Avatar (Page 1 of 4)

WHOOOOAH!

Now thats over with.

I think it was Brian (Maybe Dorkman?) at the beginning that basically summed my Avatar experience up. It went something along the lines of, thier are people that think movies are about the experience and then there are those that need a story in order to qualify a movie. I am in  the former group, mostly, although in truth I'm probably closer to the middle. Whatever.
I've actually begun to notice this more and more in myself as of late, that I am willing to forgive a movie for a weak plot if I can enjoy and just live in the experience. Which I don't think anyone would argue this doesn't.

Would I have liked a super amazing plot? Hell yes! Do I not like the movie because I didn't get one, hell no.

Anyways, I agree with a lot of what you guys said and you kinda pulled a prequels on me, cause by the end I was sorta pinning for the movie we didn't get, but you know, thats how it goes.

Although I had to laugh at Teague pointing out the idea of Avatar being a Na'Vi propaganda. As that is essentially the idea I came up with basically in my second watching and have been talking to people about. (I coulda sworn I brought it up on here once or twice... )

And the other idea I was toying with was that Avatar is essentially a giant fairy tale. Now just listen for a sec. We have villiany villians who are villians because they are villians (Quartrich) We have the damsel in distress (Neytiri) And we have the Hero who rides in to save the day (Jake). Obviously this is an immense oversimplification, but it works. I know I am giving waaaay to much credit to Cameron on this, but fuck it, it's Cameron. What if this thing was set up like Starship Troopers, as this whole higher plane of thinking, fairy tale thing, that just no one got (Ala Troopers). Whatever, discuss.

Otherwise I still fukin love the shit outta this movie. And if the sequel is actually gonna be the whole underwater/ocean thing, I will shit my pants. (For those of you who don't know my final project for this year involves a 300ft long ocean trench dwelling whale. Soooo yah.)

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2010-05-03 05:44:22)

Right, Teague you insane, the score is fukin amazing.

And I think we can all agree that if Stephen Lang had this on hand, we would have all been better off.

Sorry for the delay everybody.

Pick up Avatar at the Down in Front store

Avatar on IMDB

As you know...

Depth of field

Character arc

Save the cat

AVTR

Fire in zero g

Thundercats fan trailer

Laz Alonso, Tsu'tey was at the Arclight with us opening night

Red Letter Media reviews Avatar

Neptune

I think most people (generalization warning!) go to movies to escape and witness beautiful and wonderful things.  The story is very simple and to a lot of people, if they completely "get" it, then it was good.

So the longest movie has the shortest notes? Interesting...

What? Not even close. Titanic is half an hour longer than Avatar.

Just finished listening. Lots of interesting info, although I still love the movie (this was a fun change given the past "Cameron rules!" episodes). Couple comments:

1) Mechs are good! And, you don't build weapons into them because the one advantage of a vehicle with hands is you can pick up new weapons quickly. Hmm, I just realized the Macross/Avatar connection, as in Macross (the first part of Robotech for some of you) the big mechas were developed because the aliens were a race of giants.

2)Why is there just one Home Tree? There isn't. There's probably one per tribe, and there's probably thousands of tribes all over the planet. It probably takes a century or three to get one big enough to actually live in, so losing yours is a big deal and maybe even ends up killing most of the tribe (how many ants survive having their anthill dug up?)

3) No comment about how the whole place seems to have been designed by someone, which either is a huge hole in the plot or will be the main plot in future movies.

Why?

No, I agree it did sound angrier and more bitter. Usually even when a movie is being trashed there's a sense of fun, and that was missing. I was even surprised when the sum up by everyone was that Avatar had reached the level of "good", as I wouldn't have guessed that after listening. It's like a review that trashes a film but still gives it three stars.

Yeah, it feels kind of weak to trash such a popular movie. Maybe instead of harping on the use of mechs, you could have tried to figure out why people loved it so much?

Oh and by the way: mechs are awesome, and I loved their use in Avatar.

And a human-colored Avatar for Quallrich is the worst idea I've ever heard.

I see no reason to spend 3 hours practicing apologetics for a movie that's made almost three billion dollars (that's worldwide, Greg). The people who like it know why they like it. We didn't, and we say why, because obviously we're the minority opinion.

And "weak to trash such a popular movie"? So if a movie is popular, we can't have/express a dissenting opinion if we don't like it? Let me go on record right now and say: that's bullshit. It would be one thing if we had no real reasons for doing so and were only dissing it to be contrary and "edgy," but I think we spend quite a bit of time articulating why this falls short in our opinions.

I'm kind of blown away by this statement.  Was it weak when WIlliam Goldman completely decimated Saving Private Ryan?  Or weak when Pauline Kael said Star Wars (the original) was like a Cracker Jack box with only prizes?  If you have never "trashed," (a weird choice of words for what was a sober critique) a movie that was otherwise popular then you simply have a pedestrian point of view.  I don't BELIEVE that that is the case so I'm going to chalk it up to a combination of a) poor choice of words and b) getting butt hurt over a movie you liked.

Last edited by Eddie (2010-05-04 06:05:21)