Just saw Avatar

[Blarghagh]

Up has an insane 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it is CGI and features an old man, a boy, and a dog.

 

It also made most people cry in the first 20 minutes.

 

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

[Pidesco]

Up has an insane 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it is CGI and features an old man, a boy, and a dog.

 

It also made most people cry in the first 20 minutes.

 

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.

 

 

Also, Ice Age, or Madagascar, or whatever made millions and millions of dollars, despite being a lot worse than everything Pixar ever made, including Cars. Popularity simply isn't the best gauge of quality, even if the two are often times related.

[Hurlshort]

Yes, but Morgoth seems to be putting forth the theory that popularity = bad.

 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20100112/en_huffpost/420605

 

Apparently Avatar is depressing people. Seriously, if they want to visit Pandora, go visit Brazil or the Congo. Sure, you will probably die from some disease, but that kinda goes along with the Pandora vibe too.

[Purkake]

I'm not depressed. It's just some more crazy internet people getting their 15 minutes of fame.

[Blarghagh]

Up has an insane 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it is CGI and features an old man, a boy, and a dog.

 

It also made most people cry in the first 20 minutes.

 

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.

[Rosbjerg]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20100112/en_huffpost/420605

 

Apparently Avatar is depressing people. Seriously, if they want to visit Pandora, go visit Brazil or the Congo. Sure, you will probably die from some disease, but that kinda goes along with the Pandora vibe too.

 

I think Purkake has a point, what you say on the internet is usually an exaggeration of what you really feel.

 

Although I did find Copenhagen a lot darker and dystopian just immediately after I walked out from the movie (especially because the cinema is situated in an old industrial area).. I could imagine that feeling sticking with some people.. Perhaps a 2 week vacation to Thailand should be included in the ticket price?

[Gorgon]

I'm going to see it again tomorrow. Do they have clips for people with glasses for the 3d thing, I mean I don't know where I would stick an extra pair on my head.

[Humodour]

Apparently Avatar is depressing people. Seriously, if they want to visit Pandora, go visit Brazil or the Congo. Sure, you will probably die from some disease, but that kinda goes along with the Pandora vibe too.

 

You have a weird idea of Brazil. You don't get diseased by travelling there. You don't even get diseased by living there.

[Walsingham]

Don't listen to Krezack. I've been travelling all over. I've had all sorts of terrible brain swelling and flatulence inducing diseases. Bled internally once. Another time I threw up pure clear stomach acid. And that's leaving aside the monkey fighting and dog flailing.

 

Go see it in the movies.

[Hurlshort]

Apparently Avatar is depressing people. Seriously, if they want to visit Pandora, go visit Brazil or the Congo. Sure, you will probably die from some disease, but that kinda goes along with the Pandora vibe too.

 

You have a weird idea of Brazil. You don't get diseased by travelling there. You don't even get diseased by living there.

 

I was speaking more about rain forests than specific countries.

[Humodour]

Apparently Avatar is depressing people. Seriously, if they want to visit Pandora, go visit Brazil or the Congo. Sure, you will probably die from some disease, but that kinda goes along with the Pandora vibe too.

 

You have a weird idea of Brazil. You don't get diseased by travelling there. You don't even get diseased by living there.

 

I was speaking more about rain forests than specific countries.

 

Oh. Well. Yes. You actually need to be careful in Australia, too (at least up in the tropics where you get things like dengue fever).

[Calax]

Saw it, hadn't looked in this thread until I saw it so pardon if I repeat things said.

 

Good movie, actually pretty damn fantastic movie. Admittedly it's more of one of those movies that will be memorable for the visuals and the world, rather than the actual story. As it is the story seems like your standard "good guys are really bad guys" plot, just with the good guys having artillery and the bad guys having flowers.

 

There were obvious messages through the movie, environmentalism is good, big business sucks because they care more about their bottom line than the real world implications of their actions.

 

The biggest thing that bugged me was that the marines seemed to... happy, to be getting into a fight with these folks who obviously don't want them on the planet. I mean if this was an honest to god merc outfit full of true adrenalin junkies who just lived for that rush of survival, sure, I can dig it, but it felt like they were trying to say that the guys out there were juts soldiers assigned to the resource operation to prevent it from going belly up (and cutting off vital supplies to Earth). And yet these guys are only to happy to toss themselves in harms way, and slaughter innocents. I mean One or two guys (the commanders) I can understand, but at a certain point most of the soldiers would look at themselves like that one pilot did during the death of the tree.

 

Also the col. musta had the biggest bloody lungs on a human being to be able to go for such long periods WITH ENORMOUS AMOUNTS OF EXERTION on ONE breath.

 

Still the visuals were amazing, smurf sex was odd, characters were at least deeper than neo, and overall a good film. I'm just waiting for the obvious sequel "Avatar 2: Return of Gaia" where earths' super spirit gets all pissed and starts ripping apart human society and the Na'vi have to come to earth and soothe it while cussing out the humans for being such heartless jerks.

[Purkake]

Yeah, not really looking forward to a sequel. They wrapped everything up pretty nicely.

[Hurlshort]

Yeah, not really looking forward to a sequel. They wrapped everything up pretty nicely.

 

I can agree with that. Maybe if they do more exploration and leave Pandora altogether, but that's unlikely.

[Hiro Protagonist]

I was reading this mornings paper and found this to be quite interesting. Cameron plagiarises Soviet fantasy writers

[Whipporwill]

I was reading this mornings paper and found this to be quite interesting. Cameron plagiarises Soviet fantasy writers

 

I notice it doesn't mention Call Me Joe.

[Hiro Protagonist]

I notice it doesn't mention Call Me Joe.

 

Yes, you're quite right. Here's an article on how Cameron also plagiarised author Poul Anderson's Call me Joe. It seems Cameron has borrowed from a few sources.

 

Funnily enough, these stories from Poul Anderson and Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are regarded as great works of science fiction, but when these same stories are merged into Avatar, we have people on this forum who say the story is:

 

"An inane Pocahontas story", "From all descriptions the story is as cliche, trite, and preachy as it can get mushed up by some lame love story", "The story is cliche and very predictable", "it very much comes across as cliche, trite, and preachy", "Predictability/cliche etc", "goofy looking aliens and two and a half hours of dances with wolves/pocahontas storyline ", etc

[RPGmasterBoo]

You don't actually need to point out particular sources to know that Avatar's story is a rehash of old scfi fi concepts. There's even a comic called Aquablu with almost exactly the same plot. But that doesn't really mean anything since sci fi concepts are essentially free for all to use. He just mixed up some well known works and made a movie of it, no harm done.

Edited January 15, 2010 by RPGmasterBoo

[Pidesco]

Ferngully

[Blarghagh]

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

[Pidesco]

Avatar also has the character depth of a kids cartoon, so I thought Ferngully would be a good point of comparison. Almost everyone is either pure good or pure evil with no nuance to them.

[Stephen Amber]

The whole "savior shall mount the red dragon and lead us to victory" prophecy was pretty lame I thought. And it really wasn't that well explained... I might have actually dozed off a bit during the segments setting it up. The mesmeric quality of the 3d and banality of the dialogue combining to make one sleepy and unattentive. My fault maybe.

 

Also, the dragons hatching and choosing soul mates was reminiscent of Dragonflight of all things!

[Gorgon]

The chosen one spoke of in the propechy. When you think about it it's really strange Worthington doesn't also have amnesia.

[Humodour]

Ferngully

 

Loved that movie. Especially since I've actually been to Mount Warning. Beautiful place.

[Humodour]

Avatar also has the character depth of a kids cartoon, so I thought Ferngully would be a good point of comparison. Almost everyone is either pure good or pure evil with no nuance to them.

 

You seen either? In Fern Gully, the humans were misguided, not evil (and not just the main guy), and there was one or two mischievous/mean (though admittedly not evil) fairies. The only thing evil in the whole movie was Hexxus - the spirit of evil. You'd kind of expect him to be pure evil.

 

In Avatar, Quaritch was very fatherly to his men and it seemed like he was a minor grey character until halfway through when they flipped his place with the sociopathic corporate executive. Likewise, the female pilot seemed like she'd done her fair share of mindlessly following Quaritch's orders and enjoying it - essentially oppressing the natives along with the rest till she had her 'redemption moment' at the tree.

 

It's not like there's massive depth to this in either movie, but I wouldn't call it black and white.