Author Topic: Avatar Movie  (Read 25128 times)

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Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #60 on: March 06, 2010, 05:03:40 PM »

Offline RebusRankin

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Still need to see it.

Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #61 on: March 06, 2010, 06:07:48 PM »

Offline Brickowski

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There have been three seminal sci fi movies that changed the genre forever:

2001: A Space Odyssey
Star Wars
Avatar

After Avatar it is not possible to go back to space opera, even good space opera.  What makes Avatar special is the beautifully imagined and depicted ecology of Pandora and anthropology of the Na'vi.

On top of that it is simply a good yarn with good acting. Sure, some of it was derivative.  Signourney Weaver is Ripley in a different setting, and Giovanni Ribisi's corporate villain is reminiscent of Peter Boyle in Outland, right down to the golf scene.

But I can probably analyze Western ever made by saying that some portion of it was lifted from William S. Hart.  Ingmar Bergman even stole the final scene in the Seventh Seal from William S. Hart.  Kurosawa's Ran was stolen from Shalespeare's King Lear. That doesn't make the Ran or the Seventh Seal bad movies. In fact, they are two of the greatest ever made.

If I were Warren Buffet I would offer to finance Cameron for two projects:  films of C.J. Cherryh's Serpent's Reach and the Faded Sun Trilogy.

Incidentally, the concept of powered "gates" to travel between planets in the various Stargate movies and TV shows was probably taken from Cherryh's Morgaine tetrology, although the current Stargate space operas do not attempt to deal with the issue of time dilation, as Cherryh does.

« Last Edit: March 06, 2010, 06:16:01 PM by Brickowski »

Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #62 on: March 06, 2010, 06:16:43 PM »

Offline feckless

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Magnificent

Spectacular

Cliched

Downright stupid juvenile dialogue -- all too often

all that money and time and he can't come up with something better for an alien world than mimicking native american culture--what an idiot.


Days up and down they come, like rain on a conga drum, forget most, remember some, don't turn none away.   Townes Van Zandt

Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #63 on: March 06, 2010, 06:23:56 PM »

Offline Brickowski

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Was it any more cliched than Star Wars, with robots taken straight out of Forbidden Planet, released 25 years earlier?  Or how about Serenity, which stole from just about everywhere? It was still a [dang] good movie.

It's the nature of the sci fi genre. For starters, if you want to make money, you have to appeal to the young preteen to teen demographic.  They are the ones that will buy the video game-- and make no mistake, there will be several.

Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #64 on: March 06, 2010, 08:01:13 PM »

Offline mmbaby

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Love, loved, loving this movie. Young people went crazy for it. Graphics were incredible. It was worth paying more for the IMAX picture. The good vs. evil is always good to watch.

Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #65 on: March 06, 2010, 08:35:50 PM »

Offline Mr October

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There have been three seminal sci fi movies that changed the genre forever:

2001: A Space Odyssey
Star Wars
Avatar

After Avatar it is not possible to go back to space opera, even good space opera.  What makes Avatar special is the beautifully imagined and depicted ecology of Pandora and anthropology of the Na'vi.

On top of that it is simply a good yarn with good acting. Sure, some of it was derivative.  Signourney Weaver is Ripley in a different setting, and Giovanni Ribisi's corporate villain is reminiscent of Peter Boyle in Outland, right down to the golf scene.

But I can probably analyze Western ever made by saying that some portion of it was lifted from William S. Hart.  Ingmar Bergman even stole the final scene in the Seventh Seal from William S. Hart.  Kurosawa's Ran was stolen from Shalespeare's King Lear. That doesn't make the Ran or the Seventh Seal bad movies. In fact, they are two of the greatest ever made.

If I were Warren Buffet I would offer to finance Cameron for two projects:  films of C.J. Cherryh's Serpent's Reach and the Faded Sun Trilogy.

Incidentally, the concept of powered "gates" to travel between planets in the various Stargate movies and TV shows was probably taken from Cherryh's Morgaine tetrology, although the current Stargate space operas do not attempt to deal with the issue of time dilation, as Cherryh does.



TP, Brick. Add Jurassic Park to that list, and you pretty much have the foursome films of visual effects break-throughs.

Each movie used technology that had been pioneered by other films, it is just that they did it on a level unmatched. In the case of Avatar, you've got a fully realized immersive environment, and a new level of detail using motion capture that hadn't been achieved before.

The mocap work on Gollum now looks silly next to Avatar. (The LOTR films themselves are just as good, if not better - i'm purely speaking about the visual effects.)

Heck if you want to expand the list, Metropolis, King Kong and Forbidden Planet significantly raised the bar in their respective eras.

Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #66 on: March 07, 2010, 08:40:26 AM »

Offline feckless

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Was it any more cliched than Star Wars, with robots taken straight out of Forbidden Planet, released 25 years earlier?  Or how about Serenity, which stole from just about everywhere? It was still a [dang] good movie.

It's the nature of the sci fi genre. For starters, if you want to make money, you have to appeal to the young preteen to teen demographic.  They are the ones that will buy the video game-- and make no mistake, there will be several.

Sorry Brick,  Star Wars isn't a good example for me--I believe the only reason the earlier movies work is the actors saw them as tongue in cheek, camp.  The later movies where the actors took George Lucas seriously are boring--at times non-sense.

For me the Lord of the Rings was great movie making --great story telling, great acting--probably fantasy not sci-fi in your interpretation? 
« Last Edit: March 07, 2010, 10:25:51 AM by feckless »
Days up and down they come, like rain on a conga drum, forget most, remember some, don't turn none away.   Townes Van Zandt

Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #67 on: March 07, 2010, 08:51:57 AM »

Offline Eja117

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I'm finding some comments here very fun to read. Some of the enthusiasm is infectious.

Brick...would you say the new Star Trek series will have to raise the bar or something now? I guess I consider that space opera, whereas I'd have said Avatar is adventure/action film.

I thought everything in Lord of the Rings looked awesome.

The last sci-fi thing I remember watching that I thought looked awful was when Lucas reinserted a horridly drawn Jabba the Hut into an old cut scene and Han walked on his tail. Who the hell walks on Jabba's tail?

I love scifi. There are very few sci-fi films I disliked.  Events Horizon and the Sphere come to mind.

I also think when you do scifi the science needs to be at least slightly responsible. If it's amazing science we have very little way of understanding then it needs to be either really far in the future or somewhere really far away not involving us. I thought Avatar was a little over the line. Also if the environment is toxic is it a good idea to use flame throwers? Are there toxic gases that aren't flammable?  I interpreted it as methane, but wiki says it was just "toxic".  To me that's a little like leaving on the wrist watch in a middle ages film.

Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #68 on: March 07, 2010, 09:20:53 AM »

Offline Eja117

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Also sometimes I think a sci fi advance can be made too much of. The movie still has to be good and the special effects differences have to be noticeable to try to get credit for that.

I guess Birth of a Nation had the first live horses. But somebody was going to do that at some point. It doesn't matter a lot to me that they just happened to be the ones that did it.

Avatar looked like what I expected. I didn't see the upgrade over Clone Wars.

Also I remember now I didn't like 2001 Space Odyssey except as a potential sleeping aid

Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #69 on: March 07, 2010, 09:53:43 AM »

Offline Vatoloc

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Hmm... The plot of the movie seems somehow familiar...



When I saw Avatar 3D I didn't realize this until I saw this picture.

Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #70 on: March 07, 2010, 10:25:48 AM »

Offline Brickowski

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WETA Digital in NZ did the computer animation for both Lord of the Rings and Avatar.

I suppose Lord of the Rings falls into the "Sci Fi/Fantasy" genre, but if you start to include fantasy the classification becomes unmanageable.  You would have to include every movie involving dragons, movies like Jason and the Argonauts, Conan the Barbarian, The Golden Compass, Grindhouse, Jumanji and even The Polar Express.  I don't view any of those films as real "Science Fiction."

As for Star Wars, I thought the series declined significantly after The Empire Strikes Back.

For me, "Science Fiction" involves the following elements: science (or at least pseudo science), space travel and alien species.

I think you also have to distinguish all of the movies based on a "post apocalyptic" future as a "sub genre" of science fiction.  I'm talking about movies like Mad Max (and its progeny) the Terminator (and its progeny), Logan's Run, This Quiet Earth (nice little speeper), all of the Planet of the Apes flicks, Waterworld, the Postman, The Book of Eli, Children of Men, etc.

Then there is the "monster movie" sub genre: The Thing, Them, Predator, King Kong, and the Jurassic Park series.

My list of very good (but not seminal) Sci fi flicks would include Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still (the original with Michael Rennie), Blade Runner (directors' cut), Alien, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Silent Running, Pitch Black, The Wrath of Khan, Outland, Event Horizon, Serenity, The Abyss, The Matrix (only the first one)Supernova and Stargate (the movie).  I guess I would also include the following TV series: the original Star Trek, Firefly, Babylon 5 and the new Battlestar Gallactica.  

Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #71 on: March 07, 2010, 10:51:26 AM »

Offline feckless

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Brick--as my original post Avatar = magnificent & spectacular--but simply weak dialogue and story telling, why not hire a writer to go along with the movie making skill --cameron's ego wouldn't permit it and the storytelling aspect of Avatar is just not up to the rest of the movie--IMO.
Days up and down they come, like rain on a conga drum, forget most, remember some, don't turn none away.   Townes Van Zandt

Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #72 on: March 07, 2010, 09:40:43 PM »

Offline Eja117

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Hey Brick, while we're at it I think the Harry Potter movies are good.

In the end a sci fi film is the same as a lot of other films. Come on up close to the fire and let me tell you a story you've never heard before.

Only Avatar I keep hearing again and again.

Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #73 on: March 08, 2010, 04:25:49 PM »

Offline slam

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I live in a slightly rural area and FINALLY saw this last night.


I can't say how bad I thought it was. Just absurd. Most overhyped fall short type movie since Waterworld, which I kinda liked better. And the special effects were just not that special.

Granted I didn't get to see it in 3D, but maybe that's good.

I can understand someone complaining about the lack of originality of the story, bit to complain about the visuals seams out of left field. What exactly was bad about them?

And seeing that you have a star wars prequel avatar, do you think the star wars prequels were better films than avatar?

Also I need to ask, did you go into the theater looking to hate the movie, or did you go in with an open mind?
Let me explain. First I went in expecting to loooovvvveee the movie, which may be part of the problem. I heard stuff like "Will change movies forever". 

The visuals were good. Very good. I was just expecting visuals I had never seen, and I just can't say that I think that the cgi was that much better than say the dinos of Jurassic Park, or the clones, droids, space battles, Yoda, etc of Star Wars, or the Matrix stuff, and that was years ago. I'd say it might be a toe step forward, but not much more than that.

I definitely thought all Star Wars was much better.

But let me go into some depth

SPOILER ALERT. 

It's a sci fi film, so I will try to get by the interstellar travel 154 years from now. I'll allow for the 5 years of cryogenic hybernation.  I'll even go so far as to allow for combining dna from humans and aliens successfully, even though currently scientists find it more likely to combine dna from a human and a cucumber, but now we're pushing it. I'll even allow for the avatar technology.  I'll even go so along with the huge brain of a planet that's interconnected.

However I'm a little tired of these disguised no war for oil films where the evil military is evil just cause it's evil, and in 154 years we will be even less culturally and sentient rights sensitive than we are now.

I won't go along with a people essentially in the stone age successfully fighting modern weaponry 154 years in the future. Not only are they stone age...they're pre-agricultural, yet we have nothing that they could want. Oh gee. Let's see. We have traveled to your planet, can recreate things that look like you in a pod, have weapons way way stronger than yours, but we can't possibly have anything they want.

I also don't buy this whole "Oh we have sooo much to learn from nature" BS that Hollywood finds sacred or something.

Also it didn't help that they took a plot I've seen at least three times now and stretched it into something like 3 hours, or at least it seemed that way.

I was just expecting to see something original and good, and didn't get either. I don't want my money back or anything. I just reject the premise of the film in a big way. If I can't buy into a film I don't usually like it.

Eja117:  When you go see a sci-fi movie, you need to let go of reality and probabilities for the future.  Relax and enjoy the ride.  It’s fantasy.  Not everything has to align with what you know and expect.  Seems like you let this ruin a great movie for you.
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Re: Avatar Movie
« Reply #74 on: March 08, 2010, 05:03:20 PM »

Offline guava_wrench

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I live in a slightly rural area and FINALLY saw this last night.


I can't say how bad I thought it was. Just absurd. Most overhyped fall short type movie since Waterworld, which I kinda liked better. And the special effects were just not that special.

Granted I didn't get to see it in 3D, but maybe that's good.

I can understand someone complaining about the lack of originality of the story, bit to complain about the visuals seams out of left field. What exactly was bad about them?

And seeing that you have a star wars prequel avatar, do you think the star wars prequels were better films than avatar?

Also I need to ask, did you go into the theater looking to hate the movie, or did you go in with an open mind?
Let me explain. First I went in expecting to loooovvvveee the movie, which may be part of the problem. I heard stuff like "Will change movies forever". 

The visuals were good. Very good. I was just expecting visuals I had never seen, and I just can't say that I think that the cgi was that much better than say the dinos of Jurassic Park, or the clones, droids, space battles, Yoda, etc of Star Wars, or the Matrix stuff, and that was years ago. I'd say it might be a toe step forward, but not much more than that.

I definitely thought all Star Wars was much better.

But let me go into some depth

SPOILER ALERT. 

It's a sci fi film, so I will try to get by the interstellar travel 154 years from now. I'll allow for the 5 years of cryogenic hybernation.  I'll even go so far as to allow for combining dna from humans and aliens successfully, even though currently scientists find it more likely to combine dna from a human and a cucumber, but now we're pushing it. I'll even allow for the avatar technology.  I'll even go so along with the huge brain of a planet that's interconnected.

However I'm a little tired of these disguised no war for oil films where the evil military is evil just cause it's evil, and in 154 years we will be even less culturally and sentient rights sensitive than we are now.

I won't go along with a people essentially in the stone age successfully fighting modern weaponry 154 years in the future. Not only are they stone age...they're pre-agricultural, yet we have nothing that they could want. Oh gee. Let's see. We have traveled to your planet, can recreate things that look like you in a pod, have weapons way way stronger than yours, but we can't possibly have anything they want.

I also don't buy this whole "Oh we have sooo much to learn from nature" BS that Hollywood finds sacred or something.

Also it didn't help that they took a plot I've seen at least three times now and stretched it into something like 3 hours, or at least it seemed that way.

I was just expecting to see something original and good, and didn't get either. I don't want my money back or anything. I just reject the premise of the film in a big way. If I can't buy into a film I don't usually like it.

Eja117:  When you go see a sci-fi movie, you need to let go of reality and probabilities for the future.  Relax and enjoy the ride.  It’s fantasy.  Not everything has to align with what you know and expect.  Seems like you let this ruin a great movie for you.
I view it the opposite way. Good sci-fi is about setting up an alternate reality and then see what follows. What follows should all be reasonable based on premised made clear early on and there should be no Deux ex machina.

Nevertheless, if you didn't see Avatar in 3D, then what is the point? The story is pretty dumb. It is all special effects. I liked it because I saw it in imax. If I saw that on DVD or in a normal theater, I would say it was crap.