By You know how the first Avatar was just Dances With Wolves but with blue folks? Avatar 2 (and eventually 3 because money) will be more like another Costner film, Waterworld. In one of those decisions brought on by “hey we have the money” and “sure okay whatever” and even “Fine! You can have your damn water, James! Gawsh,” producer Jon Landau revealed that underwater performance capture technology was going into the Avatar sequels at a keynote presentation last weekend:
We have kept a team of digital artists on from Avatar in order to test how we can create performance capture underwater…We could simulate water [in computer graphics], but we can’t simulate the actor’s experience, so we are going to capture performance in a tank…We want to take advantage of the technology that people are putting out there to make the next two movies more engaging and visually tantalizing, and wrap up the story arc of our two main characters.
THR reports the Avatar folks are even looking into high frame rates a la Hobbit. While this is probably boring to most of you, the true takeaway from this should sound troubling to you. It seems the Avatar folks haven’t learned their lesson from the first film’s criticisms. Somehow they still think strong visuals equate to a strong story. Since audiences are smarter now and expect more from their media, they’re going to realize they’re being pandered to. Then again, I’m probably making mountains out of blue mole hills here.
[via THR]