_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

rockapads: are you saying that pixar films don't show intelligent storytelling as its main selling point? i personally couldn't give a toss how they look when there are stories as good as wall-e and finding nemo.

yeah i mean i loved wall e, it was sorta borderline w/ the hollywood liberal environmentalism stuff but it never overwhelmed the love story or anything. you cared more about the characters

wall e the floating ipod is more iconic than the blue dorks (c)s1ocki of avatar

seriously this movie could have been saved if the main char. used his knowledge of humans to figure out how to use the natural world to defeat the humans. instead he just martyred a bunch of them, then god saved everybody. ughguhgugh

"spoilers"^^^

pretty sure the solution to environmental catastrophe is praying, then. james cameron is the dude on a street corner w/ a 'world is ending' sign & a bigger bank account

character and plotting go hand in hand

/mckee

I think I gotta see this just to have a justified opinion.

its almost like he thinks he can buy creativity.

xpost: I vote Ridley Scott

― Tannenbaum Schmidt, Saturday, December 19, 2009 5:07 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

are you shitting me, have you seen what that dude has done lately

― akira goldsman (s1ocki), Saturday, December 19, 2009 4:17 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

A Good Year 2: The IMAX Experience

― Dif Juz Guys (Deric W. Haircare), Saturday, 19 December 2009 22:24 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

was thinking more of Alien and Bladerunner Ridley Scott w/ a dash of Gladiator

why don't you just wish cameron handed the technology off to aliens james cameron while we're in time travel land

Terrence Malick

Agree with most criticisms but the stuff about the 'God' is explained (a bit) as being not religious per se but physically tangible (or at least as 'mystical' as the Force in Star Wars).

They want to protect the physical properties of the planet (which are the basis of their culture) rather than defending a "religion" based on faith. So the criticisms of them praying to God to save them or whatever don't really hold up. (Yeah I hated the swaying scenes too).

no, they still hold up. is it science in the ten commandments because in the universe of the movie god is provably real??

they describe the planet as being a nervous system. not very religious imo.

so the movie hinges on a character so huge as to make other plot developments irrelevant ... sweet

Deej's concerns encapsulate my misgivings. However, even though I only saw this in 2-D, I was pretty stunned.

Awesome bits:

Final battle is simply a feast for the eyes, pwns LOTR, man in robot-suit fighting with a knife = XD
Really, really blunt about Iraq war parallels = XD
Really, really blunt about global warming parallels = XD

It's a really blunt film. Everything is hyperrealised then turned up a few notches. The dialogue made me roll my eyes about 40-50 times at a conservative estimate and the characterisation wasn't strong (not to mention the story being rote and yes overly militaristic, although I think maybe the point was that they lost with war, but won with nature?) but I found myself absorbed by the scale and swoop of it all. Also, too many near-misses w.r.t. death for it to be anything other than a fantastical allegory.

Monogamy-only society = dud

rockapads: are you saying that pixar films don't show intelligent storytelling as its main selling point?

i'm saying some of the Pixar movies have really basic, unsurprising, crowdpleasing plots and i like them in spite of/because of that. wasn't meant to be negative about Pixar movies, since i liked Avatar. i was careful not to say "all" Pixar movies - Toy Story 1 & 2 and Wall-e were fairly unconventional, i thought. i went into Avatar expecting a movie meant to appeal to kids and adults alike, and that's what i got. i'm not saying it couldn't have been a little bit more nuanced and still appealed to kids, either, though.

I mean, I don't think I'll still be thinking about this film in 2 days hours, but it was a pretty rad experience. Shame it cost all that money.

yeah i had fun watching it, but i can't imagine that i'll be buying it or anything.

The huge battle worked because it combined the fantasy grace of the Na'vi with some genuinely lo-fi grungy gunplay. I think this is what Cameron is best at. Floating islands and swaying prayer scenes were p-ridiculous. When they say 'I see you' to each other in that climactic man-on-smurf romance scene at the end I had 'shake a little ass' in my head immediately.

hahah yeah. every time they did the swaying thing with the lion king music playing, i wanted to crawl headfirst into my theater seat with my hands over my ears.

i haven't covered my eyes for a love-scene in YEARS but when they first got together it was unbearable

Also, I hate pan-pipes.

OH, and the characterisation of that corporate rat driving everything on from the safety of the control-room was utterly ludicrous. I know he started to show signs of remorse towards the end (you could see it in his face - oh the stories of regret he'd have to tell to the folks back home!) but given how totally evil he'd been he probably deserved to suffer more. He was pretty much written out of the story once the battles began! I guess that might have been a good thing given how bad he was.

James Horner is Cameron's biggest liability.

Well, of the external ones, I mean.

HOWEVER, none of these things were the worst thing about the film.

Oh no.

The worst thing about the film was Noah.

I knew I'd seen Noah before, somewhere.

Then it dawned on me. The horror became manifest.

I'd last seen him playing the single most repulsive male lead in cinema history in a certain Paris Hilton vehicle. A movie regularly trumpeted as one of the worst movies ever. With good reason. And a movie in which, amazingly, he'd been the most abject character. Yeah, he even made Paris seem merely terrible.

Joel Moore, why do they cast thee?

James Horner is Cameron's biggest liability.

― queen frostine (Eric H.), Saturday, December 19, 2009 8:26 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Well, of the external ones, I mean.

― queen frostine (Eric H.), Saturday, December 19, 2009 8:26 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

treat the disease not the symptom dude.

If loving Titanic is wrong, I don't wanna be right, et al.

Cozwn otm. Now that this isn't a flop will be gd to see where this tech can take properly good stories.

I think the plot of this lost a ton in the cutting though.

SPOILERS

Sigourney said on radio 4 that her whole romance subplot had been cut, along with a big science substrand. There's no sign of the former. There's only a hint of the latter in the really weird scene jammed in after they've sent the bulldozers in and she's stomping about going "but that was their router! You killed their file server ... you monster!"

I think if that stuff had been given additional time it might have seemed less ludicrously gaia ex machina at the end. But if the cut dialogue was more of that stuff, it's probably best that it went.

SPOILERS

also weird gun-in-the-first-act when she puts him in the taped-up pod and goes "this is the least glitchy". In a movie so rigidly plotted the line might as well have been "this will break at an inopportune moment and you will fall from lazerbeak and bruise yr tail" but then it just didn't happen.

It's almost like a plot twist, that, in this film.

was sigourney going to hook up w/tsu'tey?

She didn't say bt that was my guess

Hi everyone, long time reader, first time poster

I liked how there was a point in this thread where the consensus became "this is going to be the shittiest movie ever". Then after the reviews started coming in, there is 1 or 2 people who claim the movie to be shit and the rest all thought it was okay, good or better.

Before I went to the movie my sister was complaining that she didn't want to go but we had already bought her a ticket. She said something like "they are all dumb looking blue people". I told her she was being prejudiced and racist. She also said something like the movie is just going to look like a video game and that kind of animation is just going to be stupid.

After the movie everyone in my family said it was B- or B+. And yes, the animation was probably the biggest asset.

Here is my brief review:

SPOILERS: The plot was better in the first half. I would have liked a huge twist at the end. A couple of the sensual moments made turn in my seat ("I see you" (which was okay the first time I heard it) and the human navi touch scene near the end (even though I realize that it probably did need to be in the movie). Overall, whenever there was scenes that explored new scenery or showed creatures - those were the coolest parts. Whenever the big action scenes started I was pumped for them. As they we're ending I was getting halfway bored with them even though all the action scenes were cool in their own right. I think the suspense just sort of died off near the end of the movie (there was no more exploration for one) and a lot of the plot was predictable.
Overall I give the movie a B
also I hate the Titanic.

i'm kinda more interested in the gross for this in a purely sportsmanlike way: http://boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2631&p=.htm
27 mill opening day puts it at "about the same as Star Trek from earlier this year" which i guess is good for a new IP but not quite worldbeater status

i haven't covered my eyes for a love-scene in YEARS but when they first got together it was unbearable

About half the audience in my theater either busted out laughing or giggled during this.

I got turned on

posts v much in character

saw this tonight. fucking GREAT movie. one of only a few front-to-back great movies i've seen this year, and of those, by far the most consistent in tone and skillful in storytelling.

there's been a lot of negative talk on this thread about the breakthrough effects and their relationship to cinematic "wonder". and about the relationship of effects-driven wonder to real cinematic storytelling. i was surprised, therefore, by how solid the (very basic) story was and how well cameron controlled the potentially unwieldy narrative. it was exciting, moving, romantic and awe-inspiring - and not in a cheap, michael bay-style, action overdose sense. the film develops its setting, characters, themes and story arcs in a careful, thoughtful and intuitively satisfying manner. whatever i think of cameron as a person/professional doofus, he's a brilliant cinematic tale-spinner. avatar doesn't use its visuals as crutch to cover narrative weakness any more than, say, star wars or finding nemo. and it holds up just fine to such comparison.

when i say "storytelling" i'm not talking about the plot itself, which was childishly simple and sentimental. i'm talking about the way that plot becomes a tale, an act of human communication. most myths and family-appropriate adventure stories are, after all, rather simple in their conflicts, themes and plotting. simplicity allows mythic exaggeration to resonate with human experience. and cameron is clearly trying here, in the manner of star wars, to create an explicatory myth for humans in our era. i think he succeeds marvelously. i loved the depiction of the na'vi and their spiritual culture, the "don't mess with mother nature" theme & conclusion, and the brutally clear gulf war parallels.

that's not to say that it's without faults. the acting was mostly fine, but as others have said, a bit flat (though i totally stand up for sam worthington as sully - he's excellent). it felt a little long in the transition from the 2nd to 3rd act. and the rather one-dimensional portrayal of military madness and evil was, well, rather one-dimensional. but none of this bothered me much. the movie as a whole is far to good to be undone by a handful of minor missteps.

wanna say so much more, but i'll cut myself off. it's four in the fucking morning! one closing thought is that i see this movie as an invitation as much as anything else. an invitation to other filmmakers to come play with the toys offered, to make movies that in the past would have been all but impossible. fucking ringworld, dude.

i'm kinda more interested in the gross for this in a purely sportsmanlike way: http://boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2631&p=.htm
27 mill opening day puts it at "about the same as Star Trek from earlier this year" which i guess is good for a new IP but not quite worldbeater status

― fictional, homosexual, Baltimore hoodlum (forksclovetofu), Sunday, December 20, 2009 6:18 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

it's longer than 'star trek' and also it's winter. otoh, 3d tickets are more expensive than 2d.

i doubt this cost 1/2 a billi like the nyt said. it still cost A LOT, but i really would not be surprised if it does open the door to 3d -- for blockbusters anyway -- which is a win of a different kind for hollywood.

also, i didn't see it in 3D. so the gee-whiz factor was probably significantly diminished. and i still loved it to death.

i doubt this cost 1/2 a billi like the nyt said. it still cost A LOT, but i really would not be surprised if it does open the door to 3d -- for blockbusters anyway -- which is a win of a different kind for hollywood.

― Dean Gaffney's December (history mayne), Sunday, December 20, 2009 4:12 AM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

even if it did, given the investment of time & tech development resources, i imagine that a lot of that cost is overhead not for this film specifically, but for films of this type going forward. would guess that a comparable follow-up could be produced much more cheaply and quickly.

avatar 2: in the na'vi

avatar 2: gaia harder

anyone wanna actually say another about the 'game changing effects' other than 'no uncanny valley feel'?

avatar 2: tsu'tey call

s1ock I finally saw this yesterday and I am totally with you on it.

Hopefully this helps to kill off the multi-hundred-million-dollar behemoth and usher in the age of the tighter, leaner blockbuster ([eg District 9, which is not a great movie but makes mincemeat of this one.)

any of youse who really liked this movie, would you say you really connected with the characters? is jake sully now like a classic all-time character for you? or neytiri?

looooooooooooool after all my posting last night this movie has actually left my head, as predicted