Avatar (movie)

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I know I was joking sorry if I upset you. It was a joke.

Oh I see

I absolutely love it. I have seen it 3 times now, and every time I almost cried and had tears in my eyes. - And I'm not the sentimental type on usual films, Titanic did nothing for me, bored me like heck. There is some more interesting discussion of the film here:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt114921.html

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/forbes- ... -king.html



Interesting article about Avatar enjoy FANATICS!

I saw many new films released last year and can easily say Avatar was one of the worst new films I saw in 2009. A highly derivative, poorly written, cloyingly sentimental, ploddingly paced film with terrible art direction that makes one think someone vomited primary coloured Crayolas onto celluloid.

District 9 had a similar premise to Avatar and cost far less to produce, had far less hype and was by far the better film.

While some of your sentiment is rather harsh, I agree that District 9 was a better film. It had a better sense of...realism. Not in terms of technology and that, but character interaction.

Look, I know it is hard for me to say that, not having watched both, but I have researched Avatar (including an official screenplay posted online by FOX), I have seen enough and read enough of it, and I have watched District 9.

I disagree about the art direction of Avatar, however. How then, I would suggest, that you portray an alien world? Quarries and deserts only go so far. Although Avatar was on a larger scale, it has at least one serious competitor. The jungle of Zeta Minor in Doctor Who: Planet of Evil was an excellent one. Actually, Planet of Evil has a broadly similar plot to Avatar...

Tell me if this sounds familiar: a dying civilisation makes an expedition to a distant world to mine material that will help revitalise civilisation. However, this planet has a weird jungle, weird beings, and itself is alive. Not only that, but one of the members of the expedition is, well, you could say going native. And the military aren't being helpful to those who wish to resolve the situation...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UUfBi5exow[/youtube]

Of course, Planet of Evil pinched from Forbidden Planet and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but still...

Actually, later, I might list, just for fun, how many Doctor Who and Blake's 7 episodes have similar plots to Avatar. Just for fun, you understand. Not to piss off the Avatar fans, but actually more to introduce them to other science-fiction.

I prefer realism in my science fiction. That was my biggest obstacle in trying to like Avatar, and one that I never overcame. There are far too many contrivances in the plot and basic premise, gaping holes in the 'science' giving the film more of a fantasy genre feel, and too much artificial looking visuals. I wouldn't have minded Avatar being a fantasy if that's what it was supposed to be, but clearly it was meant to be science fiction, with poorly explained 'science' often being described where perhaps it would've been best left up to the imagination.

I felt the film looked like a Pixar film but with live action actors superimposed on top. I don't know why people rave on about how good it looks. I think the creators would've made a more interesting and more believable world had they used actual locations, only using CGI to create the alien flora and fauna rather than using it to create entire landscapes. Everything in Avatar looks too clean and polished, more like the 2009 Star Trek than the realistic settings of say, District 9 or Battlestar Galactica.

To me it just looks like a videogame cutscene by Blizzard or Square-Enix, except someone put in live action actors in over the top and tried to make it not look like they weren't crudely photoshopped into the scene. This is most apparent in the action scenes where I never felt like the actors and their CGI opponents were on the same page, figuratively.

Battlestar Galactica, realistic? Seriously...

Watch Blake's 7. The sets may be clean, but the storylines would be more of your go. Dark and dirty.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, Doctor Who and Blake's 7 serials like Avatar...

The first example off the ranks is Doctor Who: Kinda.
Natives of a jungle planet with an innate connection between themselves and nature being exploited by humans, and seen as primitives when really they are intelligent and advanced? Check.
Mentally unstable military types who want to kill the surrounding jungle with fire? Check.
A sympathetic female scientist character? Check.
Powered armour? Check.
Female native shaman? Check.
An influence from an offworlder to the natives that drives them to war? Check.

Of course, Avatar didn't have:
What is effectively mental rape (against the Doctor's companion Tegan )
An evil alien force that takes people over (like the Mara)
A non-violent ending (the Mara is killed with mirrors. Mirrors!)

I'll be back with more examples, unless told to stop.

God darn it! How I *HATE* Switzerland!! !
District 9 NEVER came to cinemas in Switzerland!!
Either that or it was never advertised and ran so short that I missed it!


HOW do they suppose to make money with a film, no matter how good it is, if they don't show it?

I watched District 9 a few weeks ago on DVD and really really liked it. I sure hope there's a sequel in...oh...say...3 years?

Although I enjoy a lot of science fiction, I tend to want the "fiction" to be good and I'm definitely more forgiving of slip-ups on the science side of it than I am of lousy character development. I love Battlestar Galactica because of the stellar character development. My background is in the medical sciences, so I only get REALLY annoyed with medical-oriented story lines, because they seldom are well-researched or accurate.

I agree that Avatar was a little lacking in some areas, but it was enjoyable. Some people go into movies wanting to nitpick, others go in wanting to have a good time. I wanted to have a good time, and I certainly did. A lot of posters are acting like they expected Avatar to be perfect, and I feel like that's silly.

Oh well...you can't make everybody happy.

Well, thats showbiz.

I disagree that it's silly to apply expectations to a film, especially one as heavily hyped as this one.

Avatar was made with a budget in the ballpark of $300 million, spent more than ten years in development, and was headed by an acclaimed director; there is no excuse for the pedestrian plot, uninteresting characters, or the various cinema clichés throughout the movie (slow motion stopped being cool years ago). It didn't need to be perfect, but it should have been much better than it was. As it stands now, it's a fairly monumental underachievement. I think the only things that saved it from abject mediocrity were the visual effects, which are nearly flawless, and the reasonably imaginative art direction.

The 3d presentation was nothing but a gimmick for this film. I found that the technical limitations of the technology (especially double-image problems when dealing with objects that are very "close" to the viewer, and objects with a large amount of motion- or depth-of-field blurring) meant that it detracted from the experience more than it added; I also noticed that in many portions of the film the environments were simply too large for the 3d effect to even be noticeable (in some of the floating mountain sequences, I was able to take off the 3d glasses and watch without noticing any sort of double image).

I disagree. Rather, it is the oversaturation of films with slow-motion and bullet time that I detest, rather than its continued presence.

On Avatar: I recently downloaded three video clips from IGN onto my computer. Two of them were the trailers, and the third was an excerpt from the sequence where Jake Sully is being chased by the Thanator, which, for those of you not acquainted with the film, is basically a six-legged reptilian puma about the size of a small bus.

After scrutinising the trailers and the Thanator sequence, I cannot say I see any truly significant difference between the Na'vi, and CG human-like characters (like Gollum, Davy Jones, Dr Manhattan) that have gone before. The facial expressions in some cases seem quite better, and that may be due to that special facial capture system that James Cameron put in. Personally, although I think Gollum broke the ground first, Davy Jones was by far the most realistic looking of all CG human-like characters I have seen to date.

Just in case the Avatar fans are interested, there is this image from Wikipedia that shows both Zoe Saldana and her CGI alter-ego of Neytiri side by side. Note the dots on Saldana's face, and the little camera in front.



Personally, I would want to see how they did it on the special features of the DVD. I'm more interested in the technical aspects, having grown up devouring the details of how they created special effects for Doctor Who, and later, for other TV shows and movies.

I've never seen it.

excuse=having to make enough money to cover the $300+ million

It needed to appeal to "yer average Um-ericun"...otherwise it wouldn't have made enough money. That's showbiz...keyword "biz".

That oversaturation has unfortunately rendered even tasteful and appropriate use of slow motion obnoxiously cliché. I think it would be a good idea for filmmakers to forgo using it for a while so that the novelty and interest can return.



I think the Na'vi were probably the best organic CG characters I've seen, but you are correct, they are evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and about what I'd expect at this point in time from a film of this pedigree. The facial motion capture is not anything new, it was simply used in a more sophisticated and extensive fashion here.



Honestly, for most of the effects, you can probably get a good idea of how they were made in Avatar by watching the making-of for just about any recent CGI-heavy flick. The techniques are pretty standard across the board. I think the only really new thing here might be the stereoscopic camera rig they used for the live-action plates.