AVATAR land - the specifics

flyerjab

flyerjab

Well-Known Member
David2319 said:
I really am starting to think this land may be better than Diagon Alley.
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I have been saying that all along. To be fair though, DA is spectacular. I think in the end this will simply come down to appeal of the subject matter and/or aesthetics of each land. Now I am not including rides here, just immersion and detail.

On the 16th and 17th of May I will be able to truly judge. But I have a feeling that after just seeing the daytime photos, Pandora will be my favorite, especially with Tiffins and the Nomad Lounge right on the border.
 
Daveeeeed

Daveeeeed

Well-Known Member
flyerjab said:
I have been saying that all along. To be fair though, DA is spectacular. I think in the end this will simply come down to appeal of the subject matter and/or aesthetics of each land. Now I am not including rides here, just immersion and detail.

On the 16th and 17th of May I will be able to truly judge. But I have a feeling that after just seeing the daytime photos, Pandora will be my favorite, especially with Tiffins and the Nomad Lounge right on the border.
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Completely agree! One will not make one worse, they will each be their own. One focusing on a magical town/world, and the other an alien planet focused on nature. I'm so glad it looks this tremendous!
 
Bairstow

Bairstow

Well-Known Member
Cosmic Commando said:
If WDW has managed to borrow from real cultures without much incident, I don't see how creating a fictional culture would raise those pitchforks. Certainly TWDC has had some issues, but I don't think it would be a problem unless they borrow something very specific from a culture to use it for the Navi. I think it's a brilliant way to take a broad survey of pre-industrial art and look at it through this Navi lens... simple shapes, repeating patterns, natural objects, etc. The hand print reminds me of hand print cave paintings here on Earth. The art relates to Earth art. The stories about the animals on Pandora supposedly have Earth analogs. It looks like it will fit a lot better into Animal Kingdom than I even thought it would, and I didn't really mind the land. I've come to view it as DAK's Tomorrowland.
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The issue isn't that the design and merchandise of the Avatar project borrows from existing world cultures- it's that by using the same corporate effort to present and market culture "authenticity", the Avatar project brings in to stark relief the company's previous efforts to do the same with the Africa and Asia lands. People have sometimes described Disney's Animal Kingdom as, "Third World Tourism ography", in that large portions of the park are dedicated to collating some of the more singular sights and sounds from the designers' endless world fact-finding tours, but most especially those that depict foreign poverty, in order to convey a more heightened sense of the exotic. There's a very thoughtful essay about the park, pre-Avatar available here. Amalgamated, semi-fictional places (Harambe, Anandapur) are created in order to avoid the designers being tied to a specific place or culture, and these intentionally "exotic" culture stews are then presented as part of a wider, park-wide narrative that is ostensibly about mankind's relationship to animals. That's always been one of the key differences in the Animal Kingdom's approach from most other theme parks. Unlike say, the Wizarding World at Universal, where the magic and castle are all presented as real and the overlying message is, "Isn't this cool?," the subtext from what's presented at the Animal Kingdom has always been, "You need to learn something from the way these people live." What is different now is that by using the same narrative and design techniques seen in the other lands ("authentic", "cultureally-inspired" merchandise in the gift shops, pseudo-"ethnic" garb for the cast members, etc.) is that the park is going to put a 2009 James Cameron film on an equal topical footing as aesthetically distilled notions of "Asia" and "Africa." I don't envision anyone from the social justice/culture appropriation sphere raising "pitchforks" over this, my observation is simply that by adopting the same theme park design techniques and modes as the other lands, the Avatar project is serving as a satire, intentional or not, of the rest of the park.

It's the self-parody, not any potential offense, that I find interesting and amusing, and I would love to know what sort of internal conversations were had about this.
 
Disney Analyst

Disney Analyst

Well-Known Member
Bairstow

Bairstow

Well-Known Member
Evan-500 said:
https://twitter.com/thedis/status/858329773910700032

Someone explain... I'm hearing AA but I can't imagine it's not a video?!?
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Almost certainly an AA. I'm basing this on the way there are bubbles clinging to the inside edge of the top of the tank.
If it were CGI it wouldn't have this annoying flaw.

This looks really cool, btw. Thanks for posting! Part of the Flight of Passage queue and preshow?
 
Disney Analyst

Disney Analyst

Well-Known Member
Bairstow said:
Almost certainly an AA. I'm basing this on the way there are bubbles clinging to the inside edge of the top of the tank.
If it were CGI it wouldn't have this annoying flaw.

This looks really cool, btw. Thanks for posting! Part of the Flight of Passage queue and preshow?
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Part of the queue. Go on twitter. So many photos and videos, I am blown away.

Besides the female shaman this one has also appeared in the river journey ride.

IMG_1537.PNG
 
Casper Gutman

Casper Gutman

Well-Known Member
Tahu said:
Disappointed at the lack of AA beasts. Would be way more impressed with this ride if we saw a full-sized Direhorse or Hammerhead Rhino Thingy on the shoreline taking a drink and glancing up at the boats.
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It is very pretty and the shaman is stunning (if a bit off-putting, but that's the character design from the original film).

The problem is that, when Imagineering shows us how much they can do with what they are given, it forces the question "why aren't they given more?"
 
Bairstow

Bairstow

Well-Known Member
Tahu said:
Disappointed at the lack of AA beasts. Would be way more impressed with this ride if we saw a full-sized Direhorse or Hammerhead Rhino Thingy on the shoreline taking a drink and glancing up at the boats.
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It certainly feels like a continuation of the techniques used in the Shanghai Pirates ride, that is, almost everything is projection but WDI tries really hard to find new ways to have the projection interact with the physical sets. I especially like the shadows of the little helicoptery lizard things crawling on the leaves above you.
Wonder how many parts wavy-arm-lady shares with Ursula.
 
FigmentJedi

FigmentJedi

Well-Known Member
Casper Gutman said:
It is very pretty and the shaman is stunning (if a bit off-putting, but that's the character design from the original film).

The problem is that, when Imagineering shows us how much they can do with what they are given, it forces the question "why aren't they given more?"
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The other thing is that they've been selling this whole expansion as "We're bringing this full CGI world to physical life even though some would say this is impossible". And they have been good on that with their efforts to simulate the floating mountains and building all the weird plants, I was expecting them to give us some fully three-dimensional Pandoran megafauna. Especially when that's the reason they've even put this movie into Animal Kingdom.
 

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