THE WAY OF WATER - First thoughts

[Atokirina]

We're spoiled here, there's a whole bunch of fancy cinemas to choose from.
4DX not only has moving seats, but also wind, mist, fog, scent and lightning fx. Though apparently both the rain forest and the ocean smell like roses LOL

And then there's ScreenX, where they project the movie not only on the screen, but have turned the two side walls into additional screens! So that's 3x the movie! I had to watch it, just in case there was any additional action happening on the side screens, which of course there wasn't. Not even a new fish. Extra landscape for sure, but other than that mostly creatures and characters moving in and out of the main screen. It also wasn't on for the whole movie, only the most cinematic and action scenes.
Here's a preview:

But can you believe the amount of extra work it must have been to generate and render all that additional footage? It's not like with Top Gun or something where they can 'just' set up additional camera's.

[Elyris]

I wonder if and how they will be able to integrate it to the 'home release' stuff ....


Also: 4D sounds .. interesting, let's say but also kinda frightening - there are things you don't want to smell.

[Nawmtirea]

The smells in 4DX are basically limited (in our theatre) to roses for forests (and oceans for some reason) and a charred smell (which was cool when we saw the original Avatar's 4K re-release in 4DX and you could smell Hometree burning and smoke (fog machine) drifted into the theatre. 4DX theatres around the world differ in features and scent catalogues. Some have little mist sprayers built-in to the seats in front of you to mist you, but our 4DX only has the mist makers built into the tops of the side walls. I was sitting closer to the side for our 4DX showing, so I kept feeling the mist when characters were riding ilus or in boats, but I was blocking Atokirina from feeling it. I did absolutely love seeing the Avatar 4K re-release in 4DX because it felt like a 2hr 45min Flight of Passage ride. The flying scenes were amazing in 4DX.

[Elyris]

Ah. OK then.

(I admit I understood only parts of that. 'Flight of Passage ride'? Still sounds a bit challenging.)

I wonder how much peoples behinds and spines hurt afterwards. The speedboats scenes alone gave be a sore back - man that sh1ts bad for your spinal discs. (When I did my sail certificate we als ohad a few hours of motor boat training and as the teacher had a bigger boat with an actual motor she took us along for a ride. It was ... bumby to say the least and we were not even close to anythign resembling actual high seas for that - the speed alone was enough.)

[Nawmtirea]

"Flight of Passage" is the ride at Disney Animal Kingdom's Pandora park. They "scan" you, match you to an Avatar, and then you sit on a link-chair (similar to sitting on a motorcycle) and experience an amazing 3D flight on the back of an ikran over the forests (and ocean) of Pandora. You even feel the ikran breathing between your legs. It's really well done, and quite an emotional experience as it's the closest we'll come on earth to actually riding an ikran. Seeing Avatar in 4DX was almost like a 2hr version of the Flight of Passage ride without emptying your bank account to go to Disney.

[Elyris]

Ah. OK. Never heard of it.

Sounds somewhat interesting (but I am hard to satisfy wiht 'attractions' - sings of use, scents, smaells and backdrops usually ruin any immersion for me).

[Atokirina]

News flash: Avatar Way of Water is coming out on digital on March 28, featuring 3hrs of extras.

I expected them to release a Blu-ray first, seeing how JC loves old school media, but I’ll take it.
I hope most of those extras are deleted scenes

[Elyris]

Yeah - I already saw that.

My greatest fear: it says that the extras depend on where you get it. So that#s concerning. Maybe I'll wait another day or two or so to see which version is the 'fullest'.