Blarghagh

I gotta see this movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx0GaB2EHUs

Watched the first episode of Firefly again due to being in that horribly annoying mood where you're bored as hell but don't actually want to do anything. I always end up watching something I've already seen a thousand times.

It's still playing, so you could still go if you want. I guess you could say we're talking about the one that has "Episode One" in the title. One of the pointless yet entertaining enough to fill in a couple hours prequels.

No, not really. Raiders of the Lost Ark is just as good as it always was, so I can always go back to that. Plus, maybe it's because I didn't grow up with Star Wars and have no nostalgic ties to it, but until Clone Wars came along I still thought Return of the Jedi was the worst of the bunch. EDIT: Although I am not saying Episode One is great. It's only okay. Passable entertainment once or twice.

Honestly, Episode One isn't even the worst Star Wars film, let alone worth 'puking at'. Are you implying that's what you do, then?

Plus, nobody but the biggest snobs hate them so much.

"Cowabunga dude!"

I think First Contact is pretty great. I can't believe Johnathan Frakes directed that, because all his other directing work is so much poop. Thunderbirds!?

Journey to the West was originally literature. However, I'm going to retract my suggestion due to it being a stupid mistake. Journey to the West is Chinese literature, not Japanese. Apologies.

To turn Avatar into some phenomenon? The only reason this got into the news is because Avatar is already a phenomenon.

Journey to the West.

Only two more weeks of internship, then an exam project to get my what-in-america-would-probably-be-equel-to-and-Associates Degree in Animation (not sure, the education system is different here but it would mean I have two associates degrees...?), and then on my way to get a bachelor's in 3D Animation and Visual Effects! Whoo.

What was so confusing about it? It worked pretty well for me once I got used to the part where I'm not actually walking on the floor like I'm used to in video games.

Which, although not very interesting, was effective enough in the context of the movie, I think.

He looked pretty remorseful when the hometree was falling. And despite that, he's the one that's trying to get the scientists to find a diplomatic solution in the first place.

Let's not forget that the greedy corporate shill Parker repeatedly shows remorse, doubt and seems unwilling to kill (even giving the good guys several chances to prevent it) despite his belief that the blue people are just 'monkeys' and seemingly only does it because it's his job and he feels it HAS to be done. Avatar is not nearly as black and white as you make it out to be. There are points of view for characters in this film that many people throughout history have had, and you seem to be ignoring them because they are in the role of 'villain' and you're clamping on to that so you can make your wrongful likeness to cartoons. I mean, I'm not saying that there is a lot of hidden depth in this film. It's not very deep. But saying it's a cartoon is just a gross exaggeration. This is not the hero adventurer against the evil lich and his skeleton army.

Yeah, it's remarkably close to that. All it's really missing is a giant personification of pollution voiced by Tim Curry.

Up also went a bit bland and rote in its plotting after the house arrived in South America, regardless of the perfection of that first sequence. My point being that I'd be willing to bet that what sold the movie to the millions that went to see it was the by-the-numbers adventure part and not the sweet, beautiful, sad and wonderful part. Incidentally, a similar thing happened with Wall-e which took a nosedive after the little guy left the planet. I think you're overstating that part about Up - the opening sequence was definitely the best part but the adventure part wasn't completely by the numbers, plus it was littered with beautiful, emotional bits as well. I agree with Wall-E, though. It all kindof falls apart the moment humans appear.

Plus, having your action adventure hero be a geriatric man with a hearing aid and a special cane is just plain cool.

Ratatouille is about rats, of all things. And Pixar films always focus on the story and characters first, visuals second. Well, except maybe Cars. Cars was pretty stupid, I think.

You didn't say it needed a story. You said it needed a compelling story. By which you meant it needed a story that compels to you. Because obviously millions of people going to repeat viewings of Avatar are not compelled by the story but by the special effects they've already seen. Here's another example using Star Wars: The naive farmboy saves the Princess from the Black Knight's fortress. Wow, my mind is blown by this deeply original story. Star Wars became a hit because of it's setting and it's special effects. And that's fine. It was fine then, and it's fine now. Saying it isn't is nothing but arrogance on your part.

"There has got to be more"? Glad to see your preference is the litmus test on what a film does and does not need. By the way, good job shrugging it off with a "I can't argue with you because your opinion is different than mine".

That's an odd thing to say as without the cutting edge CGI and Cameron, Avatar wouldn't be Avatar. Would apple pie be as tasty if it didn't have apples and wasn't pie? "Just because something is popular, doesn't mean it's good" is a worthless statement as it doesn't tell us anything about the product in question Product ?. Maybe it is a good product, what do I care. Episode One was a probably a 'good product', it was also a horribly dull movie. If we are talking about a work of art I can't think of a more ever present truism than that popular does not equate with good. If stripped of the polish, which is admittedly very impressive, the rest is just so incredibly banal as to be an almost complete waste of time. The goal was to create a blockbuster, to entertain with the environment of Pandora, that they did, and those kinds of moves are rarely any good. Once in a while you get lucky and find both quality and a giant budget. Doesn't happen often though. I'm sorry, but what? First of all, that original question is a pretty high level of stupid. It's as stupid as someone asking "do you really think American History X would have a leg to stand on without it's characters and ethical investigation?" This film was made for the visuals, and no matter how much you pretend the opposite, making a film for the visuals is completely fine. Film is a visual medium. Just because some films go deep with plot and character, doesn't mean they all have to, and it doesn't mean that films that don't are immediately not 'good' if they don't. And some movies that don't pay enough attention to it can be terrible because of that. It may be not what you look for in a film, but that doesn't mean it's bad. If you don't want a film to focus, at least partially, on the visuals, you're out of luck. Because there are none. The moment the camera turns on, the people making it are concerned with sound and visuals. Don't like it? Tough. Go read a book. Also, who are you to objectively place this in the 'not good' section? Quality is subjective in the first place. I wanted good entertainment, and I got that (three times so far). This movie does for me what I want it to do, and it did it spectacularly, despite me seeing the weaknesses in it's storytelling. How is that not 'good'? I think it's incredible! Also, you're making it sound like this is a Michael Bay film. This is not a film filled with horrible acting, bad pacing, and terrible directing. It is not solely about explosions and people shooting guns at each other. It may not be the best as far as storytelling goes, but where film-making is concerned, this movie does everything right. Besides, for a film not: sequel, prequel, based on a book - graphic novel - true story, I think it did rather okay even on terms of storytelling. It's hardly right to complain about this film's story when nearly everything else out there is a story the filmmakers didn't even come up with. Coming from that, I'd like to repeat my earlier point - a couple of the only other movies that had stories that were thought up by filmmakers, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars, some of the best reviewed films ever that are completely ingrained in our culture, had fairly little to no original storytelling and relied almost entirely on their action sequences, stock characters and special effects. Why was it fine then and deplorable now?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep While They Are Being Inappropriately Fondled?

Haha, me and the people here got a good laugh out of that one.