_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

also saw this on 9:45am (!!!) on a wednesday morning matinee (lol $12pp)... sold out packed theater in the largest imax theater in norcal (aka: computer nerd center of the world)

dont got on 3d glasses @ home :(

― ice cr?m, Wednesday, December 30, 2009 5:50 PM (9 minutes ago)

they put all 3 of the LOTR dircuts in the theaters on v. short term limited release iirc...

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?

― akira goldsman (s1ocki), Sunday, December 20, 2009 10:44 AM

i'd rate the movie about 7.5 out of 10 (entertaining, would def recommend for fans of genre) and was 100% not expecting high-drama BUT the film absolutely did it's job of taking me into its world and entertaining me (aside from the few groanworthy moments) for nearly 3 hours and i didn't look at my phone-clock once!

Joel David Moore is a dead ringer for Tom Green, either that or i forget what Tom Green looks like.

the one plot point that REALLY bugs me is the fact that sully was the only one to break thru to the navis because of a mystical prophecy type shit - ie the bugs landing on him - rather than any of his actions. i hate that stuff.

― the finest of display name homies (s1ocki), Monday, December 21, 2009 10:46 AM (1 week ago)

this is flawed. the enya (?) seed stayed his smurfette's bow when she was gonna kill him. none of them were impressed UNTIL he did all the physical stuff (riding the horses, banshees) BUT THEN he betrayed them when it was revealed that he was aware of the colonists plan all along and never warned them until the 11th hour. He was a pariah UNTIL he tamed the dragonthingy (again, off-camera in my cut!) and brought him back to prove that he was in fact the Kwisatz Haderach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4M9Tp6c0bs

http://bitsandpieces.us/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/imageshand_20job_small.jpg

lol this is my friends' biz swear to gawd! i'm typing this from 1/2 block away tbh.

also tbh was kinda letdown the "mating" ritual didn't involve a symbolic locking of the ponytail USBs... too obvs?

hated sigourney's stanford sweatshirt 94/7 wtf is up with that? like gurl, change your avatar's clothesies you're like almost 60y/o beezy.

lol people living in the past

also tbh was kinda letdown the "mating" ritual didn't involve a symbolic locking of the ponytail USBs... too obvs?

― ┌∩┐(◕_◕)┌∩┐ (Steve Shasta)

yeah was looking fwd to this bit and it never happened! don't think 'too obvs' would have been a problem for this film. also in general i was expecting freakier jungle shit, like plants that attack you, nasty creepy crawlies, etc. all the potentially threatening plants and insects just turned out to be beautiful and harmless! all they had was giant dogs, dino-rhinos and big lizard-birds? kind of lame.

but i guess it's for children so there wasn't going to be too much bio-horror stuff. which actually suits me fine cos that stuff grosses me out! in fact i don't know what i'm complaining about.

1) slocki y u hardmanning shakey mo for doing exactly what 99% of everyone in this thread was doing for the first half of the thread?

it was annoying when they did it too!

i will venture to guess the director's cut of this will be much better, you can tell when they were just ffwding along to get to the ending.

― ┌∩┐(◕_◕)┌∩┐ (Steve Shasta), Wednesday, December 30, 2009 8:49 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

thank god, if there had been 45 minutes more rainforest babble i seriously would not have been able to take it

also in general i was expecting freakier jungle shit, like plants that attack you, nasty creepy crawlies, etc. all the potentially threatening plants and insects just turned out to be beautiful and harmless!

agreed, my biggest complaint

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/first-family-sees-avatar-in-3-d/

I want to see this again at Imax but every show is sold out and I'd really rather wait til it's died down a bit.

boxofficemojo has worldwide gross through dec. 30 at $745 million. i guess cameron gets to toast the new year with a big bottle of told-you-so.

Shit. I should probably dust off my old 3D resume. It's gonna be a growth industry again...

i saw it 3d, no imax, and was not impressed. glad to see i was not alone in perving over michelle rodriguez in 3d :O

actually the best part was when we walked out and there was this 7 ft tall guy coming into the theater. my dad saw him first was like "holy shit!"

Thursday
12/31

AVATAR

$14,925,000

SQUEAKQUEL

$8,750,000

HOLMES

$8,720,000

should cross $300 million tomorrow

which is prob abt how much it actually cost

That sounds about right. I remember reading somewhere (maybe earlier in this thread?) that it cost $300 million to film, and another $150 million for advertising.

$500 million is a more realistic estimate

ur a more realistic estimate

Oh. Well, this Vanity Fair article cites estimates from $230 to $500 million, and says that $280 million (for production costs alone) is probably the closest.

http://www.chud.com/articles/articles/21496/1/THE-BATTLE-OF-AVATAR039S-BUDGET/Page1.html

i think cameron was under some kind of contract clause to keep production costs under $300 m, so somehow he'll figure out a way to make it look like that whatever the real story is.

this was unmitigated shit

ie, another Best Picture speech on the way! ka-ching

the 3-d is annoying and distracting. would probably need to know about perceptual psychology to say why, but imo in most instances it does nothing interesting and draws attention to irrelevant things. more damagingly it splits the image, quite brutally, into separate panes. why do this? it also dulls the colours.

it was long and boring. the lead character had negative charisma, and he along with everyone else had to work with a completely terrible script. 'the abyss' isn't perfect, but it has an emotional core and characters you give an f about. the central relationship here was furry-friendly crap. it can't be that hard to write stock characters like ribisi's, lang's, and weaver's, and yet all three are paper-thin.

plot was basic but still didn't make sense. do the blue people "get" what avatars are? this doesn't seem to be explained: the avatars are clearly marked out by their clothing. worthington carries a gun. and saldana almost kills him for no reason.

all of the tree-hugging stuff is obviously an embarrassment and it takes up probably a third of the movie.

was not expecting a masterpiece but the easy ride this has received from critics is shameful shit.

Oh. Well, this Vanity Fair article cites estimates from $230 to $500 million, and says that $280 million (for production costs alone) is probably the closest.

― Quiet, I'm making my Youtube Star Wars Review (Z S), Saturday, 2 January 2010 00:54 (Yesterday) Permalink

But it also says that the 280 doesn't include the R&D involved in making the cameras, the 3d tech etc. I can't understand how anyone wouldn't consider that a production cost...

So it needs to make about a billion, which I guess it will. I question whether people will be interested in two more Ferngully 3Ds though. I guess the sequels will be cheaper?

Considering that probably a lot of the budget went into developing technology and character designs that would be re-used in any sequels, I'm sure they wouldn't cost as much.

But it also says that the 280 doesn't include the R&D involved in making the cameras, the 3d tech etc. I can't understand how anyone wouldn't consider that a production cost...

Yeah, I had the same thought. But I imagine that finding outside funding for R&D would be easier, because any new technological "developments" (har har) would be useful for others, not just the Avatar team. So I would guess that R&D isn't included as a production cost because other outside, non-Avatar interests helped to pay for it.

finally saw this, it was easily an hour too long and the last hour was the most boring thing ever. the tree-hugging stuff got tired but not as tired as the relentless blowing up of shit at the end which was just mind-numbing, and by that point the novelty of both the cgi and the 3d was completely taken for granted. also, miliatary dude drinking coffee while blowing crap up easily the worst character in any movie I've seen in ages. both led guy and weaver were awful except when cgi, maybe this was intended in order to breathe more life into the cgi characters. all that said, it was still okay.

also voice over was awful

there were so many things bad about this I'm not sure why I still kind of liked it. starved for entertainment I guess

u liked it because it was AWESOME

duh

this wasn't as entertaining as My Bloody Valentine in 3-D

this is unmitigated shit, and yet i still had a good-ass time watchin it in IMAX 3D after a day at the zoo.

as a tech demo, it's pretty fukkin amazing. am cautiously optimistic that we get a crop of dope sci fi movies in the next few years that can marry it to scripts that aren't woeful

this would have been fine if all the excesses had been tamed (plot excesses that is, like over-the-top miliary boneheads, over-the-top tree hugging, over-the-top relentless neverending battle)

will it take the dvd release for everyone to realize how crappy this movie is?

For sure. I have yet to see a 3-D movie - any 3-D movie - that was remotely watchable at home in 2-D. Well, maybe "Coraline" excepted. Then again, "Coraline" was well written. "Avatar" - I enjoyed the hell of it, but damned if I can't recall a single character's name outside of the lead. If it has anything going for it, it's that it's not totally steeped in portent like the "Lord of the Rings" flicks. But its very dopiness will make any potential post-Oscar excitement crash like, well, "Crash." I mean, I've seen "The Hurt Locker" a couple of times now, and the second viewing was even richer than the first. A second viewing of "Avatar" would likely totally deflate any enjoyment I had of it the first time around. I'd concentrated even more on the pretty foliage and ignore anything that talks.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/03/avatar-rules-tops-1-billi_n_409804.html

movie reminded me of this passage from John Crowley's Engine Summer, in that as much as I wanted to just enjoy the few good things it had to offer, in the end this fucking movie is definitely a part of the problem

the mechanical dreams the angels made with great labor and inconceivable ingenuity, dreams broadcast on the air like milkweed seeds, all day long, passing invisibly through the air, through walls, through stone walls, through the very bodies of the angels themselves as they sat to await them, and appearing through every angel simultaneously, to warn and to instruct, one dream dreamed by all so they could act in concert, until it was discovered that the dreams passing through their bodies were poisonous to them somehow, don't ask me how, and millions were sickening and dying young and unable to bear children, but unable to stop the dreaming even when the dreams themselves warned them that the dreams were poisoning them, unable or afraid to wake and find themselves alone

milton, john crowley's review of avatar ~
Yes, I went out and made history, seeing Avatar on the day after Christmas. I found it delightful all through -- I was never bored and often thrilled and elated. That was by the astonishing and convincing 3D effects, the care and attention lavished on every detail of every moment -- the 300M that Cameron spent was all on show. The scenes in the Floating Mountains (whose gravitational oddity was never explained; maybe something ot do with the huge planet around which the moon Pandora revolves? Nemmine: Lots wasn't explained, and much was unexplainable).
there's more here
http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/

ha, wow

he's a little kinder on it than I felt overall

lool

saw it this weekend....

well, it's certainly pretty corny in a lot of ways...

seemed like something written by a gifted 15 year old sci-fi fan.

but that said, the visuals and 3D etc were really cool to see, the na'vi were way cooler in the context than i thought they would be.

it's a lot to look at and genuinely sorta awe inspiring at points.

plotline was boiler plate sci-fi/fantasy jizz, but it did make me realize just how convoluted and poorly ploted a lot of current blockbuster efx epics are - thinking transformers, the new star wars movies, pirates of the carribean, etc..

like it was almost refreshing to have a plot that established the main characters, the villains, and a main conflict in a sensible way, then actually went about a textbook a-to-b resolution of the plot.

not that that should be something to PRAISE, but in the current times i guess it is...like going back to the student thing, it seemed like someone had paid attention to a freshman film writing class and tried to follow the "rules" at least....which is a lot more than you can say about the other films i mentioned.

this wasn't as entertaining as My Bloody Valentine in 3-D

― Ward Fowler, Sunday, January 3, 2010 7:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

can't believe i missed the possible I WISH THEY'D GIVEN OUT EARPLUGS FOR AVATAR joek here.