AVATAR 2: THE WAY OF WATER (2022)

[robstyle]

The numbers are mind boggling. Disney has been exposed in the past for purchasing its own theater tickets such as with Solo, sold out, two people in a theater showings. I'm not saying that's going on here, but, can anyone confirm lines for showings or somewhat full theaters when they went? At the same time what's the cost of a ticket to an imax 3d type showing VS a standard ticket? Prices are all over the place here in Los Angeles.

 

[HMSwolfe]

The numbers are mind boggling. Disney has been exposed in the past for purchasing its own theater tickets such as with Solo, sold out, two people in a theater showings. I'm not saying that's going on here, but, can anyone confirm lines for showings or somewhat full theaters when they went? At the same time what's the cost of a ticket to an imax 3d type showing VS a standard ticket? Prices are all over the place here in Los Angeles.

Normally around the holidays, my folks would take us out to a movie. We’d all be in town, there was always something playing. Maybe something Marvel or Star Wars, maybe something else. Right now? Pretty much nothing. No competition. Almost like the big company that owns Avatar (and a lot of other different intellectual properties and franchises) cleared the board to ensure their investment didn’t go awry. I mean, I’m sure some apologist will make the argument that “of course they wouldn’t want to hurt their own numbers, it just makes sense to do it this way”. So, take it as you will. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mouse were leaning on theaters to keep Avatar on as many screens as possible (of which there have been documented cases in the past) or put pressure on smaller, rival studios to keep anything remotely interesting away from the big screen. Could just be that movie theaters really are simply dying, nothing else at play. They say never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity, but why can’t it be both?

 

[Analyzer]

We went on New Years Eve
the theater had more people than I have seen at the movies in a long time

We saw the Screen X one (where it has the side screens) because that show time worked out better for us than the IMax 3-D one
plus I wasn't sure if sitting for that long with 3-D glasses on would be comfortable or wind up giving me headache

It was pretty much the same as the first one. A visual spectacle where the story kind of takes a backseat to the ride

Glad I saw it, but not something I would probably watch again at home on a TV

I think like Top Gun Maverick, this is definitely is a "theater experience" type of movie and that is why I think it is doing so well money wise.
People want that theater experience

There was applause at the end from people in the theater as well as lots of sniffling, so it clearly had an emotional impact and connected with some

Most movies these days people are happy to wait for them to hit streaming, but like Top Gun maverick, this has the reputation that if you are going to watch, you will probably want to watch it in a theater, in one of the fancy 3D, 4D,or other gimmicky formats for the pure visual eye-fest

It also probably draws a much wider audience than normal a sci-fi movies for that reason

Most theaters these days have a bar and recliner style seats so a longer movie is more tolerable

What would make it a much better movie outside of the theater spectacle is cutting out a lot of the middle part. It could easily be trimmed down to a 1.5 to 2 hour run time without losing any of the story.

It is extremely funny however that the top selling movie of the year, or even several years at 1.5 billion has still not made a profit yet

 

[batguy]

A2 has sold about $1b overseas. Way more than domestic sales. More than Top Gun#2 sold overseas. That's the story here.

 

[TazMan2000]

Analyzer , what figures are you looking at to say that it hasn't made a profit yet?

TazMan2000

 

[joberg]

 

[Analyzer]

Analyzer , what figures are you looking at to say that it hasn't made a profit yet?

TazMan2000

I don't remember exactly, but some stories on the local radio news station where James Cameron had stated that the film needed to hit the 2 billion mark to be considered profitable

doing a quick search this seems to echo what I remember hearing...

Avatar: The Way of Water needs to make $1.49 billion to clinch the top spot for 2022, and it would need to gross somewhere between $2.08 billion and $2.05 billion to break even.

How Much Avatar 2 Cost—And How Much It Needs to Make

James Cameron's long-awaited sequel has lofty ambitions at the box office in order to recoup its gargantuan budget

time.com

And to be clear, I have no hate for the movie and hope it does well.

I think this sums it up best for me

“The plot of The Way of Water is designed to seem engagingly complex, but there’s nothing about it that’s truly surprising or particularly moving,” TIME critic Stephanie Zacharek writes,
'''
But if its current rating of 80% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes is any indication, a majority ultimately did enjoy the sequel for the visual spectacle that it is. “Cameron has raised not only the stakes of his effects artistry but the choreographic flow of his staging, to the point of making The Way of Water, like Avatar, into the apotheosis of a must-see movie,” Variety’s chief film critic Owen Gleiberman wrote in his review.

 

[batguy]

It's been discussed earlier - Cameron's $2b figure is a bit of a stretch. That's what it would have to pass before the studio admits that it made a profit for tax/contractual reasons. In reality that figure includes a lot of the work done for the 3rd movie. Probably some other fudge-work too.

Studios have been doing these paperwork games for decades. Many big hit movies have been losses according to the accountants.

Avatar#2 has made enough money to be a big success in the real sense.

 

[TazMan2000]

Analyzer

I always thought that the cost that is takes to make a movie, included projected costs of marketing it, but apparently, that's not true.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zfdtt39

So when you look up on Wikipedia about how much a costs, and how much it brings in at the box office, that number is not profit.

TazMan2000

 

[yaris]

Why does it need 2 Billion to 'break even'....??....It cost 400 Million to make, marketing/adverting/tax etc surely can't be 1.6 billion..... ....however Hollywood is well known for smoke and mirrors accounting.....

 

[TazMan2000]

A studio might make about 60% of a film's ticket sales in the United States, and around 20% to 40% of that on overseas ticket sales. The percentage of revenues an exhibitor gets depends on the contract for each film. Many contracts are intended to help a theater hedge against films that flop at the box office.

Copied from investpedia.com

TazMan2000

 

[robstyle]

The billions to profit is the entire pie, with avatar 2 being one slice of that pie. The following other three sequel films fall within that pie as all other ventures under that billions investment. At this point a single piece of the pie has deemed all other slices pure profit, but, Hollywood accounting will not expose and have you believe they "broke even" as those profits funnel through other entities to keep said profits in pockets.

 

[batguy]

Yeah the accounting of big movies is a mess.

When actors & other crew are theoretically getting back-end profits, it gives the studios a motive to rig accounting against any official profits. And sometimes an actor will intentionally take a salary with part of the amount being paid "out of the profits" (read: never) because they want their official salary to sound higher than it really is. Etc. Lots of shennanigans.

 

[Malibu139]

TC took a paltry 13 mil for Top Gun Maverick up front. But the back end percentage of ticket and home media sales takes his salary to over 100 million.

Harrison Ford did similar with KOTKS and Force awakens .

I am digging the monetary discussion here. While this movie is not exactly my thing, it IS a good thing for cinema right now. We need more Avatars, No way homes, TC Mavericks so that movie going experience doesn’t die off.

Sorta like robstyle s thoughts in post #209 AVATAR 2: THE WAY OF WATER (2022)

 

[Victor3]

The thing about the score was that's just it: it was TOO Horner. Too many of Horner's themes were reused in this one to the point where I felt like they were just laying the first movie's OST over this movie, and mixing some Titanic in for padding. I know it's Horner's style to heavily reuse themes, but I was really looking forward to hearing more original compositions.

As much I love several of Hornet’s scores, some of them definitely sound the same.
Listen to Wrath of Khan, Aliens, Deathstalker and the Pelican Brief. They use the same structure to be “bad guy music” and “victory music.” Avatar feels like it’s somewhere between these scores and Titanic/Braveheart.

My kids and I saw A2 today and we all enjoyed it. It was kind of predictable and some of it felt like annoying cop-outs. (Quarritch reborn) but overall, I thought it was pretty good. I think the story is better than the first one. I’m also a sucker for alien ecology building.

 

[dascoyne]

I didn't watch Avatar: The World of Warcraft yet, but my 12 year old kid loves the first film so it is inevitable. Mercifully, she is unaware how much her dad didn't like first fiim.

I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised with Avatar: The Last Water Bender. Despite my misgivings I want to eat my words. James Cameron has surprised me before. I am hoping it will be more intricate and less predictable than the predecessor. Or, at least, I'm hoping it doesn't paint its environmentalist message all in black and white, like the first film did. (Princess Mononoke, for example, is the gold standard for this sort of film - done with intelligence, nuance and immense beauty and imagination.) Fingers crossed.

The predecessor, Avatar, was simply another by-the-numbers "White Savior" movie to me with great effects. That formula is no more than a vehicle for audience self-righteousness, and I was really bored. I also didn't like Dances With Wolves so at least I'm consistent.

‐---

One thing that gives me pause is when James Cameron proclaimed Avatar: TWoW the most “empowering" film for women simply because it depicts a pregnant warrior. Evidently, Cameron defines "empowerment" as the capacity to commit violence and the will to dominate. Isn't that supposed to be the very definition of "toxic masculinity"?

Personally, I think the capacity to nurture itself is immensely "empowering." Maybe we don't value that quality enough nowadays.



I'll add my thoughts after I watch the movie.

 

[joberg]

I didn't watch Avatar: The World of Warcraft yet, but my 12 year old kid loves the first film so it is inevitable. Mercifully, she is unaware how much her dad didn't like first fiim.

I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised with Avatar: The Last Water Bender. Despite my misgivings I want to eat my words. I'm hoping it will be more intricate and less predictable than the predecessor. Or, at least, I'm hoping it doesn't paint its environmentalist message all in black and white, like the first film did. (Princess Mononoke, for example, is the gold standard - done with intelligence, nuance and immense beauty and imagination.) Fingers crossed.

Avatar was just another by-the-numbers "White Savior" movie to me. The formula is just a vehicle for self-righteousness, and I was really bored. I also didn't like Dances With Wolves so at least I'm consistent.

‐---

One thing that gives me pause is when James Cameron proclaimed Avatar: TWoW the most “empowering" film for women simply because it depicts a pregnant warrior. Evidently, Cameron defines "empowerment" as the capacity to commit violence and the will to dominate. Isn't that the very definition of "toxic masculinity"?

Personally, I think the capacity to nurture itself is immensely "empowering." Maybe we don't value that quality enough nowadays.



I'll add my thoughts after I watch the movie.

Well, the Feminist/environment message is thick with this one...but yes; that's another discussion altogether in terms of those words flung everywhere and at every context (Empowerment/Fearless)...tired of the whole thing already!

 

[masterjedi322]

The family went and saw this over the weekend. The theater was pretty full, but probably not sold out…

Overall, the film was OK… visually stunning for sure! I had a hard time differentiating the CGI shots from the practical ones.

The story…kinda bland, IMHO. Reminds me of The Force Awakens and A New Hope…same basic elements with just enough changes to make it “different.”

In short, I was kinda disappointed given the huge break between this and the first film.

Sean

 

[Spyhunter2k]

Saw it Sunday night. A visual spectacle. Story very similar to Part 1: natives resisting evil human invaders.

Differences? Instead of 30 minutes of "Wow, the CGI of the fantasy planet JUNGLE looks awesome..." you say, "Wow, the CGI of the fantasy planet OCEAN looks awesome." And there are kids now. That's pretty much it to me.

I'm glad I saw it, and the visuals were great, but I'd hoped for more than essentially a re-hash of the original story.

 

[The Terminator]

The numbers are mind boggling. Disney has been exposed in the past for purchasing its own theater tickets such as with Solo, sold out, two people in a theater showings. I'm not saying that's going on here, but, can anyone confirm lines for showings or somewhat full theaters when they went? At the same time what's the cost of a ticket to an imax 3d type showing VS a standard ticket? Prices are all over the place here in Los Angeles.

Saw it on the 8th, theater was pretty much full.

Spectacular visuals. Can't wait for the next one.