SPIDER-MAN swings, NIGHTMARE smolders, and Cameron's starting his big push back to Pandora
It's a big one today, and there's a lot of ground to cover
It’s Friday, December 17, and here’s where we are…
First, let me apologize for not publishing on Wednesday.
It was a frantic start to the week, but I did try to build it so that I’d be able to write about things for you. I built in time to write about Spider-Man: No Way Home, and I wrote a pretty big chunk of a piece. But the problem with it was that I was trying to abide by Sony’s requests that I not reveal anything about the movie, and with a film like this one, that seems pointless. I finally threw that out and made the decision to simply publish a piece today, giving you full warning that the review contains a full discussion of the film’s content and themes. I’m not trying to publish a laundry list of spoilers, but I also don’t think there’s any point in discussing the film if you can’t talk about what it does, why it does it, and how it does it.
That’s doubly true of The Matrix Resurrections, and I’ve decided I’m going to give you a few extra days, publishing on December 24 instead of December 22. I have already written a solid 1000 words on the movie, so whenever I publish, you can count on me letting my freak flag fly.
In the meantime, I am thrilled that we get to kick off today’s newsletter with news of James Cameron’s latest impossible bet. After all, James Cameron is one of my favorite weirdos.
I say that knowing full well I’ve never worked for him. That might change my mind. He’s a lunatic. Stories from his sets, told by people at every level of creative collaboration, are absolutely horrifying at times. It’s baked into the DNA of the films, that demanding, obsessive nature, and into the characters he makes films about, and while he sounds incredibly demanding, his films also speak for themselves in terms of the final product.
I love that he keeps making the most expensive movies of all time, that he keeps somehow defying the odds and succeeding, and that he seems to make things harder on himself every single time he gets back behind the camera. I see photos from the set of Avatar 2 and I am immediately happy knowing that he’s out there torturing actors for months on end to create something that will be singular. I guess this week is the official kickoff for the hype campaign for Avatar 2, and in addition to the Entertainment Weekly piece where the new photos came from, there was a private screening of footage for a small group of theater owners that went well. The word is that the underwater footage is truly otherworldly, but that theater owners remain nervous about everything.
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