Escape to the Movies: Avatar

[darmozjad]

i think im ready to formulate my comment on the avatar movie. im disappointed. at myself catching all the pre avatar buzz. prewievs, trailers, comments somehow made me expect the development of some archetypes - burke/selfridge, ripley/augustine (yes i know this one is quite far fetched). i left the cinema with images of final fantasy/ warcraft, memories of a distant harry harrisons novel deathworld - just because the planet itself rose up against the outlanders. this impression is nothing that would add to james camerons name, beautiful enough to make someone elses name famous. thanks for reading.

 

[funguy2121]

Oh, sorry?

But you seem to really be slighting Zimmer. Gladiator, THE FREAKIN' LION KING, and pirates of hte carribean all had amazing scores.

Edit- He was also picked to do Modern Warfare 2's
EDit2- He also did The Prince of Egypt and King Arthur as well.

Those are subjective statements. PIRATES was at least more thematic, but I wouldn't declare that music awesome. And the Lion King? Yawn.

 

[funguy2121]

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.

No, it's not, even though I think he's a smart guy.

 

[teacupthesauceror]

PSA: WE KNOW ALL KNOW ABOUT FERNGULLY. THANK YOU FOR NO LONGER MENTIONING IT.

 

[O maestre]

one of the very few reviews where i have completely disagreed with movie bob, this film sucked hard, and the amount of money used to create this poorly executed film, there were so many plot holes in this film and the characters were very bland in my opinion.
and yes the visuals are amazing, but that can only hold your interest for so long, i mean after an hour there really wasn't any wow factor.

the whole metaphor for capitalist imperialism didn't take more than 20min to sink in, and worst of all not only did it persist in pressing the issue but it continuously dumbed it down.

three hours of predictable plot and bland characters that i could not even make myself care about.

 

[luckshot]

went to see this movie the other night

visuals were amazing. everything else was just meh, the sad predictability of the script and dialog had my eyes rolling out of the sockets...or there was a problem with the 3D

i was more amazed after leaving UP than i was with this, and if a movie apparently made for adults can't out do a kids movie for story/character/entertainment...

 

[Falseprophet]

I like MovieBob because we seem to be of one mind on most of the movies he reviews. This was also one of them. I wasn't enthusiastic about seeing Avatar, because it did look like "Dances With Wolves" (hadn't heard the Smurfs thing until this review), but checked it out yesterday anyway.

It was far better than I thought it would be. Bob's right: not a lot of original ideas, but executed brilliantly. The CGI is seamless, and this is the first 3D film I've seen where the 3D was consistently good throughout, instead of being used for a couple of "flying at the audience" gimmicks. And Cameron is still a better action director than most of these hacks working today. Also, big Sigourney Weaver fan and was happy to see her in the film.

There were a couple of, not quite twists, but pleasant surprises. The Na'vi are tree-hugging hippies, and that usually rubs me the wrong way, but in this story it works, because they actually neurologically interface with all the life forms on their planet. So when they're protecting their trees and livestock, they're actually protecting the library and archive of their entire history and culture. So the destruction of their hometree was the equivalent of burning down the Library of Alexandria to the Na'vi.

Also, as my friend noted, it's unusual to see Michelle Rodriguez play her usual "hardass Latina" shtick, and still come across as the softest female in the movie.

I did notice that the Na'vi have only four limbs while all other higher fauna have six; I can only assume this was done for pragmatism. It'd be harder for human actors to do motion capture for a six-limbed creature, and it'd be harder for a human audience to empathize with them.

It was better than expected, and quite frankly not much else appeals to me until Sherlock Holmes opens. But it is long. Pack a lunch.

 

[AlbinoHero]

It probably a good movie, maybe even a great one, but that doesn't fix the fact it doesn't appeal to me. The overflow of hype created on the internet and the crappy trailers made me lose any interest I might have had in it.
When the creators of something throw their product into my face yelling "You must like this because it is the best!" I take a few steps back. It's the same reason I lose interest in most American humor films because they take a fart joke and slam it into my face screaming "You must laugh because this is funny!"

 

[Sovvolf]

It probably a good movie, maybe even a great one, but that doesn't fix the fact it doesn't appeal to me. The overflow of hype created on the internet and the crappy trailers made me lose any interest I might have had in it.
When the creators of something throw their product into my face yelling "You must like this because it is the best!" I take a few steps back. It's the same reason I lose interest in most American humor films because they take a fart joke and slam it into my face screaming "You must laugh because this is funny!"

This is often a good reason why you ignore the hype. I completely blanked the hype from my mind and did watch one trailer because I know what hype can do for the perception of a movie. I watched it and for me I thought it was a great film. You may think differently but I would suggest giving the movie a chance before you make your judgements on the movie being good or bad.

 

[Nodrog]

I dunno, I'm still on the fence about this one. I mean, it could be good, but I can't shake this contrived eco-freindly vibe I'm getting from it.

Also, as a member of Deviantart, I can guarantee with some level of certainty that this shit is going to happen. A sad truth. Makes the rest of us look bad.

 

[AlbinoHero]

It probably a good movie, maybe even a great one, but that doesn't fix the fact it doesn't appeal to me. The overflow of hype created on the internet and the crappy trailers made me lose any interest I might have had in it.
When the creators of something throw their product into my face yelling "You must like this because it is the best!" I take a few steps back. It's the same reason I lose interest in most American humor films because they take a fart joke and slam it into my face screaming "You must laugh because this is funny!"

This is often a good reason why you ignore the hype. I completely blanked the hype from my mind and did watch one trailer because I know what hype can do for the perception of a movie. I watched it and for me I thought it was a great film. You may think differently but I would suggest giving the movie a chance before you make your judgements on the movie being good or bad.

I can respect that. Though I need to survive the holiday before I see it, but that's another story...

 

[mr Awsome]

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.

Well we werent talking about limbs. we were talking about legs, the limbs of propulsion.

 

[Batfred]

Good review as always and you understand your audience. 2:56, yes that's all we wanted to hear!

Thank you.

OK, I've just got back from the Cinema and everything that you said (Moviebob) was right. I SHALL rent out Drag me to Hell and I SHALL give G.I. Joe another subjective attempt. I'll even try watching Up.

 

[Cody211282]

"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.

thats the reason I wont go see it, I haven't heard a single good thing about the plot, and for as much as they spent making it the could have had a great script

 

[Flying Dagger]

i burst out laughing when they were talking about "unobtainium"
and the cat people are basicly elves crossed with night crawler, the world was made by Roger Dean, the choppers stolen from Fallout 3 and the mech suits stolen from the matrix.
and though no one probably will know what i mean, they seem to have taken a lot from the "beyond the deepwoods" book series.
hes stolen a bunch of peoples ideas, but come out with something thats very fun to watch.

oh, and it's way more brutal then a 12A rating suggests.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

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.

My family ended up going to see this as our Christmas outing: I don't take back anything I said about the trailers and how they seemed to be tailor-designed to not interest me, because that's still true - but man am I very glad they dragged me along with them because the film was in fact very good and I found it highly enjoyable.

So if the character design seems like a deal-breaker for you, go see it anyway at a matinee showing or something, the odds are good you'll have the same reaction to the film proper.