James Cameron's Avatar

lol, the guy that ran that "mounting evidence that avatar will suck" article eats his crow

Quote:

An Apology: Avatar Amazingly Does Not Suck

To all our comrades in arms on the Avatar Sucks barricades. Our fight was brave. Our cause was noble. In some way, I'll figure out later, we can claim this was a moral victory. But the time has come to lay down our arms and return to our pastures and couches. It has been a honor to serve with you all and history will honor our valor and our sacrifice. But the war has ended. And we are losers.

http://gawker.com/5427160/an-apology...-does-not-suck

same people that ran that early review from an 'insider' about Avatar's 3d being vomit inducing

To be fair, you're enough to put people off wanting to see this film.

No offense.

  On 12/16/2009 at 12:42 AM, karmakramer said:

Well done CGI is a billion times better then real sets... , just cause a lot of crappy movies use it poorly doesn't mean making a set digitally is any less impressive then building one.

Give us a good example.

  On 12/16/2009 at 12:56 AM, Obel said:

To be fair, you're enough to put people off wanting to see this film.

 

 

 

 

 

No offense.

...

and as an example.. well Avatar lol... LOTR used a combination of models/CG... so did King Kong... but Avatar is all CG... so go see that and tell me it would have been cooler/better to have made everything you see in that film with props/sets...

Ok, its true that I only saw avatar's trailer so far but it really looked crappy to me. Ok so it has cool trendy video effects, but film-wise it sucks, sorry. I'm not even sure I want to see the whole thing.

As for Dune and all other mechanical-achievement spectacles vs CGI: Its almost like a fight with two genres of a similar medium. Most movies that used too much CGI do it, to attract blockbuster, non brainer wanting audiences, while mechanical, more material-based stuff attracts more demanding people.

Or am I overgeneralising?

are you sure Avatar uses no models or 'bigatures' like the stuff in LOTR?

If that was a question for me than the answer is simple: It does. And I know Lotr and many other movies did, but if the final output looks in any way like transformers (and they DO) than all the time was in my book wasted.

Have you seen the making of The Fellowship of the ring? There is this scene where Gandalf rides his cart to where the hobbits live. First they show you the camera shot scene and it looks realistic, quite ok. Then they show you the "awesome" work with layerings and the scene gets more color intensity, that makes it wannabe more fantasy-like. For me it just went meh. Too many parts of the movie (and other such movies) simply get overcrowded with all the video-effects, and in the end instead of a realistic, haptis experience of an alternate world you get its vague illustration. I've seen thousands of costumes and grar and all for Lord of the rings. In the end, when I saw it in the movie I couldn't comprehend it as real stuff and thus, the experience has failed.

Another thing. Imagine filming Blade runner's scenes with contemporary usage of CGI. You'll see how far that would get us.

my eye tells me a lot of the large trees in Pandora are probably model/minature elements but i can't be sure. Most people seem to be parroting the 'its 100% cgi' , but i dont remember hearing James Cameron say such a thing

i thought most of the 'bigature' elements in LOTR were probably the most impressive aspects of the films for me. The most memorable one being the Minas tirith.

In return of the king when you first see Gandalf riding his horse up the inclines my mouth was hanging wide open like Terry Schivo

i don't see very many of these huge budget movies taking advantage of this technique.

I really don't think its needed... from reviews etc, most agree its all photo real. Here watch the new episode of the Totally Rad Show where they talk about Avatar in a review, very entertaining and no spoilers...

http://www.totallyradshow.com/

Am I the only one that thought King Kong looked incredibly bad?

  On 12/16/2009 at 1:59 AM, Dan C said:

Am I the only one that thought King Kong looked incredibly bad?

No I agree, except for Kong and some creatures... it didn't look too good, felt rushed, and the movie was too long/boring

  On 12/16/2009 at 1:59 AM, Dan C said:

Am I the only one that thought King Kong looked incredibly bad?

No, definitely not

  On 12/16/2009 at 1:59 AM, karmakramer said:

I really don't think its needed... from reviews etc, most agree its all photo real.

well it goes back to my original question, has Cameron said that no small scale or large scale models/minatures were used in the production of this movie?

if he has not where are you getting this '100% cgi' information from?

I think King Kong's greatness was ruined by a lot of rushed and overdone CGI creatures. If they had just focused on Kong himself and the recreation of 1930s new york i think the movie could have LOOKEd a whole lot better, but as far as it being a good and well written movie it fails. the best special effects in the world wouldn't have been able to save it

edit: certain key things WETA worked on like the King Kong character modeling and animation as well as their groundbreaking work with Gollum gives me faith that Avatar will not disappoint visually.

If you guys are arguing the visual effects in this movie aren't going to be good, please go read some reviews. Even the ones that don't like the movie still say "go see it" because the visual effects are simply beyond anything before it. I know that sounds silly to be so direct, but its the truth. And ffs see it in 3D... if you want to see what the fuss is about, this is the film to give 3D a chance

  On 12/16/2009 at 2:04 AM, Awepittance said:

  On 12/16/2009 at 1:59 AM, karmakramer said:

I really don't think its needed... from reviews etc, most agree its all photo real.

 

well it goes back to my original question, has Cameron said that no small scale or large scale models/minatures were used in the production of this movie?

if he has not where are you getting this '100% cgi' information from?

 

I think King Kong's greatness was ruined by a lot of rushed and overdone CGI creatures. If they had just focused on Kong himself and the recreation of 1930s new york i think the movie could have LOOKEd a whole lot better, but as far as it being a good and well written movie it fails. the best special effects in the world wouldn't have been able to save it

From my understanding Pandora is 100% CG, and I think I remember hearing him say this via video interview but I can't seem to find it.

  On 12/16/2009 at 2:00 AM, karmakramer said:

  On 12/16/2009 at 1:59 AM, Dan C said:

Am I the only one that thought King Kong looked incredibly bad?

 

No I agree, except for Kong and some creatures... it didn't look too good, felt rushed, and the movie was too long/boring

I couldn't get behind any of it though, nothing looked good to me. I'm not one for photo-realism in movies, or at least trying for photo-realism in movies. It takes all the charm out of things, I don't like movies because they're too passive an experience, so anything with a slightly more abstract, or visually constrictive that leaves the mind to fill in blanks is more up my alley.

All the wizz bang, "look at my 100% lifelike exploding robot rape scene" stuff just makes me fall into a coma or turn over/give up watching.

I think possibly movies just aren't for me.

  On 12/16/2009 at 2:09 AM, karmakramer said:

  On 12/16/2009 at 2:04 AM, Awepittance said:

  On 12/16/2009 at 1:59 AM, karmakramer said:

I really don't think its needed... from reviews etc, most agree its all photo real.

 

well it goes back to my original question, has Cameron said that no small scale or large scale models/minatures were used in the production of this movie?

if he has not where are you getting this '100% cgi' information from?

 

I think King Kong's greatness was ruined by a lot of rushed and overdone CGI creatures. If they had just focused on Kong himself and the recreation of 1930s new york i think the movie could have LOOKEd a whole lot better, but as far as it being a good and well written movie it fails. the best special effects in the world wouldn't have been able to save it

 

From my understanding Pandora is 100% CG, and I think I remember hearing him say this via video interview but I can't seem to find it.

well if that's the case i'm pretty impressed.. a lot of things that people think are CGI in the star wars prequels are actually just really detailed miniatures, so i'm willing to believe either way. It just seems like more man hours would go into doing it with 100% cgi vs taking a lot of photographic elements of miniature rain forests and compositing them and integrating them with CGI.

  On 12/16/2009 at 2:15 AM, Awepittance said:

  On 12/16/2009 at 2:09 AM, karmakramer said:

  On 12/16/2009 at 2:04 AM, Awepittance said:

  On 12/16/2009 at 1:59 AM, karmakramer said:

I really don't think its needed... from reviews etc, most agree its all photo real.

 

well it goes back to my original question, has Cameron said that no small scale or large scale models/minatures were used in the production of this movie?

if he has not where are you getting this '100% cgi' information from?

 

I think King Kong's greatness was ruined by a lot of rushed and overdone CGI creatures. If they had just focused on Kong himself and the recreation of 1930s new york i think the movie could have LOOKEd a whole lot better, but as far as it being a good and well written movie it fails. the best special effects in the world wouldn't have been able to save it

 

From my understanding Pandora is 100% CG, and I think I remember hearing him say this via video interview but I can't seem to find it.

 

well if that's the case i'm pretty impressed.. a lot of things that people think are CGI in the star wars prequels are actually just really detailed miniatures, so i'm willing to believe either way. It just seems like more man hours would go into doing it with 100% cgi vs taking a lot of photographic elements of miniature rain forests and compositing them and integrating them with CGI.

I mean I know the Jungle is complete CG, and so whatever else is left is basically all alien life... so aside from a few close ups of mechs and helicopters which are real... and the human actors and human space ship stuff... everything else is CG

I don't really care if they were models, real persons or whatever. As far as I saw Avatar it looks visually POOR, because it uses all the trendy cliché effects. A quality film works from a different perspective of aestethics from the very start. That's why I said there seem to be (at least) two genres in movie-making: The one I stand for is based on author's expression of things, while the blockbuster one tries to look awesome with the newest, smoothest effects, so that many teenagers will spent money for it.

Last post.

This is probably one of the most pure and honest expressionistic films ever made. You basically have an entire planet/world that's been designed and thought up by Cameron. And it's brought to life exactly as he envisioned it because it doesn't rely on clumsy animatronics or other physical man-made effects... its digitally re-created to such realism, that its essential photo realistic. That seems to be the ultimate goal... whether you like the style Cameron has chosen is one thing... but to say pushing visual effects is "cliche" when if it wasn't for Cameron pushing the visual effects in pretty much every movie he has made, mainstream movies right now would most definitely not be where they are today. We would have not maybe seen Jurassic Park in 93... or LOTR had it not been for Titanic's use of miniature CG characters. All the tech in Avatar will also help push the industry forward... Spielberg is already using the performance capture tech that Cameron made, for his new movie Tin Tin...

Not directed at gaarg but just a general comment... I will agree the story is definitely not the reason why I want to see this film. The style is certainly more enthralling than the substance... But my basic expectations going in for Avatar are to get an engaging story with some of the best visual effects ever in 3D. From most accounts/reviews this is your traditional Cameron film. The story may be generic, and the characters may be a bit one-dimensional, but its still highly enjoyable/entertaining and definitely packs an emotional punch.

If we were talking about some low-budget thriller film or something I would probably tell you guys to just wait and see this on DVD if the trailer doesn't really interest you. However, because this film is going to be more of an "event" it would be crazy imo to not experience this movie on the big screen and in 3D if you do ever intend on watching it. Sure it might be a waste of $13 but if you end up liking the ride, you are going to be so grateful you saw it how it was meant to be seen. Also to dislike this film because someone on the forum was annoying and overly "optimistic" about it, is kind of silly. I mean why ruin a potentially good thing, because of some person? Just put me on ignore if you find my enthusiasm draining, I will completely understand. But to just push aside something truly awesome, come on now, this isn't grade school

Nobody dislikes the film because they haven't fucking seen it yet. But the amount your hyping it is not going to make it a better film. You're just building it up for a higher fall.

Have you even seen it? I mean, I know you're going to love it whether it's good or not, simply because it would have been a waste of all this droning on about it if you didn't. But I'd love if it turned out you hated it.

  On 12/16/2009 at 11:43 AM, Obel said:

Nobody dislikes the film because they haven't fucking seen it yet. But the amount your hyping it is not going to make it a better film. You're just building it up for a higher fall.

 

Have you even seen it? I mean, I know you're going to love it whether it's good or not, simply because it would have been a waste of all this droning on about it if you didn't. But I'd love if it turned out you hated it.

Lol na I haven't seen it and probably have seen less then most people here, cause I haven't watched much released footage. But, I'm still extremely excited for this film because I know Cameron can do no wrong and its about time 3D really took off. So this film will not only serve as an entertaining experience, but will also push visual effects and blockbuster films even farther... I'm sorry if my posting of videos/articles/reviews is annoying to you, I'm only promoting it in hope to discuss it with the watmm community. I don't care if the 100 or so people who visit WATMM go see the movie or not... like thats really going to make a big impact on its box office success.

I'm not that bothered, I just don't really like hype. It usually ends up being disappointing.

Bit silly to say he can do no wrong though, to be fair...

  On 12/16/2009 at 11:53 AM, Obel said:

I'm not that bothered, I just don't really like hype. It usually ends up being disappointing.

 

Bit silly to say he can do no wrong though, to be fair...

In my opinion, I just don't think Cameron is capable of making something like Transformers 2 or something. He understands emotion/action to well to totally miss it. If you enjoy big mainstream blockbusters, he makes some of the best. This is certainly the best one of the year at least considering its up for a Golden Globe and is hovering pretty high on Rotten Tomatoes... Sure the Oscar bait films like Invictus or Up in the Air will have the highest scores, but I'm tired of those movies lately. I just want some mindless fucking beautiful action sequences.

Don't get me wrong, I love Cameron. His movies anyway (Well, I say that but what I mean is Terminator, T2 and Aliens are close to my heart) but I'm just not enamoured with what I've seen of Avatar so far. I'll reserve any serious criticism for when I finally see it, I too haven't watched enough. I guess I'd just rather people discussed the film as opposed to just mindlessly defending it. But hey, each to their own.