'go big' with budgets, effects, and even filming 4 movies at once. I wish someone could just tell him it's better to do something smaller with a lot of heart.
 
R

ryutaro's mama

Member
ZoddGutts said:
To think he could've made Alita during this time but instead handed the keys to Rodriguez, sigh.
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Once again, if he was truly more passionate about Alita than Avatar, he would have focused his energy on that instead and Fox would have happily financed it.

He wasn't.

As a fan, I would rather see something he is truly into making (hands on) versus something he feels he can just produce.

elrechazado said:
So the boring generic plot was on purpose, by design? Ok
Click to expand...

Based on his track record with his other films that weren't world building on an alien planet with 12 foot tall smurfs, I would say yes.
 
A

Anth0ny

Member
Solo said:
Never to give it up? I'm pretty sure that there's only been 2 SW movies in December so far and that they are going back to May in 2018.
Click to expand...

After 3, billion dollar movies released in December, I'm certain Star Wars will only release in December from now on. It makes too much sense.

Expecting an announcement that the Han Solo movie is moved to December 2018 any day now lol
 
B

Bobby Roberts

Banned
Solo said:
He doesn't have to sell the IP to Fox or to moviegoers. It's an established property now, so he can take the training wheels off and go nuts.
Click to expand...

His inclinations to make the most four-quadrant four-quadrant thing to ever quadrant in four directions weren't really done for the sake of appeasing studios. It's what he's been barrelling towards as a storyteller since 1991 when he hollowed out Terminator and shoved Bart Simpson into the center of it. That's a creative direction that's 100% his, and he's owned that multiple times. The idea that he served up the safe shit as a calculated means of appeasement to money-men is maybe a part of the narrative, but it's not the narrative entire.

The man poured all his cinematic fetishes into the safest story he could come up with because that's exactly what he wants to do now. He wants safe storytelling, not because it's easier to get big budgets with that, but because that's the storytelling he prefers to work with. Like you said in the rest of the post, that's not a bad thing so long as the execution is on point - riskiness isn't inherently greatness at all.
 
S

Solo

Member
elrechazado said:
So the boring generic plot was on purpose, by design? Ok
Click to expand...

Boring and generic are subjective. If you felt that way, that's fine, too bad you didn't like the movie.

Buy I literally just explained the rest. He was selling an insane pitch to the studio. Of course there needed to be reliable, safe elements in there in order to get a studio to bite. Even then, Fox was still taking a mammoth risk in green lighting the film.
 
L

liquidtmd

Banned
Bobby Roberts said:
The man poured all his cinematic fetishes into the safest story he could come up with because that's exactly what he wants to do now. He wants safe storytelling, not because it's easier to get big budgets with that, but because that's the storytelling he prefers to work with. Like you said in the rest of the post, that's not a bad thing so long as the execution is on point - riskiness isn't inherently greatness at all.
Click to expand...

Correct.

Pretty much all Cameron's films are fundamentally simple stories. My beef with Avatar is that its excellence is a technical proficiency as opposed to a creative one.
 
S

Solo

Member
Bobby Roberts said:
His inclinations to make the most four-quadrant four-quadrant thing to ever quadrant in four directions weren't really done for the sake of appeasing studios. It's what he's been barrelling towards as a storyteller since 1991 when he hollowed out Terminator and shoved Bart Simpson into the center of it. That's a creative direction that's 100% his, and he's owned that multiple times. The idea that he served up the safe shit as a calculated means of appeasement to money-men is maybe a part of the narrative, but it's not the narrative entire.

The man poured all his cinematic fetishes into the safest story he could come up with because that's exactly what he wants to do now. He wants safe storytelling, not because it's easier to get big budgets with that, but because that's the storytelling he prefers to work with. Like you said in the rest of the post, that's not a bad thing so long as the execution is on point - riskiness isn't inherently greatness at all.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. I mean, it was called Project 880 for a reason haha.


(Ages 8 to 80 for those who missed it)

But it's still amazing that Fox didn't laugh him out of the room even with his pedigree.
 
E

elrechazado

Banned
Solo said:
Boring and generic are subjective. If you felt that way, that's fine, too bad you didn't like the movie.

Buy I literally just explained the rest. He was selling an insane pitch to the studio. Of course there needed to be reliable, safe elements in there in order to get a studio to bite. Even then, Fox was still taking a mammoth risk in green lighting the film.
Click to expand...
Boring, generic, safe, reliable are all synonyms here. And you can't have it both ways - that he was super daring with every other aspect of the pitch, but then went generic in order to get studio approval. Like they took all those other risks because they greenlighted the huge expenditure and risk over the least expensive aspect - the script. This is Cameron alologism at it's worst to excise the worst part of the movie, and also to set up magical expectations that the sequels can now suddenly have great scripts. They will be just as safe and generic because that's what he does, as many others have pointed out. You just want to retroactively defend the terrible script by trying to create this theory that it was that way on purpose.
 
T

The Illiterati

Member
Don't worry guys, this just mean Cameron has time to write Avatar 6.

Oh there's no Avatar 5 yet? Yeah, I mean Avatar 5, that's what I meant, that one. That's the one where the story really comes together.
 
K

kurahador

Member
elrechazado said:
Haven't seen it. What's the relation to avatar? Similar plot?
Click to expand...

Kinda. It's also the movie that get praised alot around here and apparently elevated Matt Reeves into the "savior" for DCEU's Batman after he got hired as director.

I don't enjoy Dawn btw, and having watched Avatar prior was the reason why.
 
R

ryutaro's mama

Member
Bronx-Man said:
Who is intersted in an Avatar 2 outside of 6 people on GAF?

'Anecdotal' and 'Out Of Your Ass' aren't acceptable sources, btw.
Click to expand...

Link to where I implied the level of public interest in one way or another, like you did,
Cheetara
?

Bronx-Man said:
Bobby and the rest of Star Wars GAF can tell you, praise is the last thing I give TFA.
Click to expand...

Every post I make isn't specifically for you.

Wild, I know.
 
T

The Illiterati

Member
SpaceWolf said:
You joke, but the script for Avatar 5 has already been written. That, plus its scheduled release date is already included in the OP.
Click to expand...

I once knew that, but it was so factually absurd I rejected it when trying to remember how many of these were still coming.

This shit is so egotistically insane I can't believe it.

Like, we know Star Wars prints money and even they announce like three - four future movies max. This reads like them talking about episode 12 already.
 
G

GAMEPROFF

Banned
The only person I still hear talking about Avatar every now and then once a year is my brother, who thinks The Rock is the best actor of all time (and he means this serious) and refuses to watch movies that were made before 2000 because "old movies are bad"
 
B

Bobby Roberts

Banned
Solo said:
But it's still amazing that Fox didn't laugh him out of the room even with his pedigree.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's that amazing at all.

So many of the cyclical arguments in these Avatar threads between people who occupy a spot on the scale between apathetic and disdainful, and the monklike box-office acolytes of Cameron, seem to operate via this ouroborous of hype and doublespeak. The arguments hop from one foot to the other like Al Pacino's description of God from Devil's Advocate.

He's simultaneously an unparalleled visionary and the simplest storyteller on earth who is simultaneously the surest bet in the industry that's never not second guessed, who is simultaneously the biggest success in history and also the scrappiest li'l underdog you ever saw that you can't help but root for him against the cynical establishment, and depending on which version of Cameron you happen to be debating, there is an equal and opposite version of Cameron that's just waiting to get pulled out of the monk's robes and played like a Magic card.

Like, at some point it's gotta be recognized that the formula isn't so slippery and difficult to truly behold. It's an old formula he's just been refining and refining since 1991.

Avatar is the purest variation of that formula that we've seen. He did that on purpose. The upcoming sequels will depend on if he can execute that formula better than he did in 2009, because the problems people have with the film seem to be less with the formula (Formula is a thing large audiences obviously enjoy) and more with the execution.

The man has yet to make a bad movie, but he's been standing still for a very long time and the number of people who can do what he does to some degree has increased. The novelty of James Cameron has been gradually diminishing over the past 20 years. And if we're going to be waiting until 2020-2025 for a series whose fantastical visuals are going to be draped around Shane Salerno screenplays, it seems reasonable for skepticism on just how effective that storytelling is going to be to rise in response.
 
H

hydruxo

Member
I just wish someone who was close to Cameron would sit him down and nail it into his head that he's wasting his time with this franchise. I can respect him trying to make it happen, but like dude, you could be doing so much more than this.
 
TDLink

TDLink

Member
Cameron did still work a lot on Battle Angel. He was a pretty involved EP on it even though he wasn't the Director. Pretty sure he's still involved with the on-going post production.

That project imo very much is part of the reason for the Avatar delay. Of course, he probably should have just directed it himself considering it still delayed the Avatar films, but that's looking at it in hindsight. I am sure he didn't think he'd get as involved as he ultimately did once he hired Rodriguez.
 
D

Days like these...

Have a Blessed Day
Solo said:
At a point? It's been known since day one that Cameron stuck close to a tried and true plot line in order to help sell a $500M CG movie about 9 foot blue aliens who connect to trees and have sex via USB. The only story that is changing here is anyone who pretends like the film wasn't the biggest risk ever taken by Fox or any other studio.

So yes, Cameron's kept the plot familiar to tether down the fact that literally everything else about the movie was completely unfamiliar and alien. And a "generic" story isn't even necessary a bad thing if it's executed well. Which Avatar was.

For A2 he doesn't have any of those roadblocks. He doesn't have to sell the IP to Fox or to moviegoers. It's an established property now, so he can take the training wheels off and go nuts.
Click to expand...

So this hack who no one had ever heard who directed a few stinkers such as Aliens, Terminator and Titanic had to play it safe to get a sci fi film about blue people (of all things) greenlight?

This. This is what you want us to buy?
 
C

Chumley

Banned
Jesus Christ Lol and I said 2018 has to be it after all the delays.

I'm an idiot. This has gone beyond merely being the most delayed film of all time to film vaporware.

Even the original Avatar wasn't in the pipe this long, was it?
 
S

Sectorseven

Member
Why are these sequels so hard to make? Maybe I just have no vision, but I can't see how they could be that much more amazing looking than the big blockbuster movies everyone else puts out on a regular basis.
 
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