Giant Freakin Robot

Cinema can often be a reflection of society. It can inform audiences of the troubles, pitfalls, and social issues in contemporary history in an entertaining and thoughtful way. Cinema can also be a vision of the future. Well-made science fiction movies can offer audiences both conceits. Films like The Matrix and Avatar can serve as warnings to humanity that we may become too dependent on technology, whereas movies like Star Trek can expand the role of technology in society.

Co-founder of PayPal, Facebook early investor, and billionaire Peter Thiel has denounced Hollywood for making movies that subscribe to the idea of technology as evil and dangerous. As reported in THR, Thiel told a sold-out audience at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills that sci-fi movies like The Matrix and Avatar contribute to the high-tech industry’s “deceleration” and make technological innovation seem “destructive and dysfunctional.” He added that it will be a “very good sign” when Hollywood stops making movies about horrifying and alarming new technologies.

Thiel praised Star Trek for the role of technology in its vision of the future, stating that “communicators and tablets used by the characters in that old show about the distant future are already a reality.” But The Matrix didn’t hamper technological innovation, but rather embodies it. The filmmaking technology the Wachowskis used in 1999 to make The Matrix was used in countless films thereafter. Ten years later, James Cameron revolutionized science fiction again with Avatar in 2009. In fact, most of Cameron’s films have pushed technological boundaries forward, especially his films in the last two decades or so.

Where movies like The Matrix or Avatar portray the dangers of unchecked technological innovation, it’s because those issues are complex and do have a negative potential as well as a positive one. Thiel’s comments just seem like a cheap shot.

Can you believe Avatar was released in 2009? That was almost four years ago, and there’s still not a sequel to the highest grossing movie of all-time. Director James Cameron has been busy working on the screenplays for Avatar 2 and Avatar 3, and has even moved his family to New Zealand to be closer to Peter Jackson’s Weta Studios, where the films will be shot back-to-back. Although there are no official release dates for the Avatar sequels, one of its stars offered up a potential production start.

In an interview to promote J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness, Zoe Saldana spoke briefly about the long-awaited Avatar sequels. Saldana played the Na’vi warrior princess Neytiri in the original Avatar film, and she would be reprising the role for its subsequent sequels. Saldana says, “I think that they’re doing a part two and a part three and they’re probably going to shoot it at the same time…If we just do two and then wait, I’ll probably be 45 or 50 by the time we get to part three. It takes a long time, it’s a very hard process.”

Saldana later confirmed that the Avatar sequels will start shooting early 2014. Fox originally had Avatar 2 as a Christmas 2014 release, but because Cameron didn’t want to rush the film, it may come out as early as Christmas 2015 instead. The good news is that Avatar 2 and 3 will be made at the same time, so it seems like the long wait will be worth it.

Zoe Saldana will have a very busy year ahead of her. Aside from Avatar, Saldana will appear in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy to play the sole female member of the cosmic team: Gamora, the deadliest woman in the galaxy, and the super-villain Thanos’ adopted daughter. After Star Trek Into Darkness, she will also appear in Star Trek 3, with a possible 2016 release date.

At this point, it’s hard to believe that James Cameron’s Avatar is four years old. It’s also hard to believe that Avatar 2 hasn’t been released in theaters everywhere by now. As James Cameron is putting the finishing touches on the Avatar sequel screenplays – both Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 will be made concurrently – the films’ producer Jon Landau talked about the technology behind the sequel films.

According to THR, the Avatar sequels will take place in the oceans of the alien planet Pandora. While the production can replicate water and underwater sequences using CGI and motion capture, they cannot replicate the actors’ performances in CGI water. So it seems like James Cameron may have to make the Avatar sequels the old fashioned way, underwater. Landau explained:

We have kept a team of digital artists on from Avatar in order to test how we can create performance capture underwater… We could simulate water [in computer graphics], but we can’t simulate the actor’s experience, so we are going to capture performance in a tank.

Historically, this would not be the first time James Cameron shot a movie completely in an underwater tank. He used this method to create real reactions and situations on The Abyss in 1989. According to the actors in The Abyss (especially Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), the production was hellish and miserable. There were a number of incidents where Mastrantonio, Ed Harris, and Cameron himself almost drowned while making the film.

When you make a movie that grosses more than any other film in history, as James Cameron did with Avatar, then certain people are bound to try and get a chunk of that money for themselves, and Cameron has recently dealt with multiple lawsuits calling him out for copycatting stories. Of course, when you make a movie that crams together a bunch of vague concepts, as James Cameron did with Avatar, you’re probably ripping off everyone, rather than just a couple of people. I’m sorry, I mean you’re probably “graciously showing visual and narrative respect to your inspirations.” Wouldn’t want to deal with a lawsuit for slander.

Already having gotten the Bats and Butterflies lawsuit thrown out last September, James Cameron has once again come out the victor after Judge Margaret Murrow granted his request for summary judgment in a lawsuit filed by Gerald Morawski back in 2011. (For those of you into such things, you can read the ruling here.) Morawski sued for Breach of Contract, among other things, claiming Cameron used ideas from a film concept he pitched to Cameron back in 1991, an environmentally conscious idea he titled Guardians of Eden. While that’s a neat pun and all, it apparently wasn’t enough to sway anyone into thinking it inspired this.

Dinosaurs on TGIF? 1991 rules!