Tentpole watch: 'Pacific Rim' teaser and 'Avatar' update

It's hard to think of tentpoles releasing a year or two years from now when a juicy franchise like The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey comes out just two Fridays from now. But today brings updates on two highly anticipated tentpoles: Pacific Rim and the Avatar sequels.

Guillermo del Toro, the original director of The Hobbit series before dropping out due to MGM's bankruptcy-related delays, turned his attention to Pacific Rim, an aliens vs. robots sci-fi movie that promises to show off del Toro's skills as a creature creator. Warner Bros. just released a viral teaser that reveals part of the plot in the form of a frantic news broadcast. The poor Golden Gate Bridge is cracked in half by an alien, who is then subdued and placed on a ship in the same manner as the T-Rex in The Lost World. When it comes to the blueprints of the robots, which were also released, I'm not quite as excited. They look like giant Iron Men or Transformers. There's not a lot of originality, at least in their form. How they perform in action may be a different story. The movie comes out next July.

 

 

The blue-hued, naturalistic aliens in Avatar will begin their CG creation late this year, according to an interview conducted with writer/director James Cameron in New Zealand, where he's hanging out and finishing up the script for the sequel. Apparently the script for Avatar wasn't finished at the time of production (normally a big no-no), leading to a lot of work for scenes that were later cut. A completed script for Avatar 2 plus working with creatures that have already been created in CG should mean the time from production to screen is shorter, though I wouldn't bet on that. Especially because Cameron imposed a new challenge for the series by setting it underwater, which should multiply the difficulty for both the CG team and the poor humans who have to spend a lot of time in water tanks. Though between Cameron's experience on The Abyss and Titanic, he's at home with the difficult filming conditions. Even with production starting late next year, it's unlikely the movie will release until 2015. By that time, the three-film series of The Hobbit will be done, and audiences will be more than eager to pick up where the 2009 Avatar left off.

The future of 'Avatar,' on and off the screen

By Sarah Sluis

The second Avatar movie isn't set to release for another three years, in Dec. 2014, but there is plenty of news about the blue-tinged Na'vi.

While James Cameron is filming the sequels to Avatar, Disney plans to create Avatar-themed attractions in its Animal Kingdom park Orlando, Florida's, Disney World. It's worth noting that Avatar is a 20th Century Fox property, so Disney must have acquired theme park rights, something it's only ever done before for the non-Disney properties Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

Animal Kingdom is one of the newer parks in Disney World, and many of its attractions are weaker than those in other parks. With a couple exceptions, most of the attractions don't tie in to existing film properties, making Avatar a welcome addition to the park's entertainment options. Perhaps that's why Disney was so eager to integrate Avatar into that park, and not, say, Future Land in the Magic Kingdom. Currently, Animal Kingdom has zoo-like attractions, including a safari and a petting zoo, a show about A Bug's Life, a river rapids ride, some train attractions, features on dinosaurs, and a Mt. Everest coaster. None of the attractions focus on the future, except in a vague environmentalist way.

To predict the success of the Avatar attraction, one need only look to Universal Studios' Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The attraction, which includes replicas of Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, towns that feature heavily in the series, and a roller coaster ride, opened last year and has boosted attendance in the park astronomically. It seems odd and unfortunate that the attraction opened just a year before the final film--shouldn't they have been able to finish the attraction halfway through the movie series? By starting work before the second and thrid Avatar films have entered production, Disney should be able to open the park in tandem with the final movies' releases.

In related news, James Cameron announced that he plans to film Avatar 2 and 3 at a 60-frame rate, something he first mentioned at this year's CinemaCon. Peter Jackson's The Hobbit will use a 48-frame rate, so Cameron expressed hopes that the ability to project different frame rates will come as a software upgrade, and not by forcing exhibitors to buy new equipment. In fact, his company Lightstorm Entertainment has partnered with Christie to collaborate on research, development, and deployment of the new technology. Cinema owners do not sound as if they will be left in the dark. Between the Avatar theme park and the technological upgrades for which Cameron is advocating, the impact of his multi billion-dollar property continues to flex its strength.

'Avatar' breaks two out of three all-time box-office records

By Sarah Sluis

This week, Avatar became the highest grossing film worldwide, just days after it broke the all-time overseas record. Only the domestic all-time record, held by Titanic, is left to fall. And even this film won't be the end of Avatar mania. Given that Cameron has already mentioned he has mapped out sequels for the movie, it came as little surprise when Slash film revealed that Avatar 2 is in the works, with technical crew members signing three to five-year contracts for the second film.

But what to make of Avatar's success? It has the record, but, to many, it doesn't reach quite the same phenomenon level of Titanic, which prompted magazine covers and excited chatter everywhere I went (perhaps the fact that I was a teen girl when Titanic came out contributes to my perception of the film as huge).

For those trying to contextualize just how big of a deal Avatar is, the all-time domestic box-office grosses, adjusted for inflation, help bring Avatar down from Pandora and back to Earth. On this list, the movie has a higher mountain to climb--it's ranked twenty-seventh. Titanic only made it to number six. Most of the films in the top ten are household names and beloved films among many Americans--Gone With the Wind, Star Wars, The Sound of Music, E.T., Jaws, and The Exorcist.

Part of the reason Avatar was able to break so many records so quickly was due to the added income of 3D and IMAX tickets. With enough people paying a 20-30% premium on tickets, the movie was able rack up more money with fewer ticket sales. It also means that at this point, fewer people have seen the movie than many other record-breakers on the list. That stands to change when Avatar receives another boost at the Oscars. With ten films up for Best Picture, it will be a shock if Avatar's not among them.

Having seen, and loved, Avatar in 3D, I'm still a little turned off when I see the images on a television screen or a still online. The look just doesn't seem right to me. Avatar is a uniquely theatrical movie at a time when fewer and fewer people are actually seeing a movie in theatres. It's just a matter of time before 3D-capable television screens help bridge the gap between theatrical and home entertainment, but in the meantime Avatar brings us back to a time when seeing movies on a big screen with few distractions was a special, impossible-to-replicate experience.