Avatar Breaks Even, Surprises Everyone

cheese_wizington

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Aug 16, 2009
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It's not that tough to figure out.

1. Educated people look at Meta Critic reviews, decide to see movie.
2. See movie.
3. Tell less educated friends it's actually pretty good.
4. Less Ed's go see it.
5. This happens over and over again, reaching stupider and stupider people.
6. ???????
7. Profit!
 

greenislegaming

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Sep 23, 2009
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House_Vet said:
IronGoldenEagle said:
this isn't the 16th century where we are killing the natives for their land, lessons been learned.

Military fights make no sense, one minute they are laughing at how pathetic natives attacks are and mow them down and at the end they are getting owned. True story, military walkers are made with 1cm of unreinforced glass and arrows are a serious problem for them. And please, if they are so technologically advanced either nuke the natives from orbit or drill around the tree, if its so valuable I'm sure the extra money will pay off for it.

Then comes the basic fact, the guy is not fighting for some greater purpose, he is fighting for the girl. He loves blue females and he wants them, there is no depth to his "Oh but we must stand up for our rights and way of life and nature". It's sexual desire and we all can see that.

COntinuity errors, sterotypicaly military guys obviously meant to show that those in the army have no brains/lives don't matter comapred to blue furrys, over the top melodrama, tree hugging message aside this movie is visually stunning. However, some news agencies are reporting that its causing epiliptic fits and a couple of heart attacks. So I guess Cameron is also helping the excess population problem with this movie as well.
"We are no longer killing the natives for their land"?? What kind of bubble are you living in?There was, as has recently been revealed, no evidence of WMD's in Iraq and yet we went in all guns blazing. Fan-bloody-tastic. We've really learned from those mistakes haven't we? Oil money is so potent in the west it's just unbelievable. In south america, multinational logging corporations are busily evicting the indians from the rainforest. Have we learnt our lessons here too?

Couldn't really see any continuity errors myself in the three times I've seen it so far. As far as I can tell, Jake and Neytiri's relationship is based on more than sex as otherwise he would have chosen another woman who didn't come with strings attached.

Finally: It's a FABLE, an allegory about man's inhumanity to man and the environment. This is why the army doesn't nuke the place; why the characters are stereotypes: They are meant to be identified with by a broad range of people and so cannot be too unusual in any particular area.
on the talk of the sexual motive of jake is one for sure but dont forget when he hears the tree of voices and thats when he knows the navi are defending something real on pandora

in a sequel i want parker selfridge to return as an avatar because he wants to find out what grace told him was true and why the ewye thurned against them.

oh yeah we dont nuke pandora because it would ruin the metal or something or other

@ Old Trailmix
6. silly people wowed oh their heads and gray matter is left on the cinema roof??????
 

Hallow'sEve

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Sep 4, 2008
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YES!
I dunno why, i havent even seen the movie, but I really dont want it to succeed.
(just bugs me when a film does too well)
 

TetsuoKaneda

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Feb 11, 2009
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To me, Avatar represents a point in filmmaking where other points will spin off. It doesn't have the best plot, some of the acting is merely okay, and yes, the dialogue is leaden in places. BUT! Not every movie, and certainly not every milestone in cinema has to be a fantastic film full of heart and meaning and cinema verite. Try watching Birth of a Nation, or Breathless, or or hell, even the old version of King Kong. I like all of these (okay, not Breathless or Birth of a Nation), but these are not brilliant films. But they got us thinking in new directions, new avenues of narration that led to bigger, shinier, cooler things. Things which we can point to as good films. Hell, Birth of a Nation reinvented the cinematic lexicon by using close ups and tracking shots.

What Avatar did was to represent the visual style differently, using a threadbare plot to anchor its pretty pictures. But it was a success financially. Which means people will notice it. And when they notice it, they'll go "I can fix/do that." as people often do. And the medium will continue and someone will crank out a flick that will knock us all on our asses because it'll meld the concepts that were so disparate here. Why? Because that's what happens. An idea is formed and alternately improved or devolved by others' hands until it either fades from consciousness (like the hope that someone will one day do a really good video game movie) or worms its way into the public headspace and is accepted as part of the lexicon (long, philosophical conversations between lowlife characters, un-named protagonists). Just the sheer scope, scale, and grandeur of Avatar sets it apart-- it's a big damn movie, something that has been tried by people like Michael Cimino, Werner Herzog, and David Lynch, but never pulled off as a financial success.

In the end, this marks Avatar as something that I'm glad didn't fail or fade off into the background. It's the start of something new and hopefully refreshing to the medium of storytelling. And it's also damn pretty to look at.

As a final word, what's most important to me about movies is entertainment. The main question I ask is not "was it good" or "did the film have a clear message or something to say", but was I entertained by this? It's been a good yardstick so far, and right now, I have to say, yes. Yes, I was entertained. So in my book, it worked as a film.

tl;dr - It's significant even if it's bad because of how it did what it did, but it was pretty and entertained me, so I think it was good.
 

Gindil

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Nov 28, 2009
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Mazty said:
I mean hypocrite in it's actual sense, not an insult.
So John and Sarah grew in Terminator 2, yet the character in Avatar didn't grow? We talking about the same film here as more than just Jake changed attitude in the film.
Granted in the Terminator movies they don't get help from anyone...other than ending up in the exact locations needed to kill the "unstoppable" killing machines...Not to mention that oh-so useful liquid nitrogen tanker. That's hardly coincidence, just more DEM moments for you, just slightly better disguised, however they are hardly bad films for them, and the same can be said for Avatar. Yes, it's more obvious, but that's because of the storyline. You can't discretely have a "mother earth" figure. And no, Terminator Salvation has nothing to do with ending up in the steel mill or factory. Kyle Reese says in T1 that they will most likely not be able to destroy the terminator, not adding "but if we go to a factory...". And again they end up at these places by coincidence. The car chase in 1 leads them there where the tanker so conveniently crashes, and in Judgement Day, they were not planning on being chased by the cops, and yet accidentally (the car crashes) end up in a steel works, with a nice liquid nitrogen tanker to slow the T1000 down. Plus, how does Kyle know where a factory is? I'm pretty sure he wasn't hiding a map with him when he came back in time, nor anywhere in the film did he have one, and Cameron is known to be anal about detail (he made a replica model of the steel works in T2 to show exactly how he wanted the fight to happen).
I think time will show it to be genre defining, as it's a technical break through, and again, you ignore the comments on originailty not having to be a quality of a great film.
And seeing that you think that way about Goodfellas and American Gangster, that shows you really have little idea about those films. Considering their critical acclaim (and Ridely Scott doing the latter of the 2 films), I somehow think you shouldn't be as judgemental about those films as you are.
It seemed to be a drastic change of character and a little rushed. Now before we get into me being a "one man hater of Avatar," we don't really see Jake's attitude nor demeanor except through snippets. We also don't see how his brother reacted to situations. I understand the Jarhead stereotype they put him with which means he's committed to being human. He was a clean slate that I feel we (the audience) didn't see except to tell the story and decide on something near the end. I felt sorry for his leg loss. I felt the Hoah! come out when he was with the other military guys. But for the life of me, I can only recall him actually having a personality when he first got into his avatar with the legs. Sure he was snippy. But a compare/ contrast part might have helped to see his progress as the movie went on. If his brother was so cool, why didn't anyone talk about him? It would have made it a little easier to see his own progress through Eywa's world.

originality vs execution
I'm comparing James Cameron to James Cameron because in it we see similar elements. No story is 100% original, which is true but if the story telling is flawed, it mars the story and usually fails to pull me in. When he was making the speech to "get the humans" I wasn't pulled into it, because I had that moment of "wait, aren't you a human too?" as well as "what if they find you too?"

Of course, these were answered but it was a logical oversight that I can forgive to see how it's going to end. What James did in his earlier movies was hide these oversights so I was involved and didn't think about the DEM moments that you're explaining. I can suspend a small bit of logic by thinking "wait, they got to these places and nothing helped them nor assisted them. It must have been on the map but we didn't see it." I mean, really, how do you hide a steelworks factory?

With Avatar, it's a lot harder to suspend belief. "The earth here is a giant computer" Okay... "We are one with nature." Alright... "We've just hit a large override button, causing every animal in the near vicinity to be a fighter for your cause." Wait, WTF?! I call hax!

Gangster movies
Look, I can admit to having not seen all of them. They may have been great but it's not an interest of mine. I understand the concept of The Godfather, but since I haven't sat for all three movies, it's hard to distinguish that one from American Gangster or the others you mention. I have seen The Warriors, a movie based off of Clockwork Orange. I have seen Gangs of New York which was a GREAT movie from Scorcese. But just because I haven't seen these movies doesn't mar my view that though Avatar was a great film both technologically and critically, it's going to be hard to say that it will be remembered for years to come as genre defining. If the story is lacking, which is where I believe it is, then how can the story truly be said to reinvent the wheel?

It's the same as an Xbox and PS3 fanboy arguing over who has the best graphics. You can hide a good game behind the best 3D and people won't remember it (Haze) or you can focus on gameplay and story, and more people will remember the game (Gears of War 1) and comment on it.

Wicky_42 said:
So, in T2 you're happy with a random event that just *happened* to save the heroes, who also *happened* to get chased down a freeway to the only facility in the city that could help them finish off the big bad?

Compare that to how in Avatar, we are frequently told that "Eywa provides", she delivers signs that Jake is special (her seeds flock to him), the Doctor's last words are "she is real" as she connects to Eywa, Jake interfaces directly with, asks her to look into the Doctor's memories, and warns her of the danger posed to the entire world.
I remember all of those signs. What I wasn't expecting was the way this living computer destroys natural functions to fight for a certain cause. The irony is, I probably would have believed something such as the weather changing and causing a giant tsunami or even lightning than somehow, every animal magically befriending the Na'Vi for this one glorious battle. After this, what happens? The Rhinos go back to being aggressive? Our panther fighters go back to killing Na'Vi? It's those questions of "what happens now" that break my suspension of belief far more than the action oriented T1 and T2 (there WAS no T3. ;p)