A robust News Desk and some Avatar: Fire & Ash thoughts
Lets just get straight to the news this morning. I apologise completely for the photo below… I debated including it, but it struck me as too funny not to.
Scroll down if you want some Avatar: Fire & Ash thoughts… there will be ever-so-mild spoilers.
News Desk
CNN has renewed Have I Got News For You for season 4. Read: Deadline
Following last week’s low-rated Erika Kirk CBS news special, CBS News and The Free Press are teaming for a series of town halls and debates in the new year. Couldn’t CBS just run an Everybody Loves Raymond marathon or something instead? Read: Deadline
Apple TV has ordered a new dramedy to star Will Poulter, titled Beat The Reaper. Read: Variety
An unknown fourth company apparently put in a bid for WBD assets. Read: Forbes
Jason Isaacs is joining the cast of Prime Video’s upcoming Tomb Raider live-action TV series. Read: Deadline
Adult Swim has greenlit seasons 2 and 3 of Haha You Clowns, an animated series that I just don’t get at all. Read: Variety
Love Island was the most complained about show on UK TV this year. Read: Deadline
But that isn’t stopping network ITV from possibly making a feature film based on Love Island. Read: Deadline
Great news for comedy fans. Kevin Spacey is coming back to TV with a new series made for Italian state broadcaster RAI. And we know it’ll be hilarious based off the publicity photo. Read: Variety
Starz has acquired action series The Nowhere Man, filmed on location in South Africa. That’s good, but it has me thinking… why has no one ever tried remaking 90s conspiracy drama Nowhere Man, which feels particularly appropriate for the modern moment. Read: thefutoncritic
Netflix Co-CEO’s Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters have taken a walk around the Warner Bros lot, AKA the greatest place I have ever been in my life. I would be spending weeks just walking around that place. Read: THR
Trailer Park
The Nowhere Man debuts on Starz Jan 16.
Lukas (Bonko Khoza), a former Special Forces mercenary crippled by PTSD, has turned his back on his violent past and is operating as a junk collector on the streets of Johannesburg.
Young Sherlock debuts March 4 on Prime Video.
From Guy Ritchie, witness the legendary origin story of Sherlock Holmes in this irreverent, action-laden mystery that follows the iconic detective’s early adventures. Sherlock Holmes is a disgraced young man – raw and unfiltered– when he finds himself wrapped up in a murder case that threatens his liberty. His first ever case unravels a globe-trotting conspiracy, culminating in an explosive showdown that changes his life forever. Unfolding in 1870s Oxford and adventuring abroad, the series will expose the early antics of the anarchic adolescent who is yet to evolve into Baker Street’s most renowned resident.
Coldwater debuts Jan 9 on Paramount+.
Created and written by David Ireland, the series follows stay-at-home dad John (Andrew Lincoln), who relocates his family from London to the remote Scottish town of Coldwater after a violent incident at a playground triggers a personal crisis.
Can This Be Love Translated debuts Jan 16 on Netflix.
The emotions of a celebrity and her interpreter get lost in translation as they travel the world filming a TV show. Will love find its own language?
Thoughts on Avatar: Fire & Ash
Back around 2012-ish, I thought it would be hilarious to troll friends about how much I love Avatar (a film that I liked well-enough at the cinema to have seen twice). It became an ongoing bit, but something happened during that time… I fell in love.
I genuinely loved the second film, Avatar: The Way of Water. The first two hours of that film are an incredible tourism ad for Pandora, with a third hour final act that I honestly believe was mind-bogglingly great in its construction.
With the third film in the series, Avatar: Fire & Ash, I was very excited to see what James Cameron has done with the third film.
First of all, it is a delight to be back in the world of Pandora with these characters. I struggle remembering any of the characters names (except Jake Sully, Spider, and Kiri), but I adore them all. It was genuinely good to be in their company once more for another three hours.
But, there’s something a little bit amiss with this third film. Yes, it evolves the relationships of the characters nicely, but it struggles with far too much repetition of set pieces from the second film.
The promise of the third film was that it’d leave the water regions of Pandora behind and instead focus on a new tribe of fire warriors. And we kind-of get that, but so much of this film is back in the water with more attention paid again to the whales.
While Fire & Ash moves at a far quicker pace than The Way of Water, with action sequences that are far more accomplished (there’s a mild one involving the kids escaping in a white water rapid that really popped in the 3D on the screen), so much of it feels like we’ve seen it before. Because we have.
It’s the first time I have seen a James Cameron film where he is repeating himself to this degree (Terminator 2 is also a bit guilty of this, but it feels more egregious here). And while that makes sense in the third film of a film series with five-planned entires, where he is choosing to explore the themes and ideas of this across two films, as a freestanding entry in the series, it feels like… and excuse the pun… he’s treading water.
It would be a shame for James Cameron not to be able to finish the planned five-film series at this stage - the sticking point is that if the box office doesn’t show enough revenue potential for episodes four and five, then they will cap the series here.
And that would be a shame for two main reasons:
I would happily return to the world of Pandora for more;
The franchise would be ending on a low note. It should be said that the very end of the film is just too-soft and needed more grandeur than what is delivered here.
What works against Avatar as a franchise is that all of it is filmed with such mastery that with these three-hour runtimes, we get so numbed to consistent high-level filmmaking that we don’t appreciate it.
Even though this third film doesn’t work as well as one might hope, it is still heads and shoulders above most other popcorn cinema we’re seeing nowadays.
Bring on the fourth and fifth installments.
That’s the newsletter for the today.
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The "treading water" critique of Fire & Ash is exacty what I was worried about when I heard it was mostly back in aquatic territory. Cameron's technical mastery almost works against him at this point because like you said, we get so numb to the high-level filmmaking that repreating story beats feels way more obvious than it would in most other franchises. I've had friends who unironically love these films more than any prestige drama airing right now, which kinda proves there's still an audiance for spectacle done at this level.