LET'S MOVIE

[FortNinety]

Anyone around here see Avatar yet? I myself am interested, even though I just know I'll mostly dislike it.

Also, been too busy trying to scope down actual good shit like this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oanJyBB1mzU

[Fitz]

Anyone around here see Avatar yet? I myself am interested, even though I just know I'll mostly dislike it.

Saw it the week after it came out (conventional screen, 3d).

The visual effects are stunning and in terms of doing digital environments and character creation Cameron has definitely had significant breakthroughs. The story arch is relatively standard hero-journey fair though there is a lot more complexity in the action-antagonist than you typically find in that structure.

[dmauro]

I saw it and really enjoyed it. There's more interesting stuff going on with it than you might expect. But the best part is the human technology which looks amazing. The alien's don't quite look realistic, though they're not in the uncanny valley; you can totally fall in love with the protagonist's main alien squeeze along with him. But I suspect they wanted to keep them looking slightly fake to help keep their world separate from the human "real" world. It's either that or the movie is about the state of CG (that it's so much easier to make technological things look real and organic is so much harder to pull off) and that's why Cameron made it.

I very much recommend going to see it while you can still catch it in 3D.

[Fitz]

Having a bit of the mega-fauna geek in me I liked the exo-biological design work done for the film as. The only thing that slightly irked me in the biosphere design was how clearly all the large mammaloids had split forelimbs yet for some reason the blue cat folks somehow ended up with earth style two arms/two legs. Still I know general audiences are not quite ready for significantly non-human protagonists.

I can see why they didn't let things really loose on the character, but I wanted a bit more from Stephen Lang's Col. He did such a good job of preventing the character from coming off as a villain with a script that just about anyone else would have turned into a straight up mustache-twiller.

[FortNinety]

Katie, Joe, and myself all saw Avatar last night. And I don't mean to speak on anyone's behalf, but the consensus seemed to be that it was pretty wretched.

The special effects was actually better than expected; at certain point, I had forgotten that I was watching nothing but CGI. But that had a LOT to do with the fact that everything was in 3D; aside from being somewhat distracted by everything popping out at you, the image was also not as crystal clear, so it wasn't easy to notice how little things were "off" like you would with a clear, HD image (that's not to say that you need high definition to notice not so stellar computer graphics).

The action sequences were also phenomenal. But otherwise.... I'm not going to give it flack for being thoroughly unoriginal (which it was, but everything these days's is pretty derivative), though I was almost offended by how sloppy the film's logic was, considering that Cameron's previous sci fi flicks (Terminator 1 & 2, Aliens) were a little more bit tight. A lot of things simply did not make any sense, and the film as a whole was not good enough to make one forget or ignore these issues.

Though the primary issue was it's three hour length; it's clear that Cameron had to prove something, and the only way he could do it was shove as much shit down the viewer's throat.

I'm with Fitz; pretty much the only interesting thing was Lang's character and I also ended up being somewhat annoyed by the blue people's anatomy, which I also didn't expect. Basically, if you give me total nonsense, I'm gonna find as many reasons to hate it, like the rough edges, instead of finding them endearing.

[FortNinety]

For those who haven't seen it...

[isfet]

yea, Matt essentially sums up my feelings on the movie.  very impressive visuals with a drawn out and ridiculously cliched story.  i'd recommend people see the movie for its visuals if it were shorter in length.  as it stands now, i don't regret seeing the movie, but will never do so again for any reason.

it's nice, though, to think of the ground broken with the tech aspects of it and i look forward to seeing it used in the future.

[FortNinety]

Why is the fact that Avatar fans are now acting like Harry Potter fans not at all surprising?

http://avatar-forums.com/showthread.php?t=43

[Fitz]

The primary arch was straight out of the book Hollywood Knock-off Joe Campbell.  There were some potentially interesting Hard Scifi material in the exobiology, particularly the idea of a networked biosphere, but as usual that lost to "Oooo, shiny" in most situations.

Still overall considerably better than the "Dances with Jar Jar" I was expecting.

[FortNinety]

From that forum thread...

It truly is comforting to know that I'm not the only one sick of my own planet and race

I know exactly what you mean. Seen Avatar three times now, and it's just made me realize how ignorant mankind is of what really matters. Money, Dominance, and Sex are what the entire world revolves around. Pick any current event (or any major event, really), that has ever occurred on this planet. I guarantee you, it fits right into one of these categories. Why? Why do these things which have caused so much suffering and grief for thousands of years continue? Why has no one changed their ways?

Obviously, Avatar had some sort of connection with the Native Americans and their way of life. They were virtually exterminated from the earth by the Europeans. Exterminated. They covered the entire Untied States just 400 years ago. Now, none are left unaffected by European infraction. None exist as they were; one with the planet, nature, and mother earth. Millions upon millions of them were killed as they were being driven from their homelands for useless commodities. This was the largest genocide the modern world has ever seen, yet no one realizes it as such. It's extremely disheartening...

I admit to having "Avatar Depression" 100%. It's opened my eyes to this planet broader then I've ever seen it before. This could be one of the best things to ever happen to me, or it could be one of the worst. As others have stated, this thinking simply is not accepted. The corporate monsters of the world would chew me up and spit me out. It seems to be a rule written in stone. You can never escape it. So, I guess I'll just have to do my part to change the rulebook. We all must do our part to awaken this world.

I've come to the realization that Rebellion isn't the answer. Revelation is.

... Again, to be fair, you can replace Avatar with Harry Potter, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc.

[dhex]

rule #1 (is not a fuck you rule) is "never trust a junkie"

rule #2 is "liking anything is bad"

[isfet]

that thread is...man, yeesh.


what's going to happen if any of them discover acid?

[dhex]

you presume they haven't.

[isfet]

well i assume that if they had discovered acid then they wouldn't be on a message board talking about Avatar

rather, they'd be on the floor, writhing on acid.

[Fitz]

I don't know doorways for people.

I just get creeped out by the people who keep standing in the doorway admiring it.

We'll see what the Avatard is doing in 2 years to tell whether it was a piece of motivating narrative or just a sticky trap.