_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

it is TOTALLY ferngully with guns btw

...in a good way, mostly!

the earth mother gaia hooey does get to be a bit much after a while

yeah, and some of the more sentimental scenes sort of made me cringe. the two things i found the most annoying were the music and the accents. just this sort of generic indistinct ethnic otherness.

thing about them that i admired was that i it really didn't take too long for me to think of them as "people". there was no uncanny valley distraction

yeah, i was impressed the most by this. overall the f/x were great. they generally had a nice tangible, physical feel to them despite not being 100% photoreal.

also nice to see action sequences that had clear geography and were easy to follow. don't know why that's so rare in modern movies.

anyway that's not to excuse the film's flaws, just to say that it does the spectacle part very very well.

i will paste this everywhere

http://img.slate.com/media/1/122939/2207695/2237022/2238895/CA_091217_avatar.jpg

as someone who's done his fair share of both, movies and video games do NOTHING like the same thing to me... even so-called cinematic ones like uncharted. i've never, ever been emotionally invested in anything that happens in a video game (or any character), never wondered how the story was going to develop... they are barely in the same universe for me

― akira goldsman (s1ocki), Friday, 18 December 2009 08:00 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^yes

well, see, no in my case. I've had some emotional involvement and intellectual curiosity about plot development with games and it feels about as properly placed as if I had same with a cameron film.
obvs this is personal so i don't feel the need to really argue a point here, but I will say that I don't need to see a big visual spectacular with no plot anymore and it ain't that I'm above it or something; it's just less likely to leave me really engaged. I've seen a gazillion lush gorgeous films and i'd rather do yimou than bay i guess; I gotta have some meat in the plot and characterizations OR i gotta be able to have physical control of the characters themselves or my mind wanders.

lol I'm not saying games = movies; I'm just saying in terms of spectacle/worldbuilding games do it better, and so far avatars big draw is how much of a spectacle it presents

I'll also freely admit that the last game I played was modern warfare 2 so that probably colors my viewpoint

as an aside, I see the PS3 can handle 3D apparently but we'll all need another telly upgrade or alternatively expensive glasses to use it

Flick was fun. Definitely some Starcraft moments (a friend said it was Terrans + Night Elves, so a cross-property Blizzard affair).

desplechin = video games
cameron = cinema

cameron = cinema
desplechin = video games life

I don't need to see a big visual spectacular with no plot anymore and it ain't that I'm above it or something; it's just less likely to leave me really engaged.

^This, basically. And the thing is, that isn't really how Cameron used to be. The reason why his older stuff (Aliens, The Abyss, the Terminators) worked is because it wasn't all spectacle. There was also an engaging (if somewhat facile) featuring characters you cared about somewhat. From everything that's been said about Avatar thus far, the story appears to be pretty weak, so if it's all just Arnie rampin' off an overpass in 3-D, I can prolly just wait for the home theater showroom demo at the Best Buy.

"engaging (if somewhat facile) story", I meant.

Deric otm! It's so disappointing because we have proof the guy was a great storyteller; he just didn't seem to care anymore when he could instead be playing with 3d blue titties.

also nice to see action sequences that had clear geography and were easy to follow. don't know why that's so rare in modern movies.

― krampus activities (latebloomer), Friday, December 18, 2009 7:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

this line alone makes me want to see it! we should do a thread on 00s action sequences that manage this

yeah cause movies are always filled w/scenes of u trying to jump over a pit and falling on spikes repeatedly for two hours - movies and video games are less similar than wikipedia and a novel - they both compete for yr entertainment time but past that xp

― ice cr?m, Friday, December 18, 2009 1:29 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

That's a terribly poor point

― The reverse TARDIS of pasta (Niles Caulder), Friday, December 18, 2009 2:01 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you are a terribly poor point

this guy

but I will say that I don't need to see a big visual spectacular with no plot anymore

the movie's problem is not lack of a story or plot. it's that the story is disappointingly conventional.

sub "no plot" with "no interesting plot" then.
bottom line is that if I'm going to spend two hours plus watching grandeur and neat-o shit i can totally get down with that, but i can more or less do that hanging out in times square. it's just colder. just as many furries tho

the worst moment in this movie is when they hook up to the forest internet and you can hear the sound of children laughing faintly in the distance as they experience all the na'vi's memories

from the local mpls paper review lol:

The Na'vi use a kind of organic USB cord to hook into the minds of their steeds, controlling them by mental osmosis. Watching "Avatar," I felt that Cameron had hooked into my mental circuitry, downloading gigabytes of pure moviegoing bliss.

item!

wait, so cameron was downloading gigs of pure moviegoing bliss from this guy? does he mean uploading?

hahaha

gimme back my bliss maaan

this really IS a new sort of moviegoing

anyway its obvs forks et al will eventually see this and be all it was pretty rad in its own way and no one will really care anymore

Has Ursula Le Guin complained about how the plot of this is very similar to The Word for World Is Forest? She did have the better title.

i'm actually gonna completely abstain, but in essence I agree with you mr cram

*~that is a terribly poor point~~~~*

the worst moment in this movie is when they hook up to the forest internet and you can hear the sound of children laughing faintly in the distance as they experience all the na'vi's memories

i must be a sap, but i have to say that even though i cringed at the whole children laughing thing, afterward i was like "noooo don't let them bulldoze the ancestor internet hub!"

on another subject, is this the most unabashedly liberal big budget sci-fi action flick of all time, or did i miss the point?

ya in a sense, i guess, though it is basically a "let's save the community center from the mean developer" movie and that's not really a huge breakthrough iirc

this is our time down here

so this is an incredibly expensive remake of Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo with an azure color code?

reboot

reloaded

xp well i saw it as more of a 'indigenous people in the way of massive fossil fuel reserve' (saved by a community organizer!).

i mean you probably could have made a historical fiction drama from the same screenplay, with Native Americans (or any other type of aboriginal populations) as stand-ins for the Na'vi, but nobody would have wanted to see it. the environmental message of the movie was not subtle, either. i wouldn't be surprised to read conservatives bitching about the liberal brainwashing in the next few days.

Does Pandora have legal, readily-available abortions?

i mean you probably could have made a historical fiction drama from the same screenplay, with Native Americans (or any other type of aboriginal populations) as stand-ins for the Na'vi, but nobody would have wanted to see it. the environmental message of the movie was not subtle, either. i wouldn't be surprised to read conservatives bitching about the liberal brainwashing in the next few days.

― richie aprile (rockapads), Friday, December 18, 2009 12:46 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wasnt that called dances with wolves and everybody wanted to see it?

it honestly kind of reminded me of that 90s tv special where bette midler played the ailing mother earth

xxp

Human-to-Na'vi avatars made possible by stem cells.

so this is like fern gully

slocks, i remember that! Bette was all like "i will survive.. but you... you the humans... it is YOU who will die... and i weep for you"

wasnt that called dances with wolves and everybody wanted to see it?

dunno. never saw it.

point taken, though.

i guess someone's already made/quoted "world's largest screensaver" zing