James Cameron's Avatar

  On 1/4/2010 at 2:08 PM, karmakramer said:

animation is pretty much flawless

Mocap? More like mocrap!

:P

To be fair they did mocap better than I've ever seen it done before but it still looks awful in comparrison to keyframed animation. I mean, neither looks real but at least key frame animation is appealing. Actually King Kong was really good mocap.

And I DO think the environments in Avatar were AMAZING, the fact that none of that stuff was real is incredible. But pretty much anything that moved looked like something from Final Fantasy: Spirits Within (and if anyone tries to defend that film I really won't know what to do...)

haven't read the previous pages, so i suspect I'll be repeating past comments.

visually, the movie was stunning. a masterpiece.

the concept was good. the story was decent. the acting was bad and the script was worse. the heavy handed themes of environmentalism, native american genocide and anti war on terror, were about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. it was downright laughable at times. but the movie was beautiful to behold. i'd give it a 6.5/10.

Why can't people just enjoy big-budget blockbusters for what they are instead of analyzing them like some art-house film?

people like me enjoy big budget blockbusters for what they are worth but are also realistic about their quality or lack their of. Most of peoples negative responses are just honest knee jerks to kramerkramers delusional/joking? level of excitement to say this movie is anywhere near perfection.

I found it very engaging which is all the more impressive since the story was so nothingy. Some of the concepts were cool like the mind meld ponytail shit and the floating mountains and technology stuff even if it didn't make sense. Blue monkey cats are all good in my book, the 3D probably made it.

  On 1/5/2010 at 6:32 PM, Joyrex said:

Why can't people just enjoy big-budget blockbusters for what they are instead of analyzing them like some art-house film?

Because we shouldn't have to settle for such things. The industry is overpopulated with big-budget, but mediocre, films that detract from the rare gems.

Films should be smarter and less about box-ticking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g__bQ-Y7D8Q

  On 1/5/2010 at 6:56 PM, Gary C said:

  On 1/5/2010 at 6:32 PM, Joyrex said:

Why can't people just enjoy big-budget blockbusters for what they are instead of analyzing them like some art-house film?

 

Because we shouldn't have to settle for such things. The industry is overpopulated with big-budget, but mediocre, films that detract from the rare gems.

Films should be smarter and less about box-ticking.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g__bQ-Y7D8Q

And even BESIDES that... if a mindless, big budget action blockbuster can't even deliver the best there is to offer in visuals and special effects (ESPECIALLY if it's been hyped up as much as this film) then you really gotta wonder what is the film worth at all.

Again I'd like to reiterate that I do believe some of the special effects in the film were amazing and the 3D was incredible but there was enough bad stuff to be distracting. And about 80% of the designs looked like something from a bland videogame.

Conservative 'backlash' against Avatar

  Quote

A movie as big as "Avatar" deserves more than one blog post, and I'm afraid I just can't resist poking at the hilarious spectacle of conservative movie critics launching into thermonuclear hissy fits at the anti-American, greenie pagan leftist propaganda embedded in the politics of James Cameron's epic. The Los Angeles Times has a great story by Patrick Goldstein rounding up the outrage.

 

To say that the film has evoked a storm of ire on the right would be an understatement. Big Hollywood's John Nolte, one of my favorite outspoken right-wing film essayists, blasted the film, calling it "a sanctimonious thud of a movie so infested with one-dimensional characters and PC cliches that not a single plot turn, large or small, surprises ... Think of 'Avatar' as 'Death Wish' for leftists, a simplistic, revisionist revenge fantasy where if you ... hate the bad guys (America) you're able to forgive the by-the-numbers predictability of it all."

 

John Podhoretz, the Weekly Standard's film critic, called the film "blitheringly stupid; indeed, it's among the dumbest movies I've ever seen." He goes on to say: "You're going to hear a lot over the next couple of weeks about the movie's politics -- about how it's a Green epic about despoiling the environment, and an attack on the war in Iraq ... The conclusion does ask the audience to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency. So it is a deep expression of anti-Americanism -- kind of. The thing is, one would be giving Jim Cameron too much credit to take 'Avatar' -- with its ... hatred of the military and American institutions and the notion that to be human is just way uncool -- at all seriously as a political document. It's more interesting as an example of how deeply rooted these standard issue counterculture cliches in Hollywood have become by now."

 

My first response to these nitwits is to wonder whether any of them went to see either of the "Transformers" movies, both of which kissed American military ass with about as much love as anything this side of John Wayne's "The Green Berets." There has never been a shortage of big budget Hollywood blockbusters aimed at making the U.S. look good. The only thing deeply rooted in Hollywood is a desire to maximize ticket revenue.

 

And that's what really got conservatives in a pickle. Big government socialism is not rounding up moviegoers and lining them in front of 3-D-equipped theaters. Individuals, acting on their own desires, are plunking down their cash. This is the free market in action. Simplistic left-wing environmentalist propaganda, as realized by Cameron, turns out to be spectacularly popular! Ouch! That's gotta hurt. For right-wingers convinced that a cap-and-trade mechanism to restrict greenhouse gases is an affront to American values, it must be extraordinarily galling to see the explicit environmental message of "Avatar" embraced so heartily.

 

A cynic might point out that the real attraction of "Avatar" is not the politics, of course, but the spectacle. Just as I had little problem ignoring the military worship in "Transformers" and managed to have a lot of fun watching giant robots bash each other into smithereens, most moviegoers are probably more transfixed by "Avatar's" amazing CGI special effects than by the idea that the military-industrial complex is a natural-born planet killer.

 

But what to make of the fact that a movie that portrays a very American-looking military in a profoundly unfavorable light is explosively popular with audiences all over the world? The Wall Street Journal reports that "Avatar" is already the most successful movie ever in Russia, and is drawing huge audiences from France to Brazil. "Avatar" has cleared $350 million in ticket sales in North America, but $670 million internationally.

I enjoyed this film; visually, it was excellent. I'd agree with many on the acting, it wasn't too great at times and there weren't any memorable performances. I am seeing it a second time before it leaves the cinema - One thing to learn from this film is that it just goes to show that the profit motive is extremely detrimental. It's not capitalism that's the problem, it's the very basis of money itself that is totally out of line with nature - and the film gets this across very well I think. It's a shame that a lot of people probably wouldn't remember the film based on this, they'll probably only give it recognition over the CGI and the profits it made.

I honestly feel that if the same scenario (in Avatar) were to happen in the future, we would act in the same ways the humans did in the film (greed) if we found a scarce or 'valuable' resource on another planet. It wouldn't take us long to stop considering the effects on the life inhabiting the planet, the environmental issues involved etc.. We shouldn't even be going to space until we sort out our social system on Earth.

Also, fuck the conservatives. The very word 'conservative' makes me cringe. Holding back progress in the name of tradition is a terrible state of mind to adopt.

edit: I lolled when I saw the film because during the trailers was an advertisement by the British Army for recruitment purposes.

conservatives also were all in a huff about Star Wars Episode 3, they swore that emperor palpatine was supposed to be George W Bush.

it's like no dip shits, Emperor Palpatine was just an archetypal trojan horse villain, if that's how you think of your own president than that says a lot more about you than it does about the movie being any sort of direct parallel.

conservatives have forced a stupid ass left VS right political lens over all movies in the past 10 years. I think the only movie they raved about was World Trade Center and United 93, the latter was understandable because it was basically evil brown people VS heroic americans porn (sorry i had to use it)

  On 1/6/2010 at 12:25 AM, Awepittance said:

conservatives also were all in a huff about Star Wars Episode 3, they swore that emperor palpatine was supposed to be George W Bush.

 

it's like no dip shits, Emperor Palpatine was just an archetypal trojan horse villain, if that's how you think of your own president than that says a lot more about you than it does about the movie being any sort of direct parallel.

 

conservatives have forced a stupid ass left VS right political lens over all movies in the past 10 years. I think the only movie they raved about was World Trade Center and United 93, the latter was understandable because it was basically evil brown people VS heroic americans porn (sorry i had to use it)

Is it really that bad in the US? Here in the UK, you hardly see the right wing vs left wing political commentary.. it's either you are a Labour voter or Conservative voter (not to mention Lib Dem but they hardly get as much exposure than the two main parties). I try my best to keep up with the news in the US, but what you've described does not surprise me at all.

Politics is a joke any way. It's not politicians we need, it's scientists/technicians/researchers that can actually solve problems for societies. The opinions of politicians are not relevant.

  On 1/5/2010 at 6:56 PM, Gary C said:

  On 1/5/2010 at 6:32 PM, Joyrex said:

Why can't people just enjoy big-budget blockbusters for what they are instead of analyzing them like some art-house film?

 

Because we shouldn't have to settle for such things. The industry is overpopulated with big-budget, but mediocre, films that detract from the rare gems.

Films should be smarter and less about box-ticking.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g__bQ-Y7D8Q

That was excellent.

  On 1/5/2010 at 6:32 PM, Joyrex said:

Why can't people just enjoy big-budget blockbusters for what they are instead of analyzing them like some art-house film?

Papa my feeling is that people are unable to understand anymore the standards of mythology. They probably got fed'up by the way history and myths are being told during the course of their education. Everything needs to be on the edge now, the "omg it was him all along", while not understanding that this is also standard writing (Voltaire, Shakes, etc..). Post-post-modern. Their lives cannot be fullfill without that.

Avatar' story has been done a thousand times, from Pocahontas to Dances with Wolves, well because it works!. It's the same about Hamlet, or buddy-cop action comedies, or the standard slasher, or the Odyssey. There's no originaly in writing like there's only a limited number of notes you can play on a piano. It's fucking normal. But most of the people who whine about that, they don't even understand the basis of that, they just whine because they can. They often have completely lost touch with the true essence of civilisation. Most who whine about the standard comparative mythology of Avatar "loved" Shrek , while that was the same Joseph-Cambell-archetype of a farm boy saving a damsel in distress that we've seen a thousand times. .

  On 1/6/2010 at 12:33 AM, Bread said:

 

Is it really that bad in the US?

yes it really is, almost any political news coverage is framed in a very polarized way that is not representative of most actual citizens beliefs, but more aligned with the official positions of each political party (republican and democrat since no other party is ever represented in the news)

  On 1/6/2010 at 12:46 AM, Awepittance said:

  On 1/6/2010 at 12:33 AM, Bread said:

 

Is it really that bad in the US?

 

yes it really is, almost any political news coverage is framed in a very polarized way that is not representative of most actual citizens beliefs, but more aligned with the official positions of each political party (republican and democrat since no other party is ever represented in the news)

Sure.. well it's the typical two party system that you see in western politics isn't it?

"Do you want the puppet on the left, or the puppet on the right?"

  On 1/5/2010 at 6:32 PM, Joyrex said:

Why can't people just enjoy big-budget blockbusters for what they are instead of analyzing them like some art-house film?

I like a good rollicking blockbuster.

For example, to me 2012 was a far better film than avatar, the plot propelled characters you had been allowed to connect with forward towards a clear goal, whilst washing your senses in a never ending cascade of ultimate coolness.

  On 1/6/2010 at 12:42 AM, Philip Glass said:

  On 1/5/2010 at 6:32 PM, Joyrex said:

Why can't people just enjoy big-budget blockbusters for what they are instead of analyzing them like some art-house film?

 

 

Papa my feeling is that people are unable to understand anymore the standards of mythology. They probably got fed'up by the way history and myths are being told during the course of their education. Everything needs to be on the edge now, the "omg it was him all along", while not understanding that this is also standard writing (Voltaire, Shakes, etc..). Post-post-modern. Their lives cannot be fullfill without that.

 

Avatar' story has been done a thousand times, from Pocahontas to Dances with Wolves, well because it works!.

It works because people like to root for the underdog.

disclaimer: i haven't seen the movie

any complaints regarding the fact that 'this story has been told before' are kinda weak. at this point in human history, all stories have been told before. you can reduce 95% of movies and books to basic archetypes with a few embellishments.

  On 1/6/2010 at 12:42 AM, Philip Glass said:

  On 1/5/2010 at 6:32 PM, Joyrex said:

Why can't people just enjoy big-budget blockbusters for what they are instead of analyzing them like some art-house film?

 

 

Papa my feeling is that people are unable to understand anymore the standards of mythology. They probably got fed'up by the way history and myths are being told during the course of their education. Everything needs to be on the edge now, the "omg it was him all along", while not understanding that this is also standard writing (Voltaire, Shakes, etc..). Post-post-modern. Their lives cannot be fullfill without that.

 

Avatar' story has been done a thousand times, from Pocahontas to Dances with Wolves, well because it works!. It's the same about Hamlet, or buddy-cop action comedies, or the standard slasher, or the Odyssey. There's no originaly in writing like there's only a limited number of notes you can play on a piano. It's fucking normal. But most of the people who whine about that, they don't even understand the basis of that, they just whine because they can. They often have completely lost touch with the true essence of civilisation. Most who whine about the standard comparative mythology of Avatar "loved" Shrek , while that was the same Joseph-Cambell-archetype of a farm boy saving a damsel in distress that we've seen a thousand times. .

bullshit

we've seen it a thousand times, so let's at least try to make it a good version. the asinine writing cannot be excused by the fact that cameron is riding on the back of some archetypal mythology. if anything your point only makes the steaming pile of garbage script even more flagrant.

to say "there's no originality in writing like there's only a limited number of notes you can play on a piano" is convoluted, especially since you mention shakespeare and homer in the same breath as cameron and slashers. there's a big difference. having limited thematic material is not an excuse for handling it poorly.

perhaps you're taking the piss

did they play the nasa trailer at your theater? I thought the 3d in that trailer was way more intense than the film.

  On 1/6/2010 at 2:17 AM, vasio said:

  On 1/6/2010 at 12:42 AM, Philip Glass said:

  On 1/5/2010 at 6:32 PM, Joyrex said:

Why can't people just enjoy big-budget blockbusters for what they are instead of analyzing them like some art-house film?

 

 

Papa my feeling is that people are unable to understand anymore the standards of mythology. They probably got fed'up by the way history and myths are being told during the course of their education. Everything needs to be on the edge now, the "omg it was him all along", while not understanding that this is also standard writing (Voltaire, Shakes, etc..). Post-post-modern. Their lives cannot be fullfill without that.

 

Avatar' story has been done a thousand times, from Pocahontas to Dances with Wolves, well because it works!.

 

It works because people like to root for the underdog.

The most ironic in all this is that District 9 holds about the same writing as Avatar if you look at it from a comparative mythology pov.

But everything liked that one, even if the story was really simple as Avatar? So it's not about the archetypes in the end?

  On 1/6/2010 at 4:16 AM, Philip Glass said:

  On 1/6/2010 at 2:17 AM, vasio said:

  On 1/6/2010 at 12:42 AM, Philip Glass said:

  On 1/5/2010 at 6:32 PM, Joyrex said:

Why can't people just enjoy big-budget blockbusters for what they are instead of analyzing them like some art-house film?

 

 

Papa my feeling is that people are unable to understand anymore the standards of mythology. They probably got fed'up by the way history and myths are being told during the course of their education. Everything needs to be on the edge now, the "omg it was him all along", while not understanding that this is also standard writing (Voltaire, Shakes, etc..). Post-post-modern. Their lives cannot be fullfill without that.

 

Avatar' story has been done a thousand times, from Pocahontas to Dances with Wolves, well because it works!.

 

It works because people like to root for the underdog.

 

 

The most ironic in all this is that District 9 holds about the same writing as Avatar if you look at it from a comparative mythology pov.

I can't speak for everyone else but to me District 9 story was only good up until the part where he got in contact with the alien fuel, that story set-up was too hard for a rookie writer/director to handle imo, however the special effects and alien designs are top-notch, not surprising considering that is Blomkamp's specialty.

Plot wise most movies follow a certain base formula and considering the financial risk of Avatar failing, I'm sure that was on Cameron and his team mind.

it's not just that the overall story is an archetype, it's that almost every scene is borrowed from something else, only with pretty graphics.

how many of you knew that t'sutey or whatever had a love interest for chitara before it was revealed?. the thanator chase scene is another example i have mentioned before. plus some other stuff that just shows lazyness in the writing.

as a storytelling thing, it is a mess.

I'm starting to regret bringing District 9 into this... but I think I can still make it seem relevant somehow :P

District 9 was to me what a good blockbuster should be like. Sure it straddles the line of "art movie" (for want of a better term) but let's face it, it's a balls out action movie, with no grander purpose than to entertain. It did it with style, it did it with depth (again, without being preachy), it did it with heart. It showed a realistic understanding of the real world and then planted a completely unreal element in it, and had fun with it, which in turn, let US have fun with it.

Avatar seems to show only an understanding of cliches.