Escape to the Movies: Avatar

[ostro-whiskey]

I generally agree with Movie Bob, but this is bs. This movie is just visual masturbation, I would prefer to spend my money on a flm that actually has depth, and can immerse me.

It should have been pointed out that this movie is designed to appeal to people with a limited mental capacity.

Troll.

And yes, I am falling for your troll. I am hardly a person of "limited mental capacity" and I thoroughly enjoyed Avatar. Of course, you don't know me, and need not take my word for it that I am quite intelligent. Let me make a couple points however...

First, Roger Ebert has given Avatar 4 out of 4 stars and stated Cameron is "king of the world" again. I would like to see you call out Roger Ebert as someone of "limited mental capacity." Go ahead, try to do that. Back up your assertion with some kind of fact to that matter while you do it, though, or you just prove you're a pathetic troll.

Second, you obviously haven't seen the movie, how can you pretend to have anything of relevance to say about it? I will not ever take any criticism seriously when the individual hasn't even seen, read, or *been there* to actually know what they are talking about.

Your attempt at a jab is facile, and you should be ashamed to ever post here again.

Yeah, perhaps I did go alittle far in my condemntation, R. Ebert is certainly no brainless yokel. Had I known this prior I wouldnt have been so self righteous, but you can hardly call me a troll for simply stating my opinion. I do however, stand by the premise that the film is simply visual masturbation, had it been some unkown director without Camerons vision and cinematographic skill, I assure you the film would have been viewed as a shallow, cliched flop. The 3D certainly didnt hinder it either.

 

[mr Awsome]

to answer that last question, yes, yes I would.

jk in all seriousness, for me this movie was always a maybe, still is I guess...

no! lol you HAVE to see it. i just saw it and it was amazing! seriously the second best movie ive ever seen haha right behind 2012 but only because the plot of 2012 just tweaked my interest a little bit more than avatar

when i first saw the previews i was like "im never going to see that movie its so stupid" but after i saw it i was like "Wooooooooow"

and to answer the question above "Why do all the animals have six legs except for the Na'vi?"
Thats like saying why dont humans have four legs like all the animals on Earth. They all have six legs on Pandora just like they all have four legs on Earth

well, the thing is that you're doing a 180 turn on your outlook from bad to awesome which is why it is great, but I'm only doing a 90 turn from mild interest to awesome which is not that great to me.

and for that last part: kangaroos and birds have 2 legs. Not "all the animals on Earth" have 4 legs

oh true i didnt think about them...but all we saw in the movie were horse-like things, dragon-like things, rhino-like things, and tiger-like things and im pretty sure those animals all have four legs in real life.....if dragons existed that is... so maybe the animals in the movie that correspond to the animals in real life all have less legs than the rest of the animals in the movie

 

[Razorback0z]

Blargh, even after hearing about how it's a wonderful film that I really should see, I just can't muster any enthusiasm about it. It's like there's a switch in my brain controlling enthusiasm that the initial teaser trailer flipped to the off position.

After careful analysis, I've concluded that the reason I can't get behind this film is that I appear to be incapable of taking the blue cat people seriously and think they look ridiculous. I hate that this is a deal-breaker, but that's apparently how I'm wired.

Man your reading my mind... They are the exact reasons I am sitting here thinking "meh Im still gonna pass"

 

[Boom129]

1stly on the dances with wolves thing, watch ferngully
2ndly a much weirder "would you do it" is the character Tali from mass effect

 

[Energylegzz]

I saw this movie and I loved it But I didnt see it in 3-D

 

[funguy2121]

Oh, and what the Hell happened to James Horner? The soundtrack sounded like Hans Zimmer!

Hans Zimmer is amazing.

Dammit, you fixed the grammatical errors before I could make the funny! Bastard!

I enjoyed the background music for the last 2 Batman films, but it was just that and nothing more, completely a-thematic.

I also really liked the bad-guy tune in Broken Arrow, but that's about it. The point I was making was that Horner, along with Michael Kamen and Danny Elfman, used to write the kind of epic scores that defined 90's filmmaking the way that John Williams defined 80's movies. This kind of scoring seems to have all but disappeared, although the new Star Trek had a pretty damned good score.

Listen to Braveheart, Aliens, and/or The Wrath of Khan if you don't know what I'm talking about.

And damn you for fixing that, I had a perfectly good dumb joke for that...

 

[funguy2121]

I generally agree with Movie Bob, but this is bs. This movie is just visual masturbation, I would prefer to spend my money on a flm that actually has depth, and can immerse me.

It should have been pointed out that this movie is designed to appeal to people with a limited mental capacity.

Troll.

And yes, I am falling for your troll. I am hardly a person of "limited mental capacity" and I thoroughly enjoyed Avatar. Of course, you don't know me, and need not take my word for it that I am quite intelligent. Let me make a couple points however...

First, Roger Ebert has given Avatar 4 out of 4 stars and stated Cameron is "king of the world" again. I would like to see you call out Roger Ebert as someone of "limited mental capacity." Go ahead, try to do that. Back up your assertion with some kind of fact to that matter while you do it, though, or you just prove you're a pathetic troll.

Second, you obviously haven't seen the movie, how can you pretend to have anything of relevance to say about it? I will not ever take any criticism seriously when the individual hasn't even seen, read, or *been there* to actually know what they are talking about.

Your attempt at a jab is facile, and you should be ashamed to ever post here again.

Yeah, perhaps I did go alittle far in my condemntation, R. Ebert is certainly no brainless yokel. Had I known this prior I wouldnt have been so self righteous, but you can hardly call me a troll for simply stating my opinion. I do however, stand by the premise that the film is simply visual masturbation, had it been some unkown director without Camerons vision and cinematographic skill, I assure you the film would have been viewed as a shallow, cliched flop. The 3D certainly didnt hinder it either.

I personally lost all respect for Ebert when he gave the thumbs up to Speed II: Cruise Control and Batman and Robin. I also gained quite a bit back when he was the only reviewer I encountered who did his research on the film Funny Games and was the only person who could see that movie's weaknesses instead of cumming on himself for its strengths. I would never use the argument "critic X said the movie was really good" unless, of course, that critic were Joe Bob Briggs. That being said, it is amusing to see all these folks on here talking about how stupid the movie is when they've only seen 90 seconds of it.

 

[Therumancer]

To avoid spoilers at this point I'm pretty much just going to touch on some of what was said in the review for the most part, though there will doubtlessly be a few spoilers here but nothing major.

All told the movie is visually stunning, the action is good, but the storyline is borderline offensive. One of the reasons why I am such a jerk today is because simply put I get tired of all the white-guilt crud shoved down my throat every fifteen seconds by the media, especially when it involves historical reinventionism. I mean I'm sorry if during the age of conquest my own desendants kicked a lot of butt, and we enjoy the fruits of that labour, but I'm tired of hearing people crying about it. It seems like every Thanksgiving I have to periodically dodge huge guilt fests about our later treatment of Native Americans that oftentimes miss
"little things" like the situation with Chief Uncas (close ally, and later enemy) and indeed the entire French and Indian war.

When you get down to it, this is a message movie, and honestly we've all heard the message before. This is basically yet another rant about how the civilized world in general, should be ashamed of our success and how we've taken resources from the enviroment and how our forefathers have treated indiginous people and so on, and it does this while of course giving little time or credit to the other side, except to paint them in the worst possible light.

Basically the entire thing is like an extra-mega-long episode of captain planet. "Evil" space corperation comes in looking for this mineral that sells for a lot of money. Why it's that valuable/important to be worth all that is not covered, but apparently the military is willing to send people to massive training programs for a ridiculously hostile enviroment specifically to protect the mineral gathering operations, leading me to believe it's got to be a power source or whatever (the movie doesn't say to my memory). How many lives on how many worlds might be dependant on this mineral are not touched upon.

The idea that diplomacy has been tried beforehand and failed, is given about 15 seconds worth of lip service to justify the existance of the whole "Avatar" program.

Through the whole thing I was left feeling that the movie was suffering from being totally one sided, and ultimatly acting as an extremely one sided propaganda piece.

I don't want this to get any more detailed or involve spoilers, but I'll simply say that about the time I heard the "they killed their mother" line I pretty much got to the point where I think they took it too far.

The movie is decent, and fairly entertaining, but really I'm not sure if I'd recommend anyone go running out to see it for the eye candy alone.

I don't expect many people to actually listen to me, but people comparing this to "Dances With Wolves" is not apt really. It's more along the lines of "Ferngully: The Last Rainforest" with cutting edge animation and more action. I actually think the plotline is a little closer as well.

 

[Crabby_the_Frog]

I personally enjoyed District 9 plot-wise more, but I this is definitely my favorite film of the year. Truly epic. Just long... yeah. Long. 2 hours 40 minutes run time long. Only complaint.

Like... Dances With Wolves/The Last Samurai, but with furries. And guns. And mechs with knives. Awesome.


WATCH IT IF YOU HAVENT!

 

[Sovvolf]

Well I watched this Movie Review a little later then I usually do and mainly because I didn't want your review or any one else's to slope my judgement. You know what I'm talking about here... when a movie reviewer gives his critique even if you don't agree their is often some little nagging sound in the back of your head that's telling you others don't like it so you shouldn't... even if you don't give a shit their is still that thought... which can be a much louder and powerful nag depending on how good an arguement said reviewer put up. This works for both a good or bad review too.

Has it happens I just got back from the Cinema about 20 minutes ago from watching this movie (in full 3D courtesy of Sheffield Cinemaworld as Barnsley is the type of shitty arsed town that doesn't have a Cinema that shows 3D movies) and it was awesome, I did have the niggling Dances with Wolves or Last Samuria though which I didn't get from South Park... has I haven't watched South Park since they stopped showing it on basic TV over here in the UK. These thoughts didn't spoil my enjoyment of the film and I was more looking at it as Pocahontas but on a different planet sort of movies to which they are changes and differences here and their but the story sort of resembles it.

The movie it self was just fantastic however 3D sort of strains the eyes but I was almost glad that they didn't go all too far with the 3D like they do in most movies. See in most 3D movies the 3D is very in your face to which it looks daft in 2D, you know the scenes I'm talking about... the scenes were the Helicopters come so far out the screen you can practically touch them. No this movie doesn't go for that instead this movie opts for highlighting the basics to give it a more natural feel in 3D, such as foliage and plants. Ho don't get me wrong there's the odd eye catcher here and there however this movie seems to use 3D to add extra immersion that to grab the audience and say "Hey look at this isn't it cool"... the action scenes do that enough.

The acting in this movie is pretty impressive and this Sam Worthington fellow is beginning to show some great and impressive talent. Sigourney Weaver is top notch as with most films she does and one of the Nav'i looked to what I was sure was Wes Studi who seems the appropriate actor for this type of movie given his performance in Geronimo and ironically Dances with Wolves and to back up my point of Pocahontas I seem to remember him playing the tribal chief(Pocahontas's father) in The New World which sort of mirrors his role in this movie. I could be talking out of my arse here and it may be a different actor but it sure as hell looked like him.

Now for the juicy action. Well this movie just flows with it, and it's not that goofy sort of action like you get in most movies. Ho certainly things blow up and there's plenty of carnage but it flows well and looks to have had some thought gone into it. The action sequences have the whole slow motion jumps thing going on that you see in 300 a lot but here it feels and looks right and is shot well and well it looks pretty damn cool. The villain is also pretty neat but well... he just wont die... seriously is this guy Sean Bean or some thing, how much damage does this guy just shrug off.

Any way that's rather plain a pathetic attempt to review this movie
Summary:

Good: Good effects, good action, good acting, good story and just plainly looks beautiful.

Bad: The movie tends to drag here and there, the story is (despite being fun and well told) predictable.

9/10

 

[teacupthesauceror]

Thank you.

I was getting ready to wince at a pretentious ragging on the unoriginality of the storyline, the frogs that could never have evolved, the heavy-handedness of the message, why they didn't just ask for the "unobtanium" (you missed the one joke) or somesuch nonsense. Instead you delivered an accurate account of how brilliant this film is. Sure, the plot has been done before, although I saw the Na'vi as African tribes (bare-breasted, jungly and corn-rowed with a hunting ritual rather than plainsy and with feathers), but then I haven't grown up saturated in sagely Indians; rather the horribleness of slavery in both Roman and early modern times. The fact the Na'vi haven't invested in bikini technology was also a welcome addition to the things I was prepared to rag on but couldn't, and while enviromentalism was the order of the day, it was done so much better than in Happy Feet or the Maximum Ride books, and didn't derail the plot for rants.

The animation is, of course, gorgeous, as you pointed out, but unlike Beowulf you were drawn in to the characters rather than watching the animation, and the 3D was so subtle that if the damn glasses hadn't kept slipping I'd've forgotten it was there. Yes, the creature designs sometimes erred on the side of silly (or cool, depending on where you're sitting), but you didn't notice because you were so drawn in, and for god's sake look at giraffes. Any god that can design those things can make six-legged hammerhead dinosaurs.

But the most important thing? The cinema applauded. And this was in England, where you either have silence and decorum or yobs shouting and throwing popcorn at the screen. An applauding cinema is the hallmark of success, and Avatar is well on its way to becoming the LotR of cinema, except not overrated, because James Cameron realises that while his songs and language may be wonderful, audiences are easily bored. It can go on the shelf next to the Watchmen comic, The Hobbit and your misspent youth.

See you next time, and again, thank you.

 

[Sovvolf]

Snip

I do agree that the movie is closer to Ferngully then dances with wolves. However for the rest of your post... well me and you don't often see eye to eye let's just face that fact and this is another one of them times.

 

[teacupthesauceror]

To avoid spoilers at this point I'm pretty much just going to touch on some of what was said in the review for the most part, though there will doubtlessly be a few spoilers here but nothing major.

All told the movie is visually stunning, the action is good, but the storyline is borderline offensive. One of the reasons why I am such a jerk today is because simply put I get tired of all the white-guilt crud shoved down my throat every fifteen seconds by the media, especially when it involves historical reinventionism. I mean I'm sorry if during the age of conquest my own desendants kicked a lot of butt, and we enjoy the fruits of that labour, but I'm tired of hearing people crying about it. It seems like every Thanksgiving I have to periodically dodge huge guilt fests about our later treatment of Native Americans that oftentimes miss
"little things" like the situation with Chief Uncas (close ally, and later enemy) and indeed the entire French and Indian war.

When you get down to it, this is a message movie, and honestly we've all heard the message before. This is basically yet another rant about how the civilized world in general, should be ashamed of our success and how we've taken resources from the enviroment and how our forefathers have treated indiginous people and so on, and it does this while of course giving little time or credit to the other side, except to paint them in the worst possible light.

Basically the entire thing is like an extra-mega-long episode of captain planet. "Evil" space corperation comes in looking for this mineral that sells for a lot of money. Why it's that valuable/important to be worth all that is not covered, but apparently the military is willing to send people to massive training programs for a ridiculously hostile enviroment specifically to protect the mineral gathering operations, leading me to believe it's got to be a power source or whatever (the movie doesn't say to my memory). How many lives on how many worlds might be dependant on this mineral are not touched upon.

The idea that diplomacy has been tried beforehand and failed, is given about 15 seconds worth of lip service to justify the existance of the whole "Avatar" program.

Through the whole thing I was left feeling that the movie was suffering from being totally one sided, and ultimatly acting as an extremely one sided propaganda piece.

Yes, it's a message movie, but the message isn't in your face. Believe me, I hate the environment. I wish it would get out of my gullet. I went into the film waiting to be underwhelmed and came out applauding. There are characters, and a story and immersion here. There is also cheese, and "white guilt", and a few pieces of fridge logic, but it's more than that. It's a film, not a soapbox.


EDIT: Also a bit fat LOL at anyone on this thread trying to be too smart for the film. Yes, it is pretty, yes, even I (who can't watch any spy film or detective show because she gets lost) could predict the plot twists, yes, it was a morality play, but you weren't expecting a brilliant character study, and its strengths lie in being the best of both Disney and war films: good guys, bad guys, visual masturbation and a smile on your face.

And maybe I'm trying to be too smart for this thread, but patriotism and adherence to military brainwashing does not make a guy sympathetic. Then again, I empathise most with Alan Bennett's characters and Mulan, so who am I to judge?

EDIT II: Plus, Lord of the Rings is black and white morality (the Hobbit does grey better), and it is regarded as great literature and a great set of films, as are Die Hard, the Famous Five, and Mulan. Go figure.

 

[The Wah]

and to answer the question above "Why do all the animals have six legs except for the Na'vi?"
Thats like saying why dont humans have four legs like all the animals on Earth. They all have six legs on Pandora just like they all have four legs on Earth

well, the thing is that you're doing a 180 turn on your outlook from bad to awesome which is why it is great, but I'm only doing a 90 turn from mild interest to awesome which is not that great to me.

and for that last part: kangaroos and birds have 2 legs. Not "all the animals on Earth" have 4 legs

oh true i didnt think about them...but all we saw in the movie were horse-like things, dragon-like things, rhino-like things, and tiger-like things and im pretty sure those animals all have four legs in real life.....if dragons existed that is... so maybe the animals in the movie that correspond to the animals in real life all have less legs than the rest of the animals in the movie

All animals on earth have 4 limbs. Humans, Kangaroos, Dogs, Birds, Lizards, Fish, all of them. Hmmm, maybe I should clarify that a little more; All animals with backbones, past and present, have four limbs (that should clear up the "Octopus, Squid, Snail and Slug" Brigade). Arachnids and insects are not animals, btw.

All animals, with backbones, in the past had four limbs. The MegaFauna fossils show this, the dinosaur fossils show it as well.

All animals that we saw in Avatar, except the Na'vi, had 6 limbs. This is why I found it weird that the Na'vi didn't have the same number of limbs as the rest of the fauna on the planet. For some reason, Na'vi had 4 limbs. Maybe they didn't evolve on the planet? Maybe that is the plot-line for the inevitable sequels.

 

[teacupthesauceror]

Arachnids and insects are not animals, btw.

They sure as hell aren't plants or fungi. They aren't vertebrates, and so can't be used againt your "all animals with a backbone" whatsit, but they are animals.

The Na'vi have four limbs because four limbs are easier to animate and from an evolutionary standpoint just get in the way once you're standing upright, unless you're built like a centaur.

 

[Fire Daemon]

All animals that we saw in Avatar, except the Na'vi, had 6 limbs. This is why I found it weird that the Na'vi didn't have the same number of limbs as the rest of the fauna on the planet. For some reason, Na'vi had 4 limbs. Maybe they didn't evolve on the planet? Maybe that is the plot-line for the inevitable sequels.

According to Tvtropes on the Avatar page [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Avatar]: due to the fact that they (Na"Vi) evolved from the monkey-like Prolemuris, which has six limbs, but two arms that bifurcate into four forearms. These forearms fused into two by the time the Na'Vi had evolved, leaving them the only ones with four limbs.

Apparently the Na'Vi are highly evolved creatures, more so than humans supposedly. None of that is revealed in the movie though, so it's kind of pointless.

 

[CrispyMyth]

I personally lost all respect for Ebert when he gave the thumbs up to Speed II: Cruise Control and Batman and Robin. I also gained quite a bit back when he was the only reviewer I encountered who did his research on the film Funny Games and was the only person who could see that movie's weaknesses instead of cumming on himself for its strengths. I would never use the argument "critic X said the movie was really good" unless, of course, that critic were Joe Bob Briggs. That being said, it is amusing to see all these folks on here talking about how stupid the movie is when they've only seen 90 seconds of it.

I don't expect anyone to respect or not respect Ebert. I used him as a counterpoint to the "limited intelligence" jab is all. I think it's universally understood that Ebert is quite intelligent.

 

[GLXRBLT]

"The plot was kept so basic to not distract us from all this immersion"?????!!!!????

I laughed my ass off when I saw Avatar's trailer. If there's one thing I can't stand about movies, it's clichés. What does Avatar have that hasn't been done a billion times before? Kinda reminds me of Gears of War: compensating poor story with amazing visuals. If I don't care about the characters or their motivations, I can't give less of a shit about the rest of the whole movie.

Please, somebody tell me that Avatar has some unique twist, turn, moment, character, new idea or ANYTHING that would make me want to watch massive battle scenes again. What I've seen thus far doesn't give away any of the previously mentioned.

And before you all start ripping my post to pieces: my opinion is based entirely on what I've seen and heard about the movie, I haven't seen it.

Who died and made you the king of intellectual story-telling?

All of this raving is retarded, this movie is awesome and it is damn well more original in it's storytelling then almost everything that comes from hollywood these days, also Cameron has proven time and again that he knows what the fuck he is doing.

Best goddamn movie i've seen since the LOTR trilogy.

Everybody should stop quoting south park now and GO SEE IT because IT IS AWESOME.

Cheers.