If you have seen Avatar 2 — and by the looks of the box office, you have — you know it’s a visual spectacle. How James Cameron surpassed expectations on this one is bewildering. But give it to him; the guy did it. And prognosticators of the box office tell us you have given him something else. Well, you’re about to do that by New Year’s Day!
Founder of BoxOfficeGuru.com, Gitesh Pandya, estimates Avatar 2 will swim up to the global $1 billion mark by New Year’s Day.
That sound you just heard was #AvatarTheWayOfWater cracking $300M domestic, $700M intl and ONE BILLION DOLLARS at global #boxoffice - all at the same time!! #Avatar
— Gitesh Pandya (@GiteshPandya) December 28, 2022
This shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Its opening weekend grossed more than $400 million. Santa doubled that mark while he was gallivanting around the globe. And now this. Despite what everyone has thrown at Captain Na’vi, Cameron ducks, spins and swims like an NFL defensive end. And they threw some doozies right at his melon.
Avatar 2 Started the Delayed Dominoes
Cameron is legendary for being a stickler for details. The guy is a Hollywood fascist, and he gets what he wants. Because of the cinematography complexities. In an interview with The Wrap, Julian Howarth explained the rigorous and inventive ways he performed a motion capture (or was forced to) shoot Avatar 2.
“We said, ‘How can we help the actors feel more in place?’” he said. “‘How can we make them feel as though they’re in a forest or by the sea or in these environments?’ And so, I developed a system where we surrounded the stage with speakers and started doing on-the-spot sound design. When actors arrived on the set, they were immersed in an audio environment that gave them the feeling of where they were.”
And that started the delays. Howarth tells the perils of creating submerged audio speakers so the boss could direct his actors underwater. There was sound mixing of “knocks and mechanical sounds” that clashed because they sounded different 30 feet deep. There is a cornucopia of impressive details, but since sequels were filmed concurrently, the release dates are now pending.
Cameron mentioned his “woes.”
“They exist. These stories exist. We know exactly what we’re doing. We know what these movies are gonna be. We just have to go through the process of getting them done. So, you know ideally two years from now, [Avatar] 3 comes out. Ideally maybe 3 years after that 4 comes out and then ideally maybe a couple years after that 5 comes out. So we won’t be away from the marketplace, so we’ll have that sense of a persistent world and ongoing story people want. If they’re going to invest in these characters, they’re going to invest in this world, we want to give it to them in a regular cadence, ideally, and that was the game plan. That’s one of the reasons we were gone so long.”
Lights. Camera. Not As Much Action.
James Cameron isn’t a fan of guns–well, what people do with guns. (Terminator 2 was a massive exception, but let’s move on.) But this is Avatar 2. All those military goobers couldn’t leave the Na’vi alone, so Cameron acquiesced. Nonetheless, he still limited the bulleted bravado.
In an interview with Variety, the modern headlines of gun violence and mass shootings stick with Cameron. He felt he would add to the mix with gratuitous gunplay, so he left about 10 minutes of shooting on the cutting room floor.
“I actually cut about 10 minutes of the movie targeting gunplay action. I wanted to get rid of some of the ugliness, to find a balance between light and dark. You have to have conflict, of course. Violence and action are the same thing, depending on how you look at it. This is the dilemma of every action filmmaker, and I’m known as an action filmmaker.”
For Cameron, a re-evaluation of gun violence is personal. He shared in the interview that he was glad he moved to New Zealand, “where they just banned all assault rifles two weeks after that horrific mosque shooting a couple of years ago.”
With a run time of more than three hours, the guy thought no one would notice. And with the box office receipts raining like a ticker tape parade, he was right.
Cultural Appropriation Versus Appreciation
This is the highest hurdle Cameron had to jump in the direction of Avatar 2. What’s sad is that he may never get over this hump. Many people are woke, which is a good thing for our country. Others need to go back to sleep. Good night!
The Wrap is full of quality interviews and writing (much like you will find in the Nation here). The quills over there must have the boss on speed dial because they got another riveting interview. This one was about the “fine line” between cultural appropriation and appreciation in Avatar 2.
The film has sparked countless boycotts for what is seen (and interpreted) in the movie. There is belly-aching about the romanticization of antebellum America, a presumed depiction of a “White Savior” complex, and an unappreciated appropriation of indigenous culture.
The research king, James Cameron, has pulled references from the Lakota Sioux tribes to build the subaquatic world of the Na’vi. Avatar 2: The Way of The Water focuses on Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and his Omaticaya clan fighting the military forces. The problem is they live in a jungle, which opened the door for debate–and the mouths of millions.
“We had a lot of discussions about cultural appropriation. How much is too much? At what point are you no longer honoring and celebrating a culture, but actually extracting and exploiting? So we tried to walk a fine line there and celebrate Polynesian indigenous culture in general, right across from Hawaii, down through Tahiti, French Polynesia, Māori culture and Samoan culture and so on. We wanted to just put our own swerve on that with our artists in terms of the style of the tattoos and the wardrobe and all that sort of thing.”
Cameron may as well be an anthropologist. He studies human culture, which is why Avatar 2 has sparked much controversy and discussion. He shares in the post that he “[wanted] to celebrate the human imagination,” but many don’t want to celebrate his depiction on screen. You see, the Lakota Sioux were a horrific example of genocide. Have you heard of Chief Sitting Bull? The massacre at Wounded Knee? That’s the Lakota Sioux.
James Cameron is a titan among directors, and Avatar 2 is another reason why. Despite the arguments and praise, solutions, and more problems, no one can erase the indelible mark James Cameron has made in Hollywood. Sure, they can try, but with another billion dollars, he has a few disinfectant wipes lying around.
All images credit: Russell Carpenter/Iva Lenard/Mark Fellman via 20th Century Studios/TSG Entertainment/Lightstorm Entertainment
Since he saw ‘Dune’ in the $1 movie theater as a kid, this guy has been a lover of geek culture. It wasn’t until he became a professional copywriter, ghostwriter, and speechwriter that he began to write about it (a lot).
From the gravitas of the Sith, the genius of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, or the gluttony of today’s comic fan, SPW digs intelligent debate about entertainment. He’s also addicted to listicles, storytelling, useless trivia, and the Oxford comma. And, he prefers his puns intended.