I really enjoy Avatar and I have been excited about the sequels but, that teaser did nothing for me. Did not build up my excitement at all. The whole thing was just so mellow and calming, like it was a trailer for a nature documentary. This is the first new Avatar movie in 13 years, I was just expecting something a little more flashy.
I actually was wondering if the first few shots were from the first movie because it looked so familiar. Is that good or bad?
Let me be clear, I am not saying that "no one remembers or even likes" the original movie but that is overwhelmingly what I see in the rare times that I see people talk about Avatar at all. It's been more than 12 years since the original movie and not having the franchise get the constant sequels, spinoffs or TV shows that many other franchises get today has made it easier for everyone to forget.
This. Every word of this
No doubt Fox and now Disney would like to have this be another Marvel or Star Wars but I love that Cameron hasn't turned Avatar into "There's the streaming series that leads into a third trilogy of interrelated spinoff movies telling a tale on another part of the planet..." As far as I know, the only tales building on the movie have been three comic book mini-series and that's it.
Yep, the media narrative is the same around every single James Cameron movie now, and it's been proven wrong twice. Titanic and Avatar were both positioned as massive bombs before they came out, both opened relatively modestly (~$25 mil opening weekend for Titanic, and ~$70-80 mil for Avatar), and both turned into the biggest hits of all time based on word-of-mouth, repeat viewings, and audience goodwill. Disregarding this objective evidence, the media and message board naysayers continue to relentlessly and anecdotally post from their respective bubbles that "nobody" actually likes those movies.
I'm not sure if we can infer from this short teaser that the movie "adheres to a proven formula." This is very light on story details. It seems clear that this trailer is supposed to tell audiences, "Hey, remember Avatar? There's a sequel coming!" As we get closer to the release date in December, we should get more of an idea of what the actual story is and how it may differ from the original. Just because it continues the story from the original doesn't mean it adheres to a formula. It could, but I don't personally see a basis to infer that just yet.
I'm not sure how what you're suggesting would function as a sequel. I think it is reasonable to expect that it focuses on Jake and Neytiri again and the characters around them because they were the center of the first film. Cameron isn't just going to throw out the world he established in the first one.
I guess I was thinking that avatars give people to opportunity to take on any identity they want. Since Jake already helped save the Na'vi people in the first film, maybe he could switch bodies and go on to help some sort of mermaid or bird people or whatever.
All I really remember is "unobtanium" and how stupid I thought that sounded when it came up in the theater. (Yes, I know it's a real thing, but it still sounded dumb in the movie, IMO.)
It's a super geeky engineering joke that predated the movie by decades. Just like the "Flux Capacitor" in Back to the Future or half of Tesla Motor's marketing buzzwords (e.g., "Ludicrous mode"). The whole joke in the movie is that an Elon Musk-type CEO at the villainous corporation would be so nerdy and arrogant as to actually name the resource "unobtanium" in homage to the long-running engineering joke.
