Avatar: The Way of Water

[Khev]

No doubt he was a fierce taskmaster - but rightly so. He was a mad scientist who had incredible skills across so many disciplines that he expected the people he hired to be able to do the job better than him... and when they didn't, he got pissed. That "was" Cameron, before he started spouting off that "testosterone is a toxin that needs to be weeded out of the male body."

One thing to consider about Cameron's "testosterone is a toxin" comment is that he's got a really messed up view of macho bullies due to being picked on by "jocks" when he was in high school. And if you notice almost all of his films portray over-muscled meatheads that are pretty much cartoon caricatures of what such individuals are like in real life. The Extended Collector's Edition of Avatar opens with a dude who is clearly a professional body builder playing an overbearing goon who slaps a woman in public and then starts pawing her right up against the bar until Jake wheels over and pulls him to the ground and starts wailing on him.

Then you've got the two dopes who Arnold grabs by the hair in T2, jerk marines reporting to Quaritch and so on. Hell Cameron even pathetically went back to his own high school reunion post-Titanic just to brag to the jocks who picked on him about how awesome he was for being the number one filmmaker in the world and wrote it down for all to see in his own autobiography. Jim that does NOT make you look cool, lol. So the dude clearly has issues.

My point is I'm guessing that what he calls toxic masculinity is way beyond what normal "woke culture" calls toxic. Because Jake, Arnold, Hicks, Reese, and many other male characters in his movies are clearly masculine badasses so he certainly isn't advocating for men to be passive, female worshipping sissies or anything. Hell one of the main messages of AWOW is for men to be careful to NOT take themselves out of the fight which is pretty counter culture in a good way IMO.

That testosterone garbage and all the Terminator crap is what I'm talking about; he advocates a (Terminator) film "this one is the best since T2" then it tanks, and he comes out years later and says "I got behind them because they were my friends and so I wanted them to succeed." (Something to that effect).

Then with Dark Fate he co-writes and produces. Says again, it's the best thing since T2. Says anyone that doesn't like the film is a misogynist, etc (all the current ******** Hollywood says to place blame elsewhere), then it TANKS, so he blames Tim Miller (the director), and now, last week says it's some ******** about the fact that Arnold and Linda were too old. **** off ******. YOU wrote a **** film that disrespected your own lore;

Yeah his multicolored shirt "straight 10" praise of Terminator Genysis and greenlighting the stupidity of killing off young John only to repeat the same old plot with an all-female cast was just dumb and he has no one else to blame for that.

take responsibility and accept that you're not as great as you once were.

I guess I'd agree that he isn't as great as he used to be but only because IMO Terminator 1 and ALIENS can't be touched. I'm still very much leaning toward ranking AWOW as third overall out of all his films and it is absolutely #1 with regard to visuals so that's still really saying something (IMO obviously.) And he was heavily involved with Alita which I still love so to me he in no way has gone off the deep end like we've seen with Lucas, Spielberg, Scott, the Wachowskis, or Peter Jackson (depending on what you think of the Hobbit.)

 

[Mandible]

One thing to consider about Cameron's "testosterone is a toxin" comment is that he's got a really messed up view of macho bullies due to being picked on by "jocks" when he was in high school. And if you notice almost all of his films portray over-muscled meatheads that are pretty much cartoon caricatures of what such individuals are like in real life. The Extended Collector's Edition of Avatar opens with a dude who is clearly a professional body builder playing an overbearing goon who slaps a woman in public and then starts pawing her right up against the bar until Jake wheels over and pulls him to the ground and starts wailing on him.

Then you've got the two dopes who Arnold grabs by the hair in T2, jerk marines reporting to Quaritch and so on. Hell Cameron even pathetically went back to his own high school reunion post-Titanic just to brag to the jocks who picked on him about how awesome he was for being the number one filmmaker in the world and wrote it down for all to see in his own autobiography. Jim that does NOT make you look cool, lol. So the dude clearly has issues.

My point is I'm guessing that what he calls toxic masculinity is way beyond what normal "woke culture" calls toxic. Because Jake, Arnold, Hicks, Reese, and many other male characters in his movies are clearly masculine badasses so he certainly isn't advocating for men to be passive, female worshipping sissies or anything. Hell one of the main messages of AWOW is for men to be careful to NOT take themselves out of the fight which is pretty counter culture in a good way IMO.

Yeah his multicolored shirt "straight 10" praise of Terminator Genysis and greenlighting the stupidity of killing off young John only to repeat the same old plot with an all-female cast was just dumb and he has no one else to blame for that.

I guess I'd agree that he isn't as great as he used to be but only because IMO Terminator 1 and ALIENS can't be touched. I'm still very much leaning toward ranking AWOW as third overall out of all his films and it is absolutely #1 with regard to visuals so that's still really saying something (IMO obviously.) And he was heavily involved with Alita which I still love so to me he in no way has gone off the deep end like we've seen with Lucas, Spielberg, Scott, the Wachowskis, or Peter Jackson (depending on what you think of the Hobbit.)

Wow - didn't know that about the high school thing. Clearly he has some savage issues!

So you'd put Avatar 2 3rd on his filmography? Interesting.

I'd go:

Terminator 1
The Abyss
Aliens
Terminator 2
Titanic
Avatar
Avatar 2
True Lies

Although the first 6 are all pretty solid films - it's only True Lies and AWOW that I would rate as average.

 

[choombaz]

I think the most nakedly honest JC film is True Lies

 

[Wor-Gar]

Hell Cameron even pathetically went back to his own high school reunion post-Titanic just to brag to the jocks who picked on him about how awesome he was for being the number one filmmaker in the world and wrote it down for all to see in his own autobiography. Jim that does NOT make you look cool, lol. So the dude clearly has issues.

Now that's the Cameron I've always known.


I would definitely add The Abyss and T2 to his masters resume with Terminator and Aliens.

The Abyss is such a masterful film -- regardless of what you think of the silly aliens, I myself always said the movie is brilliant if you take out all the alien stuff. That sequence that starts with the fight with Coffey, then the sub chase, then the 'who-should-drown' scene, then Harris waking his 'dead' wife. That is some of the best 30 mins in any film. Not to mention the first flood scene, and the suspense of that snaking, striped line unraveling... a lot of great movie moments.

 

[Khev]

Wow - didn't know that about the high school thing. Clearly he has some savage issues!

So you'd put Avatar 2 3rd on his filmography? Interesting.

I'd go:

Terminator 1
The Abyss
Aliens
Terminator 2
Titanic
Avatar
Avatar 2
True Lies

Although the first 6 are all pretty solid films - it's only True Lies and AWOW that I would rate as average.

Man what a list, several absolute classics and not one single dud. (And I tend to take his word that he was fired early on in the production of Piranha 2 with his American sounding name being left in the credits for marketing purposes.)

So much "T & A" in his film titles, especially The Abyss which has both T and A, heh heh. I'd probably rate every single one of his films in the 8-10 range so to me there won't be a huge discrepancy between his best and worst film no matter the order. I think it just comes down to preference of subject matter, tone, and individual characters.

 

[Khev]

Now that's the Cameron I've always known.

I can just imagine the grown up jocks at his reunion listening to his boasts, then looking at each other, then turning back to him to say "wait you flew from Malibu, CA all the way back here to Canada just to say that?" *Cut to bathroom doors bursting open as six large men carry him face first toward the bathroom stalls "No, NOO, NoooOOOO, I'm the King of the World dammit, the King of the--gurggle--" *flush*

I would definitely add The Abyss and T2 to his masters resume with Terminator and Aliens.

The Abyss is such a masterful film -- regardless of what you think of the silly aliens, I myself always said the movie is brilliant if you take out all the alien stuff. That sequence that starts with the fight with Coffey, then the sub chase, then the 'who-should-drown' scene, then Harris waking his 'dead' wife. That is some of the best 30 mins in any film. Not to mention the first flood scene, and the suspense of that snaking, striped line unraveling... a lot of great movie moments.

Man it's almost painful to see you spell out those scenes because they were so, SO good. And then totally sabotaged by such a lackluster non-ending. I absolutely agree that those are some of the most intense and perfectly filmed scenes ever, and yet due to how the film is resolved I can never shake the feeling of being let down when all is said and done. The ending doesn't make it a bad film, but it's probably in my bottom two (along with Titanic) of his films because of it.

 

[jye4ever]

Shame we never got a JC Star Wars or even Marvel Phase 1-3 movie.

 

[Khev]

Oh and going back to The Abyss for a second Cameron confirmed earlier this week that it has a new master and will finally be coming to 4K by March 2023 at the latest so I'll be looking forward to revisiting it for the first time in many years.

 

[JAWS]

Watching T2 again earlier this year with the context of all the movies that have come out the last 10 years made me realize that I had grown to be WAY to harsh on it. It's a true classic.

As for AWOW all you need to know is that I loved it, Junkion loved it, JAWS loved it...even otomofan only said that it "mostly sucked" and we all know that on otomofan's grading scale mostly sucked means slightly awesome, lol.

View attachment 613996

I can be too hard on T2 also. I tend to think it’s highly overrated but that does not make it a bad movie.

 

[JAWS]

I guess I'd agree that he isn't as great as he used to be but only because IMO Terminator 1 and ALIENS can't be touched. I'm still very much leaning toward ranking AWOW as third overall out of all his films.

Agree 100% about T1 and Aliens

Don’t know if I would put AWOW at number 3 yet. If it can’t hold up to a 2D viewing then it will fall down the list for me. I still think T2 is a better movie and The Abyss might hold up better. Like you I have not seen the Abyss in ages. Looking forward to that 4k release

 

[Khev]

Agree 100% about T1 and Aliens

Don’t know if I would put AWOW at number 3 yet. If it can’t hold up to a 2D viewing then it will fall down the list for me. I still think T2 is a better movie and The Abyss might hold up better. Like you I have not seen the Abyss in ages. Looking forward to that 4k release

I can definitely understand that. But even if for argument's sake you watch it again either in 2D or whatever and you decide that it drops to dead last of all of Cameron's flicks (though I can't imagine anyone ranking the original Avatar above this one since in my mind this was superior in every way,) even if it falls all the way down to "T2" levels or whatever your bottom ranked Cameron flick is, that still puts it among the best films of the decade, lol.

And even if Avatar 1 is forever just another "Dances with Wolves" or "Fern Gully," "Pocahontas," and so on just the fact that this new movie exists forever puts this storyline beyond those films. I'm reminded of Robert Kirkman stating years ago that so many zombie movies were about the first night or first few days of a zombie outbreak and how he always dreamed of seeing what took place after those events; what day to day life in such a setting would be like and so forth.

Well AWOW shows us a version of what a story is like after the "happily ever after" of the white man marrying the Native American girl and living with her tribe, having to try and protect his new family from outside threats while struggling to maintain a marriage between two very different individuals and so on. Now I'm sure that there are novels and things that have already told stories like that that I'm not aware of, maybe even movies, but this was all a first for me and I found it very compelling to watch. Then all the super awesome aqua blue marine battles, cool new creatures and high tech machinery and insane 3D was just icing on top of icing, lol.

 

[spindrift]

I'm hoping Cameron makes a couple fantastic live action films before he retires- I think Avatar 3 will be his last and frankly am glad. I consider them animated family films, which is fine but are we ever going to see him go back to kick a** action /sci-fi material again?

 

[jye4ever]

Why wasn’t Avatar Extended Cut preferred by Cameron never released in 3D only the inferior theatrical cut is in 3D!

Is that correct?

 

[jye4ever]

This might be the far superior movie but i’m shocked that Cameron didn’t create a trailer as epic as from the first movie.

That trailer from the first Avatar has to be one of the best cut and narrated trailers in the history of cinema it never fails to give goosebumps by the time it arrives at flashing Cameron’s movie names i’m in full fist pumping mode lol

 

[Khev]

Why wasn’t Avatar Extended Cut preferred by Cameron never released in 3D only the inferior theatrical cut is in 3D!

Is that correct?

Yep!

There's actually four cuts of the film now.

Original 2009 Theatrical
Special Edition Extended (released in theaters in late 2010)
Collector's Extended Edition (released on blu-ray as a special box set with the other two cuts)
2022 Theatrical re-release which is the 2009 Theatrical cut plus one extra scene of Giovani Ribisi telling Jake "this isn't over" as he heads to the shuttle at the end

Since Avatar is now back on Disney+ I just checked that last scene at the end and the extra line is not there so I'm guessing that the rumored 4K disc that will coincide with the AWOW 4K release will be the 2022 cut only. Now maybe they remastered the two extended cuts in 4K but I'm not going to hold my breath.

And on another note I just learned that not only was the original film remastered in 4K for the recent theatrical re-release but it was also converted to HFR! Grrr I didn't even know to look for that when I took my kids.

 

[Khev]

This might be the far superior movie but i’m shocked that Cameron didn’t create a trailer as epic as from the first movie.

That trailer from the first Avatar has to be one of the best cut and narrated trailers in the history of cinema it never fails to give goosebumps.

So true but since the only trailer I watched was just the kids swimming around the coral reef I had no idea what the conflict was going to be or had any hint of what the action sequences were going to look like which ended up being freaking awesome!

But yeah I still have Neytiri hopping onto her banshee, Quaritch's gunship banking with all guns ablaze, and that one guy getting torn out of the helicopter by a banshee burned into my brain from that first epic trailer.

 

[JAWS]

I can definitely understand that. But even if for argument's sake you watch it again either in 2D or whatever and you decide that it drops to dead last of all of Cameron's flicks (though I can't imagine anyone ranking the original Avatar above this one since in my mind this was superior in every way,) even if it falls all the way down to "T2" levels or whatever your bottom ranked Cameron flick is, that still puts it among the best films of the decade, lol.

You definitely liked the film more than I did

For a first time viewing I did fully enjoy it. But Waterworld did it all better lol

Seriously though even though I really had fun watching it, I can see this film being a slog to sit through with repeat viewings and corny moments feeling more like cringe.

Hope I am wrong though. I did find it much better than the 1st. I did not give the first one a 2nd thought after I saw it. This one I have thought about here and there. I am looking forward to the 3rd film so that is definitely saying something also. I’m

As for my Cameron rankings

T1
Aliens


T2
AWOW
The Abyss


True Lies
Avatar
Titanic

 

[Khev]

You definitely liked the film more than I did

For a first time viewing I did fully enjoy it. But Waterworld did it all better lol

Seriously though even though I really had fun watching it, I can see this film being a slog to sit through with repeat viewings and corny moments feeling more like cringe.

Hope I am wrong though. I did find it much better than the 1st. I did not give the first one a 2nd thought after I saw it. This one I have thought about here and there. I am looking forward to the 3rd film so that is definitely saying something also. I’m

As for my Cameron rankings

T1
Aliens


T2
AWOW
The Abyss


True Lies
Avatar
Titanic

I can respect those rankings!

 

[jye4ever]

Yep!

There's actually four cuts of the film now.

Original 2009 Theatrical
Special Edition Extended (released in theaters in late 2010)
Collector's Extended Edition (released on blu-ray as a special box set with the other two cuts)
2022 Theatrical re-release which is the 2009 Theatrical cut plus one extra scene of Giovani Ribisi telling Jake "this isn't over" as he heads to the shuttle at the end

Since Avatar is now back on Disney+ I just checked that last scene at the end and the extra line is not there so I'm guessing that the rumored 4K disc that will coincide with the AWOW 4K release will be the 2022 cut only. Now maybe they remastered the two extended cuts in 4K but I'm not going to hold my breath.

And on another note I just learned that not only was the original film remastered in 4K for the recent theatrical re-release but it was also converted to HFR! Grrr I didn't even know to look for that when I took my kids.

I was not aware that there were two extended cuts only knew of one so which is the preferred?

 

[Khev]

I was not aware that there were two extended cuts only knew of one so which is the preferred?

Good question. It's been a while since I've watched either.

The SE is 9 minutes longer than the theatrical and CE is 17 minutes longer. Here are the extra scenes for both:

It was kind of cool to see Jake's crappy life on a Blade Runner looking Earth. You could definitely understand why he'd want to leave. I think I'm going to check out the full CE just to revisit all the extra scenes to see how they play.