Avatar Sequels Going Carbon Neutral

This is old news, but I thought it is worth sharing again because a) it's Avatar; and b) the world is full of miserable crap so it's nice to hear some good news for a change!

James Cameron has insisted that the production of his two, possibly three Avatar sequels will be carbon neutral.

The king of the directing world has committed the rest of his career to producing sequels to the biggest-grossing film of all time, hinting at the possibility of not just a trilogy but even a fourth entry into the mega-franchise.

While many derided Avatar for its simplistic plotting and heavy handed eco-message, the science fiction fantasy blockbuster won legions of fans keen to spend time on the far away planet of Pandora, beautifully realised by Cameron and his team and changing the 3D game for good.

But what is most interesting about the upcoming sequels, not just for those who hated the original film but also for fans of the franchise, is that James Cameron intends to really put his money where his mouth is and invest in carbon neutral filmmaking, even on one of the biggest blockbusters of all time.

Environmentally conscious Cameron will be shooting the sequels at the MBS Media Campus in Southern California (formerly known as Manhattan Beach Studios) that features an aggressive water conservation program, eco-friendly paints and cleaning products, sustainable café and craft services practices and a number of programs to promote greener transportation by its employees.

Not only this, but Cameron will also be digging into his own (no doubt over-stuffed) pockets to fork out for a solar array which is said to provide all of the electricity needed to shoot and produce the sequels. The sequels to the biggest blockbuster of all time are going solar-powered, reflecting the environmental message of the films themselves.

If that was not enough, Fox and Cameron have pledged some of the profits from the sequels will go to environmental causes.

Many have criticised Mr Cameron in the past for making films that seem to attack technological development and the richest members of society while simultaneously pushing forward film technology faster than anyone else in the business and also getting richer than anyone else in Hollywood.

It is this paradox that has fuelled criticisms of Cameron’s more recent films such as Titanic and Avatar, but with his plans for the sequels, he looks set to hush the naysayers and lead the way in taking Hollywood into a more socially responsible and environmentally aware era.

If the very biggest blockbusters can be carbon neutral, it says a lot about what else we might be able to make less damaging to the environment if we put in the right kinds of investment.

Whatever people say about Avatar’s predictable and simplistic plotting, they will no longer be able to attack the writer and director’s intentions or accuse him of being a hypocrite by selling a message he undermines or even does not truly believe in.

His love of nature and particularly the mystery of the deep oceans of this planet has shined through in his previous work and will undoubtedly feed into the first Avatar sequel that Cameron has suggested will explore the oceans of Pandora.

With all this saving the planet while making the sequels, perhaps the future of the human race will not come to colonising and destroying other planets for their natural resources, as seen in the original Avatar. Perhaps we can learn a little something, both from the films and from James Cameron himself.

Is this the future of movie-making? Let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter @ilovethatfilm

Why the Avatar Sequels will be better than the original

Why the Avatar Sequels will be better than the original

James Cameron’s Avatar sequels will be bigger, better, smarter and more spectacular than the original Avatar film.

Cameron, the director of Avatar, Titanic, True Lies and The Abyss began his career working on sequels. Though he might wish to forget Piranha 2: The Spawning, this was the film that gave the young James Cameron a shot at making his own feature films.

With Avatar being officially the biggest box office behemoth of all time, Cameron will have his work cut out to create something even more spectacular in the two/three sequels he has promised fans.

How can James Cameron top the biggest blockbuster in history? Well aside from Piranha 2, he has an excellent track record for making sequels that improve on the original films.

After writing and directing The Terminator, Cameron took on the unenviable task of creating a sequel to Ridley Scott’s horror classic Alien. Instead of giving audiences more of the same with another run around a dark spaceship, Cameron gave the world Aliens, a superior sequel that swapped some of the tension for all out action and made Ripley the iconic female bad ass that she is today.

Switching genres from science fiction horror to a science fiction war movie, notably making his cast of gung-ho marines into Vietnam War archetypes, Cameron upped the stakes in countless ways. Star of Alien and Avatar, Sigourney Weaver returned as Ripley but now had a little girl to look after. The supporting characters became tough as nails marines ready for a fight with the aliens, rather than cowering, whimpering space truckers easily picked off one by one by a single alien.

The master stroke is clear from the title however. Cameron gave audiences not one Alien, but many, many Aliens. If the monster had been scary in the original, the director gave us a hundred more reasons to be afraid of the beasts as they appeared from out of the walls surrounding the heroes at every opportunity.

When James Cameron wrote and directed a sequel to his own independent success story, The Terminator, it looked like it might be a case of same old story but with a bigger budget. Less brains, more blockbuster excess.

However Terminator 2: Judgment Day was released in 1991 to overwhelming critical praise and huge global success. Handed a then huge budget of $102 million, Cameron managed to make a sequel that was bigger, better and smarter than the original. While The Terminator had been made for an incredibly modest $6 million and grossed over $78 million worldwide, Terminator 2 cost over 16 times more than its predecessor but raked in over $500 million world wide.

Cameron switched Arnie from bad guy to good guy and made the Terminator an even more iconic presence. Sarah Connor went from slightly bland final girl material in the first film to ultimate bad ass saviour of the world in the sequel. The T-1000 terminator became even more terrifying than Arnie’s villain had been in the original with Cameron also taking special effects into a brave new world of digital photo realism.

He knows when to say enough is enough too, jumping ship before the Terminator franchise turned to campy silliness and diminishing returns in Terminator 3. He chose to walk away rather than make an inferior sequel.

So when James Cameron finally delivers his Avatar sequels, you can bet that they will be bigger, more iconic and better than the originals. If his previous work is anything to go by, we can expect the technology he uses to provide even more spectacular effects and his strong female character Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) to become an even more powerful and iconic presence in the sequels. What is most exciting is that James Cameron will write a better story, developing his characters and upping the stakes for all on planet Pandora.

I for one cannot wait to return.

Avatar Sequels and Next Bond Director

Recently I've been writing about all sorts of strange ponderings over at Filmoria including my thoughts on the Avatar sequels and who I'd like to see as the next Bond director. Click this link to check out my thoughts on James Cameron's Avatar sequels and why they are a step in the right direction for Hollywood in certain ways. To check out who I'd like to see as the director of the next Bond films, please click here.

Avatar is the biggest box office behemoth of all time and I'm curious as to why that is the case. Are we going to have a generation of Avatar fans who are as dedicated as Star Wars fans? Will James Cameron's sequels live up to the ludicrous expectations that fans of the first film will have? I remember reading on the release of the film that people were getting depressed and even semi-suicidal that they could not live their lives on Pandora. So immersive was the world Cameron created and so luscious was his 3D cinematography that fanatical fans were taking the whole cinema as escapism thing a bit far and walking out of the darkened theatre back into their real lives and feeling miserable.

I'd like to think that some of these fans found the environmental warnings of the film also very concerning and decided that we needed to make a change right here and right now on Planet Earth and start looking after the rainforests better and getting back to nature a bit more. Perhaps as they left the cinema and saw their decaying, dirty, polluted cities, they did indeed feel depressed at what this planet was becoming. If that is the case, then good on Mr Cameron for making people think twice about the destruction of our planet.

In completely different news, Sam Mendes stepped away from Bond after his huge success with Skyfall. I think it's a real shame but I'm sure there are plenty of others who are thinking that Mendes should get back to making sensible films about suburbs and repressed emotions and stuff. Skyfall was a truly awesome Bond film. I'm not the biggest fan of the franchise but this one had loads of great character stuff as well as some breathtaking action. Sam Mendes and Roger Deakins made it both beautiful and thrilling and I would have loved to see them have another go. However whoever takes the reigns now has seriously big boots to fill and I don't envy them!

What do you think about Avatar's success? Does it really deserve to be the biggest film of all time or do kids just have more money to spend on going to the cinema these days or what?

And who do you think should direct the next Bond film?