Avatar

It's all serving the story of this man who's trying to get home or as we find out, isn't sure if he wants to go home and what the reasons are behind that and the human story behind what does it mean to be at war? What does it mean to make sacrifices or make bad decisions or good decisions? How do you make those decisions? Who do they, who does it affect? You know, all those kinds of things that come into this story are, are all front and center and the Cyclops and then, you know, the big set pieces and things, they're always fit around that story.

So the story's never compromised for the sake of a really impressive shot, which you do find, like you said, I mean, Avatar, right? James Cameron, I like the Avatar movies because they're great popcorn movies.

They're, I mean, But there's no, you don't come away from that nourished in any way from the story, right? With this one, and I guess, you know, I'll ask you about this when we get into it, about James Cameron as a writer.

I'd read some criticism of a lot of people say he's a great filmmaker, not a great writer.

Also, Moana is strongly represented now at Disney World, but far less so at Disneyland.

Or if that Avatar project, which keeps getting delayed, is eventually cancelled at DCA, an underwater journey here through the seas of Pandora might work well in this space with the subs as well.

And one more option.

Though Iger was very centered on using parks as extension of film IP, perhaps Josh DeMauro might be open to an original idea to theme this ride, perhaps something related to Jules Verne.

If anything, and this I think is a long shot, a re-theme of Star Tours to some other IP is probably a more cost-effective idea.

It could be used for a Tron experience, or a flight through the world of The Incredibles, or a fly-along experience with Iron Man, or a journey through the Quantum Realm with Ant-Man and the Wasp.

And again, if that Avatar project gets cancelled for DCA, Star Tours could be turned into an aerial tour of Pandora.

Anyway, from a cost-wise perspective, a re-theme over moving the attraction makes a lot more sense to me.

for months.

And then you fooled me into basically watching another Avatar movie.

And that's what we'll talk about today.

If you've not joined us before for any movie review or an Oscars profile episode, you get two reviews in one episode in that we will not spoil the plot for you in the first half of these episodes.

Immediately turning people away from our pod, I'm sure.

Maybe we just don't like fish people.

Avatar, they have fish people.

And you know what? That's

Black Dahlia, based on the book by James L. Roy.

Screenplay by Josh Friedman, who has been a part of the Avatar films, 2025's Fantastic Four, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, and the Terminator franchise.

So he's got, you know, some blockbusters under his belt.

Directed by Brian De Palma.

Mm-hmm.

So you see this with, like, George Lucas with the Star Wars prequels, and you see it with James Cameron with the Avatar movies.

Mm-hmm.

Where it's like...

Right

... well, like the dialogue and all of that jazz.

Um, and Avatar movies I think are fine.

They're perfectly fine.

I mean, they have the numbers somehow to back it, right? Like, it's, it's just-

It's like with, I felt, 'cause we, we talked a little bit in Discord about, um, the Avatar films, and I feel a little bit like Avatar, when it's like, until I actually watched them last year, I kind of felt like I didn't...

It felt like everybody was watching it, but nobody was watching it, [laughs] right? Like, clearly so many people are watching it.

It doesn't make this much money without ev- so many people watching it.

Nearly a day.

[laughs]

Like, point is, like GTA and the Avatar films are like beyond-

Oh, we're over eight