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So any all y'all seen Avatar?

The Tomtrek

The Tomtrek

Love Wookiee
Just got back from seeing it, and I'm going to post what I thought of it and then you can make poses saying what you thought of it and we can compare our opinions. (with spoilers)




Okay so first off, I thought it looked fantasic. The best the best CGI I've seen. In the early pictures and trailers, I thought the Na'Vi looked pretty fake sometimes, but not in the film. There were times when you thought you were looking at someone in makeup, except of course you weren't because they were giant skinny blue cat things. The 3D wasn't as WORLD CHANGING as they should it would be, I thought, but it looked nice anyway. I imagine watching it in 2D wouldn't be that much worse.

The action scenes were cool, and great to watch. In fact the entire film is great o watch because it really does look so nice.

The one problem I had with it was that, yeah, the story is pretty simple. The Na'Vi are pretty batently American Indians with big-bad humanity being big and bad but the natives are IN TOUCH WITH NATURE so they're better (although they at least gave a decent scientific reason for the Na'Vi to be so IN TOUCH WITH NATURE).

But apart from the so-so story everything else really is top notch. It's fun to watch and you can look at the pretty things on the screen without having to turn your brain off to enjoy (unlike other films *coughTransformerscough
*). It's not Aliens. Or Terminator 2. But it's still pretty good I thought!


IT'S A GOOD FILM I LIKED IT.
 
I went late last night (my date wanted to see it); awful movie, blatant furry overtones, shameless rip-off of Dances with Wolves, cardboard acting, and a story whose resolution was obvious within the first five minutes; a plot with no shades of grey. D, saved from an F only by the CGI.
 
The one problem I had with it was that, yeah, the story is pretty simple. The Na'Vi are pretty batently American Indians with big-bad humanity being big and bad but the natives are IN TOUCH WITH NATURE so they're better
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One to skip, then. But who didn't see this coming?
 
The Tomtrek said:
I wouldn't skip it just because of that. I mean, yes, the story is a bit thin and heavy-handed (can something be thin AND heavy?), but it's certainly not bad.
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Maaaybe. No, probably not, but it bugs me enough to give it a pass.

avatar-spoiler.jpg
 
Dual said:
I went late last night (my date wanted to see it); awful movie, blatant furry overtones, shameless rip-off of Dances with Wolves, cardboard acting, and a story whose resolution was obvious within the first five minutes; a plot with no shades of grey. D, saved from an F only by the CGI.
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It ripped off Pocahantas and Bravehart as well. In fact I had the song "Colors of the Wind" stuck in my head pretty much the whole movie but I still liked it.
 
I haven't been feeling this movie at all. The way everybody is fellating James Cameron over how awesome he and his new movie are is a huge red flag for me. Overhype generally means a movie is not worth full price admission. I'll see it at the dollar flick place. Plus the title keeps making me think of those Yugioh style kid crap movies. Wasn't there some kind of kid show called Avatar?
 
I'm going to see it after the holidays, I don't care if the story is thin. I hardly ever go to the movies, but I like to go to the theater when the movie is BIG.. like pretty and exciting big. I don't see deep meaningful movies that are sad at the theater because: 1) I am a crier (you'd think someone I know just died) and 2) I like to watch meaningful things more privately without distractions.

I'm sure I will enjoy the Avatar theater experience just like I enjoyed Star Trek. It's probably not as good if it isn't larger than life.
 
Loktar said:
It ripped off Pocahantas and Bravehart as well. In fact I had the song "Colors of the Wind" stuck in my head pretty much the whole movie but I still liked it.
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Definitely Dances With Wolves, also Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and it you've ever read Robin Hobb's Soldier Son trilogy, that's there too.

I'm going to see it again Imax 3D.
 
I was going to see this on Christmas Day, but I think I'll see Sherlock Holmes instead. Unless that gets shitty reviews, in which case I'll watch my Blu-Ray of "The Hangover" for the bajillionth time.
 
I saw it yesterday. Here's a cut and paste of a review I wrote at ASVS:

Well, I finally saw this movie last night. For the most part, I liked it. First the bad, I'll get it out of the way so I can focus on the good parts of the film. The main complaint I had was the ham-fisted way they pounded the Indian/European analogy that the story was based around. After a while it was like "Yes, I get it. The Na'vi are supposed to be the Indians and the Humans are the European settlers." It seemed like they had to make it as blatant as possible just in case you were too thick to get the comparison. It's also conspicuous, that all the Humans were Americans, and most were white. So, yes, we get the not so subtle implication. There was also a strong anti-capitalist message. (As there was with Wall-E) It's all the evil corporation's fault, and they destroyed the Earth, "killed their mother", etc, etc, etc. VERY irritating, but par for the course with Hollywood these days. Mostly anti-American, anti capitalist messages. OK. Fine, whatever. The dialogue was a bit trite as well, along with very cardboard characters. Now to the good parts. It was singlehandedly the most GORGEOUS movie I've ever seen. I've never seen over the top effects and CGI integration like this before. It was seamless, and stunning. I saw it in 3D, and the 3D effects were unbelievable. It was really hard to distinguish between real and CGI. I have to hand it to them. It was truly amazing. I also liked how the Na'vi were much, much larger than the Humans. It seems to be a trapping with a lot of sci-fi to have aliens and Humans be roughly the same size. It was also a major part of the story, that Pandora had a poisonous atmosphere to Humans. Although it was never mentioned what the atmosphere consisted of. (or why the fire burned the same color as it does in our atmosphere for that matter, but that's another discussion.) I found this interesting, and also part of the reason for creating the Avatar bodies. I'm going to avoid spoilers as much as possible, since I'm sure most of you haven't seen it. The creativity with the animal and plant forms were really amazing as well. They spent a lot of time with the creativity aspect of it. I would love to see some behind the scenes information on some of these plants and animals. The story was pretty creative, and had some very original aspects to it. I loved the mechs that the Humans used. Pandora is an inhabited (conveniently) Earth-sized moon of Polyphemus, one of the three clearly fictional gas giants orbiting Alpha Centauri A. The trip from Earth in the movie was about 6 years, in cryo storage. Which is an odd thing to begin with. Alpha Centauri A is roughly 4.37 light years from Earth. To get there in 6 years, they wouldn't need FTL, but they would be traveling at relativistic speeds. Why they would need cryo storage baffles me. But I'll chalk it up to one of those things that wasn't thought through. The Humans were there mining a mineral referred to (jokingly) as "unobtanium". Although, they never revealed what made it so valuable. It looked just like a chunk of coal. RayCav said to him the movie looked like a cross between Ferngully and Pocahontas. I'd agree, except I think it's more like a Dances with Wolves/Ferngully crossover. All in all, it was an OK movie, if you can get past the heavy handed political lecturing and flimsy character development.
 
The plot may be ham-handed, but I think it's really up to the viewer to decide exactly what it is David Cameron thinks is evil.

I saw it more as a condemnation of modern mercenary groups like Blackwater (thus the out-of-the-blue reference to "terror" by the evil guy in his big speech) and the elf-things as a reference to the Zulu (battle of Isandlwana and all that), but that's probably just me.

I enjoyed it. The dialogue was terrible, the plot was terrible, and the imaginary technology was terrible, but Cameron managed things so that those things didn't get in the way of the nice, flashy action movie he'd made. At least it didn't make me squirm and feel embarrassed I was even in the theater like District 9 did.
 
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