The Media's ridiculous amount of Cheerleading for the Avatar Sequel...

[Pavel Mosko]

I have never seen the amount of puff pieces and other promotional articles designed to prop an entertainment franchise as what has been going with the new avatar movie for the last month. And that says a lot because there was a lot of articles designed to promote and prop up the deeply flawed "Rings of Power" series by Amazon, as well as many other woke movies and TV series like the cancelled Bat-Woman series by the CW, where journalists mention in so many words how this work is designed to not appeal to its established fanbase and somehow "that's a good thing".


Now unlike those other series and movies, the Avatar movie from what I can tell looks like it is made to appeal to fans of the 1st movie, it is just that it needs to make 2 billion dollars worldwide in its box office to break even and only a handful of films have reached that. So at least, on the business side of things James Cameron doesn't know what he was doing (waiting this long to make a sequel was very risky business wise let alone running up such huge overhead that it almost takes a miracle to make a profit).

 

[J_B_]

Having dabbled in film & literature as a hobby, I can tell you art doesn't go anywhere without a lot of marketing. For most commercial films, good or bad, woke or not, the marketing budget is typically similar in size to the production budget.

Most artists need financial help, which means patrons, which means courting those patrons. There are artists who do art for art's sake, but unless you're plugged into a tight-knit artistic community, you'll never hear of them. Trust me. Any artist you know of who plays at the national level has been backed by lots and lots of marketing $$$.

Even then, bad is bad. With a few exceptions, marketing can't save a bad movie (i.e. one with bad production quality). I agree the Rings of Power was a train wreck, and I'm sure Amazon is well aware of that. They'll never admit it in public. Rather, they'll put on a brave face about making season 2, but give it time and you'll see how committed they actually are. I wouldn't be surprised if they let it quietly fade away and no season 2 ever appears.

Then Avatar. I wasn't crazy about the first one, so I wasn't going to see the second. However, because some friends wanted to see it, I tagged along. And I have to say ... I think the second is better than the first. It's not great cinema, but it's entertaining.

Hollywood is desperate to find the next Game of Thrones. They haven't found it yet, and I happen to know that's because they haven't bought any of my properties yet. Hee hee.

 

[DragonFox91]

I run into all sorts who said the 1st Avatar wasn’t very good, overrated, just ‘Pochahontas in space’ hope the 2nd one doesn’t make anything.

I think people are way too harsh on it. So b/c I like underdogs, I was hoping the 2nd one would do well.

I didn’t see too much media hype for the 2nd one at all, quite the opposite, so am surprised it did cross the $2 billion worldwide mark. I wonder if there’s some fudging going on b/c I don’t think I’ve ever run across someone who didn’t completely trash the 1st movie.