Avatar = Hot Garbage

[Lovelocke]

Lets hope they include a film appreciation course for the price - It showcases (presently) unrivaled technical achievement, but is an otherwise flat "heard it all before" story. Near word-for-word quotes of our "War" on Terror were hideously uninspired and they still haven't gotten gravity correct for the CG sequences (and theres many of them).

It marks a step forward for mega-budget "ho-hum" filmmaking and at 2 hours, 50 minutes could stand to lose about 30-40 minutes of fluff... and even then, it would only be as good as "Ferngully: The Last Rainforest".

That said, the movie *WAS* eye-tearingly beautiful in detail, but just like "The Matrix" trilogy, if you've been a fan of anime for years, you've pretty much seen it all before and should be even HARDER in your critique of the "knockoffs". So many flashbacks to the dated Lifestream FMV scenes from Final Fantasy 7...

 

[DoctorNick]

Well while I'm going to withhold judgment until I actually see it, I must say that the basic premise of 'EVIL Technology Users' VS 'Organic Hippie Native Culture' already doesn't place it off to a good start in my mind.

If I want to be preached at while watching a movie I'd go watch a Michale Moore flick.

P.S. I fucking hated Ferngully.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Well while I'm going to withhold judgment until I actually see it, I must say that the basic premise of 'EVIL Technology Users' VS 'Organic Hippie Native Culture' already doesn't place it off to a good start in my mind.

If I want to be preached at while watching a movie I'd go watch a Michale Moore flick.

P.S. I fucking hated Ferngully.

It sounds like it's basically modern American steroptypes versus stereotyped Native Americans, IN SPACE, doesn't it?

That said, at least Michael Moore tells you he's going to be preaching, you know what he's going to do.

 

[internetzealot1]

Well, as I blanked out while reading your post, I'll just say it was worth the price of admission.

 

[Space Spoons]

If it's pretty to look at, it'll be worth the price of admission for me. I hate to admit this, because it makes me look like a philistine to fellow movie fans and a walking dollar sign to movie execs, but sometimes, I just want to shut off my brain and wade knee-deep into cinematic fluff. I like intellectual movies as much as the next guy, but I just don't see anything wrong with occasionally leaving my cynicism at the door so I can just enjoy the ride. In fact, that's one of the reasons the Matrix trilogy is one of my favorite trilogies.

 

[DoctorNick]

Well while I'm going to withhold judgment until I actually see it, I must say that the basic premise of 'EVIL Technology Users' VS 'Organic Hippie Native Culture' already doesn't place it off to a good start in my mind.

If I want to be preached at while watching a movie I'd go watch a Michale Moore flick.

P.S. I fucking hated Ferngully.

It sounds like it's basically modern American steroptypes versus stereotyped Native Americans, IN SPACE, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah it does.

Reading more about it online not only does the crazy IN SPACE environmental message take center stage, but so does rampant commentary and allegory on the War on Terror!

Because god know we don't get enough of those from every other Hollywood writer who thinks they're a lot more clever than they really are!

I don't know, this movie is going to have to fucking AMAZING to overcome the above for me.

 

[Knight Templar]

Do you have a point?

I liked the movie, really like it come to think of it. I don't understand what made you dislike it to the point of making this thread. But you most likely don't understand why I liked it, which is fair enough I suppose.

 

[Wayte]

So, it looks safe to say this is officially the next movie all the clever people hate.

 

[Lovelocke]

Don't get me wrong, I'm a film snob but I can totally "turn it off" just to enjoy something. For God's sake, I watch "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny" every couple of months and love it to death. I just watched "Star Slammer" on Netflix and had a blast doing a MST3K gimmick with it!

There's a lot of flash and whizzbang going on in this movie that just doesn't equal any formal "story" connection, which if you're going to have a near 3-hour movie you'd better have a f***ing good story: This is Avatar's biggest flaw.

Also, about Roger Ebert - He's "mostly" right about the games cannot tell a story thing: Had he said "Most games require you to move from Room A to Room B because in Room Z there's a princess waiting for you... rare is it that there's a game with cinematic quality and a riveting story that spans the length of a television series", more people would've agreed with it. Instead, he just flippantly said "Games can't do it".

In science terms: Peggle would never make a fantastic movie, and you can't make a movie as dim and limited as Peggle.

 

[Kollega]

Well while I'm going to withhold judgment until I actually see it, I must say that the basic premise of 'EVIL Technology Users' VS 'Organic Hippie Native Culture' already doesn't place it off to a good start in my mind.

If I want to be preached at while watching a movie I'd go watch a Michale Moore flick.

P.S. I fucking hated Ferngully.

It sounds like it's basically modern American steroptypes versus stereotyped Native Americans, IN SPACE, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah it does.

Reading more about it online not only does the crazy IN SPACE environmental message take center stage, but so does rampant commentary and allegory on the War on Terror!

Because god know we don't get enough of those from every other Hollywood writer who thinks they're a lot more clever than they really are!

You three. Quoted for truth. This Anvilicious hippie message may be thought-provoking to the masses, but i have already learned that megacorporations are evil, having superior tech does not mean we can break in and take whatever we want, blah blah blah.

As for the special effects... i'd rather waste two hours of my life on drawing stuff.

 

[Chewster]

I wasn't particularly impressed by the trailers and since it is supposed to be this giant comeback for James Cameron, who hasn't made a good film since The Terminator, I think I'll just skip it and save my twelve dollars.

 

[Julianking93]

I personally liked Avatar, good sir.

It was interesting, the CGI was done well and the action scenes kicked ass and had a good romantic plot.

 

[Jirlond]

If you go see this movie with a pissed off internet attitude of course you aren't going to like because the internet is always right.

I avoided the trailers and reading up about it, went to see it in 3D and it was worth EVERY FUCKING PENNY!

So what if the story isn't exactly original - it has original settings and Cameron tells it brilliantly. I would say it was a perfect comeback for him!

 

[Zac_Dai]

I just want to go see it for awesome 3D CG fun!

Its not like every story or plot in massmedia is orginal anyway.

 

[Lovelocke]

If you go see this movie with a pissed off internet attitude of course you aren't going to like because the internet is always right.

I didn't. I knew the movie was coming for years, casually followed news on it whenever some big story came up: Aside from that, I didn't know a single thing about the movie other than its expensive and there's blue people. I went into the movie with probably the clearest mindset possible, akin to the first time I saw Lord of the Rings (never read a single book)... and while LOTR totally blew me away, this movie just plain didn't.

James Cameron has made some of my favorite movies (and IMAX/Omni Theater documentaries), and if we're going by either "Yes or No" reviews, then yes: See Avatar... but since I have a crippling illness known as thought, I tend to look at mega budget/mega wide release films with more scrutiny than the little asian movie that could with a $2,000,000 USD pricetag directed by Park Chan-Wook: Especially when the little asian movie could teach more to the world if the world could be bothered to *read* subtitles for about 2 hours.

 

[Internet Kraken]

The movie is 3 hours long?

Well now I'm not seeing it. I already had doubts about seeing the movie because I hate it's plot, and the thought of dealing with that for 3 hours makes me cringe.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

As South Park pointed out, Avatar is really just "Dances with Smurfs (In Space!)". It may be an old story full of familiar themes, but it does it rather well and manages to have some pretty epic sequences of flight, combat, etc. Oh, to the guy who complained about gravity: I'm pretty sure it gets mentioned in the film that Pandora has somewhat less than Earth gravity. It doesn't say exactly what amount it does have, but it's less than Earth.

 

[thiosk]

Oh dear, someone had to bring up ferngully. My father was so disappointed with me when he saw me watching that movie... communist and lame.

I don't understand why everyone clings to this notion of the American Natives being some sort of super-hippy eco-warriors.

Just like everyone else,

First they rape the land,
Then they rape eachother,
then they collapse into cannibalism and move away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Pueblo_Peoples

And the whole "But they used every part of the animal!"

So do we. Ever wonder what is in dog food and fish food?

 

[Jonny49]

While I did think the story was very formulaic, I still thought the characters were interesting to watch and the script to be mostly good. That with the special effects makes Avatar a brilliant piece of film-making.

 

[electric discordian]

I wasn't particularly impressed by the trailers and since it is supposed to be this giant comeback for James Cameron, who hasn't made a good film since The Terminator, I think I'll just skip it and save my twelve dollars.

Aliens? The Abyss? Terminator 2? Titanic? (That was pretty crap!)

Oh and Aliens which is regarded as a scifi staple a quality roller coaster ride was about the evils of corporate America. Terminator was anti technology. No one seems to think these films are too preachy!