Avatar

Filming in motion-capture in a big pool of water is more complicated than you may think. James Cameron describes the crazy process for the ‘Avatar’ sequels.

Kate Winslet and James Cameron are back together again after twenty years: Winslet has officially joined Cameron’s Avatar sequels, which began production last week in California.

No subject is safe from SNL, but the creator behind the “Papyrus” font certainly never thought they’d send Ryan Gosling after him. Following this past weekend’s premiere Avatar sketch, the designer stepped up to defend his creation as “a well-designed font.”

James Cameron has finally started production on his four massive CGI-laden 3D blockbusters with a budget of $1 billion.

Josh Brolin is the type of guy who’s not easily persuaded. If you invite him to brunch and he doesn’t want to go, just drop it. If you offer him a Coke when he says he’s not thirsty, just walk away, the man isn’t thirsty! And if you want him to star in your sequel about blue aliens and he turns you down, rest your case. You’re not going to change his mind, even if you’re James Cameron.

The next of James Cameron’s Avatar sequels are officially off and rolling, with visual effects production in full swing today at the Oscar-winning Weta Digital in New Zealand. Cameron changed the game for movies that heavily feature visual effects and performance capture, paving the way for films like Luc Besson’s Valerian and the new Planet of the Apes trilogy. Funny enough, Weta is getting an assist this time around from motion capture tech used in War for the Planet of the Apes.

I like Avatar. Quite a bit, actually. On occasion, I have been known to defend the film, at length, on this very website. I would drop everything to hang out at Disney’s Pandora theme park if I could. (Stupid job, stupid beloved child.) But even I struggle to justify four Avatar sequels, which is supposedly the number of new films in James Cameron’s epic sci-fi series that will be coming in the years ahead.

James Cameron is the kind of director who likes to revolutionize the industry he works in whenever he makes a movie. Shot entirely in a new format of 3-D motion-capture, his Avatar wowed audiences with its visual style and groundbreaking effects, and Cameron is poised to do it again. He announced today that Avatar 2 will be projected in 3-D, but audiences won’t need their glasses.

It’s been nearly eight years since James Cameron’s Avatar took the global box office by storm, and while it’s become très chic for some corners of the internet to endlessly bash Avatar, I still maintain my stubborn affection for Cameron’s movie. Very few filmmakers can create action-driven science-fiction that operates at Cameron’s level; just look at how many times people have messed up Cameron’s Terminator franchise, a near-flawless formula for blockbuster movies that studios have nevertheless run directly into the ground. We may laugh at Cameron’s planned sequels, but they are both original (technically!) and creator-driven movies. Isn’t that what we claim to want from Hollywood?

So long as you’re not bothered by the ruthless capitalistic spirit of six-dollar bottled water and don’t stumble into the clandestine torture facility concealed within the giant EPCOT globe, everyone loves Disney’s amusement parks. They earned the title of Happiest Place on Earth through a militant doctrine of mandated cheer, and with a new amusement park based on James Cameron’s unkillable sci-fi series Avatar opening soon, they’ll add the distinction of Trippiest Place on Earth to their pedigree. Today brings two brief sneak peeks at the facility set to open this summer, and it’s like you can already hear the hallucinating 20-year-olds begging to be let off the ride.