AVATAR Remastered Review and Post-credit Discussion

Hey everyone, Avatar Guy here. I'm with Ashen today and we just got back from seeing Avatar, the remaster. I'm wearing glasses because I got hooked in the eye because the 3D effects were so amazing, and it's Harry's arrow. Yeah, and I'm just wearing the 3D glasses because they're so cool. Yeah, not really. So today we wanted to talk about, I guess, just the remaster in general. Our thoughts on seeing the film in 3D for the first time in 13 years. Yeah, it blew me away, basically. Yeah, me as well. Honestly, it changed how you see the film so much. It became more of an experience than just a film. The sound, everything about it, just in IMAX 3D. It was IMAX as well, right? Yeah, we saw it in IMAX 3D, for anyone wondering. I think the stuff that James Cameron keeps talking about of saying you have to see it that way. Yeah, you understand it. You understand it now that you do have to see it in cinema to experience Avatar in the way it's meant to be seen. Because that's what he keeps saying on the advert, right? The way it's meant to be seen. There's so much, like people saying in the Discord, one of the big things is right from the very first scene, that little droplet in front of Jake. Yeah, that was so good. You can tell that he's also filmed it in such a way that it's for the 3D. Because I even felt like, you know when they're on Hell's Gate's base? Yeah. It wasn't that much 3D. And yet when they went on to Pandora, that's when suddenly I was like, oh my god, the world is deep. Well, on to Pandora itself, like into the jungle. Like into the jungle, yeah. The actual first bit which got me was when they went into the base itself. And it was the amp suit scene. Right, yeah, with Quaritch. Yeah, with Quaritch. Yeah, I think. Because of the 3D and the sound of everything, the amp suit itself, it felt like it had, it was obviously just felt more real. And like you could feel that it was like, I don't know how much it weighs, like a 10 ton metal giant 15, 20 foot device. Just like, it's really intimidating actually. And I feel like there's a, it really just added more oomph to like every single like cinematic thing. So like the Thanator chase as well, that was. Yeah, the Thanator. I feel like we both appreciate different aspects of it though. Because like you said with the amp suit, even though I loved that scene, I didn't feel like that wasn't the bit that wound me. The first bit that wound me was the Thanator bit. That was when I first went, oh my god. Yeah. When he was walking through those plants. And you can see the depth of the forest when they land and stuff. You know when they land in the forest with Trudy and Norm and Grace? Yeah. And then he walks off and that's when the Thanator comes. That's the first bit where I was like, oh my god, this is just something completely different. I think it's crazy that even after all the years of being a fan and hyping it up and talking about how amazing James Cameron is, the fact that it can still blow you away. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to be honest. I knew that it was going to look much better and it's meant to be more of an experience in cinema, in 3D. But you kind of forget what that even means. Yeah. What does that even mean that it's going to be more of an experience? And until you actually see it, I don't think you can really understand. Yeah, it's kind of like the thing of being on a roller coaster. You can fully understand what it is you're going on and you can be fully expectant of it. But when you're actually there, it's completely different. Should we talk about the thing of the story that you mentioned? Yeah, go on. I don't know what you mean. So Ashen mentioned that there's a lot of people who criticize Avatar for its story. Oh yeah. And yet when you're watching it, if you're sat there thinking anything about the story, then I think you're lying. Because you're so immersed in that world and on that journey, there's no single point in the film where you get to stop. You don't have a chance to breathe. It's so much more full on when you're watching it in 3D. It's like the pacing is just always something. You're just experiencing something. You don't have time to think like, what's this amazing twist going to be? And how's this everything relate? And what's going to happen next? It's just like you're in the moment of the now rather than... Yeah, it reminds me of... The closest I can think of is watching the film when I was a kid. I'm not really thinking forward to what's going to happen or anything like that. It's literally, oh my god, this is gonna happen. Even when you've watched it multiple times and you know exactly what's going to happen, the only thing that changed was I was laughing at some of the bits that would come up. Like Mawat screaming or when Quaritch goes... Just any Quaritch line. Because we're like, we just know them too well now. It's about any Quaritch line which comes up. But you now see it in IMAX 3D. It just makes it funnier, I guess. Was there any particular scene that you really felt like, oh my god? I think the entire final battle just felt... It was so much more full-on. Like all the sound as well made it so much more full-on. So when the gunships are firing, you hear the FUD noises. It's like really low, heavy, heavy noise. You can almost feel the impact of the bullets hitting into the wildlife. It feels visceral, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I tensed up when the... For me, it wasn't even the final battle. For me, the bit that I kept thinking went to his home tree's destruction. That's the bit that I think I loved in the first film and that I loved again watching it again in 3D. There's a bit I think where they shoot the rockets to destroy the beam. And it explodes and you see a Navi get thrown through the air. That bit, I literally tensed up. That's how much I was in it. I was like, oh my god, this is... Whereas normally when I see an explosion in a movie, even when it's in IMAX but not 3D, I wouldn't have that kind of actual physical reaction to it. No, I mean, I didn't have any physical reactions like that. But I'm not the sort of type to sort of, when playing a video game, to turn the head. Right, exactly. That's why I think when we watch a film, we both have different appreciations of different elements. Which I like. It's the same with when we're doing other things. Like when we're doing videos for the channel, I think we both have very different viewpoints. But it makes sure it covers up lots of, I guess, the base. When you kept talking about... So the pacing, right? I feel like that's almost... Can you say that that's a James Cameron trademark signature? Yeah, I would say so. Yeah, all his movies, like... His pacing's so good. It's like you blink and you've just watched an hour. It's like... Oh, yeah. Yeah. It didn't feel like that long at all. No, it didn't. It was like two hours, 40 minutes to a theatrical part of 42. Yeah. And I'm trying to think of bits where it's like... Where it's just nothing. And the closest I could think is when they travel to... When they leave Hell's Gate and they go to... They fly the... What is it called? Camp 26? They fly that away. That's the only bit where I felt like it was a lull. And it was almost like you needed it after everything that happened. You need to breathe before the final sequence, I think. Yeah, for sure. That was the only bit where I felt like I could just kind of relax and sit back for a second. I think one of the things that we talked about was... And we've mentioned this on the channel elsewhere. Everything is way more local than I remembered. Yeah, and in the film itself, the location of where all the events happen within the film, it seems to all happen within like a 10-kilometre radius. Because we've always talked about the world building and how amazing the world building is. But at the same time, it's actually very localised. You have Hell's Gate, Home Tree and then Tree of Souls. And a little bit of a journey to the Floating Mountains, right? Four major locations. Seems like they're definitely within a small region. And then about the clans as well. You said we're gathering the clans, but... What does that mean? Like, if Pandora is a giant world and they said we gathered all the clans, what do they mean by that? It doesn't feel like they actually went across the whole of Pandora. No, of course, of course. It feels like they gathered the clans in their area. How would they? Well, they also said that more clans would be coming in. So I don't know how that works. Oh yeah, so Horatures, if we don't attack now, they'll go from thousands to tens of thousands. Our perimeter will get overrun. Yeah, so it's like they got the ones in the local range and brought them in. And I think that on the point of being very local, one of the things that we've brought up before was, in the comparison video even, we talk about how everything feels very zoomed in versus what you see from the footage of the Way of Water. But that... So just to be clear, what I mean by that is the shots from the Way of Water seem almost like there's more on the screen. There's more going on. It's kind of zoomed out from your phone. Yeah, there's more background. Exactly, there's more going on in the background of the shots, right? Whereas Avatar, it feels a little bit zoomed in, which is both a limitation of the technology, but also you said the big thing about the immersion. It's like, because the 3D feels so real, the fact that everything's so close to you, it almost makes the pacing even stronger. I'm not sure, I think having it so close and personal to it makes it so much more of an experience. So I'm not really sure how that's going to work in Avatar 2 if they want to keep loads of close-ups, just like in the first movie or... I feel like, I mean, it almost matches thematically too though. If you think about the first one's a heavy focus on Jake and that it's focusing in on him, that the sequels are going to be a bit of a pan out to focus on him and his family. So it works visually as well. I guess, yeah, that's true, that's true. Remind me if we ever get to interview Jim, that's the question that we need to ask. But I definitely, I noticed a bunch of stuff that I never noticed before. So I noticed the baby in the arms of the woman as they walk away from the destroyed home tree. I've never seen that before. That the only Navi baby scene. Everyone's talked about the dust that floats in front of the screen. Which scene was that again? Ashes. There was ashes when the thingy fell. That was the most significant one that I can remember is when the ashes come down. But people talked about it and saying, was that in the original? Because I think they are there in the 2D that you just don't see them because they're not floating in front of your face. I guess we should also mention the added scene. Oh yeah, the added scene. Yeah, for sure. Basically at the end, when they're about to leave. Sorry, after the final battle. These are spoilers there. Big spoiler, big avatar spoilers ahead. After the final battle, when the Navi win, they round up all the humans in the Hell's Gate and they're taking them onto the Valkyrie shuttle to send them back to space. And there's a new scene where Selfridge is in the line and he speaks to Jake and Tiri and he says, this isn't over, basically. So it's like an additional scene just to add a little bit of extra hype and continuity between the first movie and the second. It's like 15 seconds max. Yeah, maybe less than that. Yeah, it's really short. But the thing that I noticed was the characters of Jake and Tiri are definitely re-rendered for that scene. I can't tell whether they shot it new or what, but the texture of their skin is less glossy. I mean, it makes sense. It probably wasn't rendered back in 2009. Right, so it makes me wonder, was it some kind of test or was it literally a... Why would they add it in? Personally, I think they probably just used whatever technology they had now to render it, but also tried to make it look stylized to look like the first film. That's probably the case. But I knew I was prepared for it because I'd read about journalists who talked about it, but even so, I was like, oh wait, that's slightly different. I personally feel like it didn't really add a huge amount. I enjoyed it. I thought it was nice to see something we hadn't seen before. But anyone who's watched it knows, I feel like the humans 100% know this is another. They're not just going to give up on Pandora, given how much... Yeah, how much... A Montanian sells for one kilogram. It's 20 million a kilo. Yeah, 20 million a kilo. The one thing that I keep thinking about with that is I don't know how dense it is, so we don't know actually how much that rock on... It's holding in that scene. It might be a kilogram, you don't know. But you would wonder, would he even be allowed to have that on his desk? Because if I was an employee and that was, let's say, 20 million, he's holding millions of dollars in his hands. He is. Maybe 20 million is not that much in the future. That's true. With inflation right now, yeah, that 20 million could be like worth some bread. Inflation adjusted, a Montanian's actually about $100 a kilo. So yeah, it feels funny to me that that's... That he's literally allowed to have that on the desk. No, that's actually a really good point. Like someone could just steal that, put it in the pocket. Yeah. 20 million, right? Have you ever seen Blood Diamond, the film? No, I haven't seen it. Basically, these people who mine diamonds from the river and they're literally checked after every shift to make sure they don't have any diamonds in their pockets or hiding them anywhere. It would be 100% be like that. You'd try and sneak something into your cryotube and get home. Maybe it was fake unobtainium, like a prop. Fake unobtainium. Oh, but it was floating. Ah, I don't know. Yeah, that's true. You don't actually know. Are we going to mention the preview of... Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. Maybe we should rate the film compared to 2D versus... How much better? How did you feel about the film as a difference between... It feels like a different film. I think that it's a completely different experience. It's like looking at a picture of spaghetti versus eating spaghetti. It's how I feel. Is that much better? I mean, yeah. If you're hungry and you want food, one of them is looking at the picture, the other one feels like I'm actually doing something, you know? That's the difference to me. Yeah, that makes sense. I know it sounds crazy, but it feels subjectively different from watching it in 2D. It feels like a completely different film. It's almost like when I'm watching it on my TV in 2D. It's really comfortable for me. It's just a comfy, nice watch. But watching it in cinema, it's so full on. It's not stopping. It's literally a difference between a perception and an experience. It's almost like he's captured that. I think that's part of the reason why it was so successful. It's given you something that I think no one had experienced in that way before. That's, I think, a huge part of the reason why Avatar was so successful. No, I agree with that. Shall we talk about the credits? So, for anyone who doesn't know, and if you haven't seen the film yet, everyone should know this. About a minute after the film ends, so the credits play, the main credits, so you see the director and the cast. And then after that, it shows a preview scene. And different people get different previews. But it's one of, I think, maybe three scenes at the moment. There might be more, we don't know. And it's a scene from the sequel, Avatar The Way of Water. And the scene we got was the one of Loak, the son of Jake, with this huge whale-like creature called a Tolkien. So, I mean, what did you think? I was blown away. Like, normally I'd give Avatar, like, a 10 out of 10. But, like, after watching that clip afterwards, I was like, Avatar can't be a 10 out of 10. This looks too good. Yeah, it looks amazing. Real. I think it was genius to put it so quickly after the original to show you the significant upgrade. But you were sat there seeing it, and then suddenly it's bang. Here's a funny side thing before we talk about the actual footage. Is that it should have showed it earlier because the credits were rolling. And I saw someone leave the cinema. Yeah, someone left. People didn't know that there was anything else, which is crazy. But maybe it'll encourage them to see it again so they can see the extra scene. I mean, sure. I mean, I'm so sorry for them because it looks so amazing. I'm like, yeah. It was absolutely amazing. I think, I wonder if that's why they've also done variants. Because I've seen people online say that they've gone to see one in IMAX 3D and they're going to see it in Dolby on Monday and going to see it in something else on another day to try and see each scene on the big screen. But no, I definitely agree with you. I feel like they should have. There should have been even something like maybe a little clip from Jim at the start. You know, that one where he said, 15 seconds ago, thanks for coming to see Avatar. Make sure you stick around at the end. Yeah, I'll just say in the corner, clip coming up. Don't leave. Just anything. It's not a YouTube video. But you know what I mean? Yeah, no, I get you completely. So yeah. But the actual scene itself. Yeah. I mean, it looked amazing. Like the water and just the way... You can see the underwater motion capture technology really like working. It looks so real him like swimming. You can tell it's underwater, can't you? I don't know. I don't even know why, but you can just tell that it was filmed underwater and not with strings. Not with the, yeah. And then the realness of the Tolkien and the skin and things. It's... Words find it feels difficult to describe. It's so much clearer than Avatar, which when you're Avatar, you're just completely immersed in it and you don't really like recognise that it could be clearer or anything like that. You're just sort of enjoying the movie. The more I think about it, it does. It felt like it was like clearer, more colourful and even brighter. I'm not sure. More detailed and clearer, I think. Yeah. It's like it's just clarity. You can really tell what's going on everywhere. I think I think the content of the scene. So there is another video on the channel if you only want this bit, but I think the content was cool as well. I think there's a lot of cool stuff happening in the scene. Yeah. I mean, this is total spoilers. Yeah, this is super spoilers. Don't see it. Like if you end here. But the LWAC basically removes the harpoon from the whale's fin. Yeah. And the harpoon's this huge metal harpoon that looks like it's been there. It looks like it's been there a while, right? Or is the harpoon old? It looks rusted. And it doesn't look like a fresh wound. Yeah. You know, because one of his fins was cut off as well and that looked like it healed over. Yeah. So you think he's definitely been in some kind of altercation with some kind of human group. So it seems like it seems like the humans have been causing trouble in the oceans of Pandora for some time now. Exactly. Since it's not fresh because the harpoon's rusted. That's one of the things I noticed. My absolute like crazy theory and everyone's going to comment on this. I said maybe the harpoon was made by some kind of Na'vi who are technologically advanced. So maybe there's a clan. I mean, I'm not totally. I don't believe I don't believe it. I just think it's a cool idea. You know, to put that out there. They would be hated by every single other Na'vi clan. If there was a Na'vi clan which did metal work. Yeah. But yeah, they cut off Finn and there's definitely something happened. And then we saw some of the sign language as well. Yeah, we did. So we actually saw him use sign language and say I'm sorry. Oh yeah, it was I'm sorry when he saw his Finn. And then the bit that shocked me was that you actually saw from the point of view of the Tolkien. I thought that was cool. If everyone look out, if you see it, it goes yellow and it kind of is from the perspective of the Tolkien. Yeah, I'm going to be honest. I missed that. I just thought it was something like a cool camera trick just. Yeah, because I thought that was strange because we haven't seen anything like that in the original. And then also the fact that we hear the Tolkien talk like just the kind of whale sounds, you Again, I think we know that these films are going to be about as much. There is much about Earth, like the real Earth as they are about Pandora. And James Cameron produced that documentary series on Disney Plus called, is it Secrets of the Whales? Yeah. So I wonder how much of. Yeah, he should be. He should be a whale expert. He's gone into. I mean, they're one of the deepest traveling creatures he loves to see. So it doesn't surprise me that he'd also think whales are really cool. This is going to be the best whale in cinema history. It literally is. It already is. I mean, it's not technically a whale. And the way that it interacted as well with Loack, I think was really cool. I mean, it's made me. I didn't think that I could be more excited for Avatar 2, but seeing it once that scene ended, I was like, oh, my God, just it's just it's so many. It's going to be completely bonkers this December when everyone goes to see it. And that was the thing. People are having a huge positive reaction to Avatar, right? Yeah. I think that can happen again, but even on an even higher level. I think so as well. We have like we have the internet, social media is in like full force now. That wasn't the case in 2009. Yeah, it could even be the word of mouth is even stronger than it ever was. That's true. Like people are going to go see Avatar 2 and just be absolutely mind blown and then be like all over social media just like raving about it. First 200 million opener where the second weekend is higher than the opening. Yeah, true. Could you imagine? Yeah, that would be really cool. 250 million second weekend. People would lose their minds. It is during the Christmas holidays, so. And the World Cup. The World Cup finals on the first weekend. Yeah. So the second weekend. So it's not out of their own possibility that the second weekend is higher than the first. Just like the first movie did that as well, by the way. Yeah. Oh, wow. Put down it. I think, I mean, yeah, I think our overall thing is that even though we're huge fans of it, we were still pretty much in awe. Yeah, completely. Which is, and that said with complete sincerity as well. I know that if I went to see it and I felt this is Avatar, I love it. It was good to see it on the big screen. I would say that. Or even if I felt like actually it wasn't massively different from me seeing it at home and I've seen it so many times. I would say that too, but I think the 3D and maybe even seeing it in IMAX with, you know, the sound and everything else we discussed. Yeah, the sound was so good, by the way. Yeah. Because they updated the sound, right? Yeah, they did. They upgraded the sound as well as the visuals into 4K. And if you want to see all the details about what they've actually changed with this remaster, then there'll be, there's a video link to our other video, which kind of goes through all of the different changes they've made. It's not just an upscale. It really is, I think, better. I've even heard, I'm not sure I remember it. My memory isn't good enough, but people saying that the 3D is better. So people like. I don't remember. It was, it was 2009 for me. Right, that's what I'm saying. I don't remember. But I know that the people who said that they were getting headaches before. The glasses were definitely, they seem different. Yeah, I mean. So I don't. I don't like much, like much. They don't seem to have any technology in them. It's just like a frame, very light frame. Yeah. And also, I wonder, I don't know if people have played with the actual distance and the thing to make it better, but it felt like. Another thing, which you also mentioned, we haven't seen a high frame rate, but a lot of the people who have seen it that I've seen have pretty much had positive things to say about it. The only one I've ever heard was negative was the one from D23. Those who are not Avatar fans though, were they? I mean, the real thing though is normal people. I mean, also, I guess they're not normal people. If they're going to D20, if they're in that audience. Not calling other people out, but they're not like the general audience, you know? If they're at D23 and they're watching that, they're probably fans. Massive fans of some of the IP, like Star Wars or Marvel. And also, they're probably huge fans of films and TV in general, you know? Yeah, could be. I think we can wrap it. What do you think, wrap it up there? Yeah, I think it's time to wrap up. We've got over quite a few things. Yeah, I'm trying to think. So yeah, remember to like, subscribe, comment. I was going to say that if you want to get some stickers, you can get some stickers for the channel, like these ones here. If you want to get some stickers, there's a link in the description for the stickers. Definitely join our Discord server. There's amazing like discussion in there and some really cool people. The Avatar fandom is extremely wholesome. Thanks everyone for watching as always. We actually really enjoyed this format and we hope you do as well. If you haven't seen Avatar Remastered yet, I would definitely say go out and see it. In 3D. Yeah, in 3D. Go and see it in 3D. Biggest screen, best screen you can. And this isn't our advice, this is James Cameron's advice. And you know that. I mean, it's ours as well. Yeah, it is, yeah. But it's also, I think you should listen to him. So yeah. Oh yeah, great. All right, thanks everyone. Thanks everyone, thank you.