James Cameron's AVATAR 2 - now playing in cinema theaters

[caldwell.the.great]

Who are your trusted critics?

NONE.

[Necrometer]

Who are your trusted critics?

MANTIS

Oh fuck - looks like the movie is getting Shevil'd:
http://stopavatarmovie.blogspot.com/

[Necrometer]

the audio on this is out of this world:


you know - for kids!!!

[ungodlywarlock]

Who are your trusted critics?

MANTIS

Oh fuck - looks like the movie is getting Shevil'd:
http://stopavatarmovie.blogspot.com/

What a dumb thing to protest.

[Necrometer]

hahahaha, music video for their attempt to re-create "My Heart Will Go On"... I will not watch in the name of spoilers, but holy fuck everything about/around this movie brings the LOLs
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea ... =101404181
1:20 = viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36735

Who are your trusted critics?

MANTIS

Oh fuck - looks like the movie is getting Shevil'd:
http://stopavatarmovie.blogspot.com/

What a dumb thing to protest.

Bold statement!

[MANTIS]

review from Chud:

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

The game is not changed.

It has, however, been gussied up. The visual effects in James Cameron's Avatar are undeniably excellent, and his use of 3D truly sets the standard for the way this particular gimmick should be employed in the future. Cameron's frame is deep and textured, and the CGI characters have very expressive faces and are exceptionally detailed. Cameron has taken a step forward with CGI and motion capture, but it's simply that - a step. Not a leap. Not a revolution. A step.

This is the only advancement Cameron has made. You would think that a guy who was working on a movie for well over a decade might take some of that time to fine tune his story and characters, but it seems that Cameron only cares that his characters are three dimensional visually. And he certainly doesn't care that his story is hackneyed, corny and trite. The reason Avatar resembles so many other movies, comics and books is because it's almost completely generic, a total retread of overly familiar tropes, clad in a new digital skin.

You're not supposed to care either. You're supposed to just get swept up in the visuals and in Cameron's strong skills as a storyteller and action director and forget that what you're watching is something you've seen a hundred times before. Watching the film I got the distinct impression that Cameron wasn't homaging his influences so much as just simply swiping them; Cameron doesn't want to remind you of Dune, he just wants to rip it off.

For the first hour I was on board. Avatar jumps right to the alien planet of Pandora, home of the nine foot Na'vi and the precious metal Unobtanium (honest), and it felt like Cameron was using the familiarity of his story to his advantage, cutting through the bullshit and the set up to get to something exciting and meaty. You know the basics: crippled Marine Jake Sully comes to Pandora to participate in the Avatar program, putting his human mind into a genetically modified Na'vi body so that he can interact with the natives in an environment and atmosphere that is completely hostile to humans. At first you can forgive the laughably one-dimensional baddies like the callow bureaucrat played by Giovanni Ribisi or the verging-on-parody version of the hard-ass military man played by Stephen Lang because there's the feeling that Cameron is going big here, that these characters are just the dressing in a larger vision that uses the cliches as a springboard into something more interesting.

It's not. What you see is what you get. This becomes almost distressingly obvious as Jake begins to go native and we spend forty minutes or so watching him learn to be a Na'vi. The native race is just a science fiction spin on the Noble Savage trope, a depressingly outdated white guilt construct that's as reductive and destructive as the standard racist Backwards Savage trope. Except in James Cameron land, where nothing can be too on the nose, the connection between the Na'vi and their planet isn't metaphorical or allegorical - they actually plug their fucking hair in to the ground and commune with the Mother spirit of Pandora (and in James Cameron land things can't be too spiritual, so there's a wonky science explanation for how this works). By about an hour and forty five minutes the realization sinks in that no new ground will be broken here and that Avatar is barreling directly where you thought it might go in the opening five minutes and that Cameron's big statements are the kind that will resonate deeply with 12 year olds who recently discovered the ugly true story behind Thanksgiving.

Things get better in the last bit as the movie finally moves to action mode; Cameron stages huge pixel set pieces that are thoroughly excellent in a completely emotionally detached way. I didn't give a shit about anything I was seeing on screen beyond the simple 'That looks cool' reaction . It's like a painting of cyborg dinosaurs equipped with rocket launchers and ridden by beautiful naked women: totally fucking awesome but utterly without any deeper meaning or resonance. Except it doesn't take two plus hours to look at such a painting.

Cameron's incredibly good at what he does, and so Avatar never even approaches the level of being a bad movie. It fluctuates from being thoroughly okay to being pretty good, but the film never really comes alive in a truly engaging way. The visuals are what catch you, not the story or the characters. If the designs of Pandora's flora and fauna appeal to you then I imagine that Avatar could be a thrillingly immersive experience. The film often feels like an adaptation of a guidebook, dwelling on the details of the planet's ecosystem, much of which looks like it comes from a black light poster version of a prog album cover. There are a lot of comparisons being made between Star Wars and Avatar, every single one of which is off base, but most especially those that compare the world building of Lucas and Cameron. Lucas' world building was done in broad brush strokes, in the briefly glimpsed patrons at the Mos Eisley Cantina. Cameron's is done in nearly scientific detail. One world builder engages your imagination to fill in the blanks, making you participate in the world he made. The other makes you feel like you're getting a quiz at the end of the reel. And if you can't dig the designs, like me, you're left cold. The horses the Na'vi ride just looked like the horse Ookla the Mok rode in Thundarr the Barbarian, and the Na'vi themselves never looked anything but silly - all gangly proportions and kitten features. Your mileage obviously may vary, and at this point you've likely decided how you feel about these designs, even before walking into the theater.

The cast is capable, if hamstrung by the script. I don't understand why Sam Worthington couldn't have just played an Australian guy, since his accent is all over the place in the movie, but he has a fierceness that works well for Jake. Zoe Saldana, playing Jake's Na'vi girlfriend, does plenty of fine work through both a sheet of pixels and an incredibly silly made up accent. Stephen Lang - often looking bafflingly CGI despite being a real human being (is this a weird lighting thing, intended to reduce the Roger Rabbit-esque divide between the people and the toons?) - manages to make it through the entire movie with a straight face despite playing a guy who seems like he might literally eat nails. Seriously, this character is a complete joke, and Lang often feels like he's in on it. I wonder if Cameron is. The rest of the cast does what they can - everybody is playing eighth banana to the bugs and fungi of Pandora anyway.

Those bugs and fungi are CGI creations, and they're good ones. But they're not the mind-blowing next level. CGI has actually been pretty good with environment creation for a while, and many films use CGI invisibly to enhance environments. You can easily forget that the lush jungle forests of Pandora aren't just on a stage or shot on location but come from a processor. It's the rest of the stuff - the animals and characters and mechs - that always look like they're animated. Obviously the characters and creatures in Avatar aren't as cartoony as the leads in the Toy Story films, but it's the same principal in that you eventually forget that you're looking at animated characters not because you believe them but because you accept them in context. Actually, Avatar reminds me a lot of Wall*E, a film that had nearly photoreal environments; the big difference is that Pixar stylized the characters while Weta has attempted to make Avatar's characters as 'real' as possible. But there's never a moment when you're watching the Na'vi or the big rhino monsters or any of the other beasts where you feel like you're watching something physically real. What helps is that huge chunks of Avatar are completely animated (and by the way, let's get off the idea that mocap isn't animation. The mocap process requires tons of work from animators to create what it is that you're watching on screen. It's a disservice to skilled animators to pretend that the motions of the actors become what you see on screen without other intensive human intervention), so that aforementioned Roger Rabbit divide isn't so pronounced. In fact, humans and Na'vi so rarely share the screen that at the end of the movie I nearly forgot that the aliens are almost double our height.

The most interesting thing about Avatar is its truly radical politics, all of which comes across as grossly hypocritical. The movie - the most technologically advanced film ever made, we've been constantly reminded - romanticizes the Stone Age Na'vi; it's like Bill Gates telling you how good poverty is for the soul. But beyond that it's almost John Walker Lindh In Space; we're meant to cheer as Jake Sully doesn't just support the Na'vi but actively takes up arms against his own people and helps kill hundreds upon hundreds of them. It's as if Dances With Wolves ended with Dunbar leading the Indians at the Battle of Little Big Horn. While the film was conceived long before our current adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq Cameron makes ploddingly on the nose references to current events, having the bad humans talking about waging a 'shock and awe' campaign on the Na'vi and insisting they must fight terror with terror (despite the Na'vi engaging in no terror). Cameron's idea of subtlety seems to be having Lang play Colonel Quaritch and not Colonel George Bush. Obviously taken in the context of the time Star Wars can be viewed as a pro-North Vietnamese piece, but Lucas wisely avoided naming any characters Ho Chi Minh or having Han Solo visiting the planet Tet; what would have been an otherwise arguable subtext in Avatar is blown into full on text, although I imagine it will be largely ignored by people simply being absorbed in the visuals.

Those visuals can be overpowering in 3D, which seems to be the only way to really see this film (have any critics seen the movie in 2D, a format with which a large chunk of the audience will have to make do?). Too often what is passed off for spectacle is really just incoherent noise - I'm looking at you, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - but Avatar delivers the 3D spectacle in a major way. The vistas are huge and deep and detailed, and the action becomes more engrossing in 3D; I think you probably have some kind of neurological issue if you're trying to swat away the Pandoran flies, but if any film is going to make the argument that 3D can be used as something more than a gimmick, Cameron has delivered it. It's the 3D that had me most skeptical, and it's the technical aspect that most won me over; rarely are objects pointing out of the screen but rather the jungle is given a dimensionality that comes closest to truly replicating how our eyes see the world - certainly closer than the average 3D film, which reduces everything to flat objects at different depths within a diorama. It's the 3D that makes the film a must-see in theaters; most of Avatar's value will be utterly lost when translated to home theaters, unless you have some kind of super new TV that does cutting edge 3D (and they're coming).

For me the 3D wasn't enough. The film's not bad, and I suspect that a second viewing would reward me with some extra details (sort of a graduate level study of Pandoran ecology), but it's nothing special. As someone left cold by the film's designs there was no way in for me - the characters offer nothing to grab on to and the story is feeble - and so the film's running time was mostly spent admiring the work put into everything shown on screen. The Na'vi are laughably silly, juvenile versions of Native Americans, making Jake's journey to their side feel like the actions of a freshman who just discovered Noam Chomsky; I found that I couldn't get behind the natives or the guy who has gone native because of how simplistic they are. Strangely I was almost rooting for the evil corporate good guys because their mustache twirling evil colonialism routine is often pretty hilarious. And the love story between Jake and Saldana's Neytiri is so half-baked that it carries all the weight of the legendary romance of Twilight's Edward and Bella. From my position on the outside of this movie I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the heavy handed messages, the predictable plot points and the tiresome mysticism.

The prediction I make for Avatar is simple: this is 2009's King Kong. It's a movie that will dazzle many people, but in a little while - maybe months, maybe years - the consensus will slowly change. Distanced from that first spectacular 3D screening, people will begin to realize how hollow and stupid the story is, how there are no characters to care about and how ham-fisted Cameron is with his deep thoughts straight from the freshman dorm. Unlike Kong I suspect that Avatar will be somewhat watchable - Cameron does bloated better than Peter Jackson does - but removed from the big screen the film will lose all impact.

In the meantime I'm glad for those who were able to be swept away into the over-detailed world of Pandora. I wish I had been swept away as well, but in the end I need something more than pretty pictures to grab me.

6.5 out of 10

[RIVERPICKLE]

Who are your trusted critics?

MANTIS

Oh fuck - looks like the movie is getting Shevil'd:
http://stopavatarmovie.blogspot.com/

What a dumb thing to protest.

No shit. I fucking hate people. I wanna shit on that website and smear it around with my balls.

[Comrade Slinky]

All protests will be peaceful and non-confrontational. Suggested methods of protest:

* Stand outside of theaters with signs and pamphlets to express your views
* Sit down in theater lobbies and do not move unless the police use force or violence upon you
* Stand up during a viewing of Avatar and remain standing
* Buy tickets to Avatar in bulk but do not attend showings. An empty theater sends a message
* Bring your mate to the theater and show affection to each other.

[ungodlywarlock]

All protests will be peaceful and non-confrontational. Suggested methods of protest:

* Stand outside of theaters with signs and pamphlets to express your views
* Sit down in theater lobbies and do not move unless the police use force or violence upon you
* Stand up during a viewing of Avatar and remain standing
* Buy tickets to Avatar in bulk but do not attend showings. An empty theater sends a message
* Bring your mate to the theater and show affection to each other.

*....and while you are there, be sure to buy a LOT of popcorn and soda, but consume none of it!

[fallbacktostone]

this was one stupid movie that i managed to like a lot.

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

and it still commits just about every anthropologically lame & narrow minded sin in the book

[Necrometer]

Yeah those really weren't aliens at all, were they? It's definitely a fantasy movie. Glad you liked it

edit: can't stop thinking about the fucking fairyland this is bad

[doubleblumpkin]

I loved it. I give it a 8.5/10. Saw it in 3D, I'm glad I did because I would've wondered what it was like if I didn't. I had mediocre expectations for it and was just blown away. They did a really good job of making me forget that I was watching some dopey looking blue aliens...

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

except for the love scene, I was very aware that I was watching two gumby smurfs make out

Really good job of genre bending. It morphed sci-fi, fantasy, war, animation, and action all into one and made it extremely cohesive. It had it's eye rolling cheese moments, but I was really expecting a lot more than there was. I want to go see it again this weekend in 2D.

[delmuerte]

So, like...total fucking shock. I really dug it. I didn't think the story was so horrible. It's kinda generic, but whatever, it's not really the story you're going to see. I saw it in 3D (my first 3D movie ever) and that was also awesome. I did notice a number of kinda funny inconsistencies, like...

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

how were the humans able to communicate with their avatars in the flux zone? And where did the scientist avatar that wasn't Sigourney Weaver or Sully get a gun from?

but it was overall very entertaining. Also, it was hilarious that the big mechbot thingies had huge, oversized knives and guns with saw blades on them.

Fuck. I think I wanna see it again.

[Dr Yail Bloor]

So, like...total fucking shock. I really dug it. I didn't think the story was so horrible. It's kinda generic, but whatever, it's not really the story you're going to see. I saw it in 3D (my first 3D movie ever) and that was also awesome. I did notice a number of kinda funny inconsistencies, like...

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

how were the humans able to communicate with their avatars in the flux zone? And where did the scientist avatar that wasn't Sigourney Weaver or Sully get a gun from?

but it was overall very entertaining. Also, it was hilarious that the big mechbot thingies had huge, oversized knives and guns with saw blades on them.

Fuck. I think I wanna see it again.

wouldnt he have got the gun from michelle rodriguez' character? thats what i thought anyway

[Sineadrepresent]

There was next to nothing redeeming about this movie. I recognize that some steps have been made in the use of CG, but it really wasn't even anywhere in the vague vicinity of all that everyone's making it out to be. A few steps in the right direction on technical level is no excuse for remaking The Last Samurai.

It was nowhere near being the technical marvel everyone claims it is and that, unless you're a really big purveyor of "Civilized White-man sides with the noble savages to save their home and proud way of life from the clutches from the evils of capitalism and industry" films, was the only reason to pay admission. At least Dances with wolves had Graham Greene.

They should have had Paul Riser reprise his role from Aliens instead of hiring Giovanni Robissi, that kid pisses me off.

As a technical demo it was alright, as a film it was toss.

[Necrometer]

There was next to nothing redeeming about this movie. I recognize that some steps have been made in the use of CG, but it really wasn't even anywhere in the vague vicinity of all that everyone's making it out to be. A few steps in the right direction on technical level is no excuse for remaking The Last Samurai.

A jungle that feels living, populated with characters that can emote with 90+% the range/power humans can... and all of it was fake - that's a big leap. If it never "clicked" past the suspension of disbelief for you and felt Star-Wars-new-prequely then I understand your unimpressedness. I also get it if you discount it because of the plastic sheen over everything. What do you think holds the current greatest achievement in this realm of special effects if not this, or what do you think is the runner up? I was just shocked at the way they brought it all together so seamlessly. All the things you see, that is.

[delmuerte]

I will openly admit that there was a lot of time in the movie where I couldn't tell if it was CG or real. Reading that the movie was 60% CG and 40% real was kind of a shock. I woulda thought it might have been the other way around, at least.

[Necrometer]

That 60%/40% split is 99% certainly bullshit. The only stuff that was "real" was the humans and the indoors. Everything outside was fake, all vehicles were fake, etc.

[kelly]

Plenty of inconsistencies, plenty of cheesy parts, but overall very enjoyable and I loved it. I only saw it in the regular theater but I think I'll go back and watch the 3D version. It is definitely a must see in theaters flick.

[guardianoftheblind]

Why 'Avatar' didn't change anything for gamers

http://www.destructoid.com/why-avatar-d ... 8534.phtml



"If you're like me, you probably saw James Cameron's Avatar over the weekend. If you're really, really like me, you didn't find it particularly impressive. You may have found James Cameron's bazillion-dollar opus boring not because of the cliched plot, or the needless narration, or the uninteresting characters, or the pretty-good-but-not-as-great-as-the-idiots-with-Comic-Con-press-badges-said-it-was CGI, but because of one fairly simple fact:

Avatar wanted to do things videogames are already better at.

At E3, one of the film's producers briefly explained the plot to a group of journalists. He used phrases like, "transport the audience into an alien world," and "let the audience explore locations they'd never dreamed of" in "a world that feels more real than anything you've ever seen in movies before."

Fine. Cool. A wonderful goal to aspire to. But also a completely redundant one to anyone who has spent the last decade playing videogames.

Hit the jump to see why Avatar hasn't shown gamers anything they haven't already experienced in a more effective, immersive, and exciting way.

erere

Games, by their very nature, are about exploration. Even in the most linear of linear experiences, there is still some room for the player to feel their way through things, to figure out what the game is capable of. Call of Duty may only allow one way through every single level, but the player is still allowed (and arguably, encouraged) to spend as much time as they want simply drinking in the details of the world, figuring out ideal fighting strategies, and generally dicking around to their heart's content.

The very nature of the medium allows, and implicitly encourages this sort of behavior; there's seldom any punishment for standing around and ignoring the main plot of Modern Warfare for a few minutes because you want to check out the brickwork on the enemy base you've just shot to shit. All the little appliances in the Black Mesa research facility exist solely for the player to play around with: hey, the soda machine actually dispenses soda! Hey, I just destroyed Dr. Magnusson's casserole! Though one could reasonably argue that allowing the player the freedom to dick around and ignore the main plot of linear games undermines dramatic tension (imagine staring at a soda machine for the entirety of "No Russian"), the fact remains that concepts like exploration and self-mandated pacing and just plain dickin' around are well-suited to games.

Movies, less so.

James Cameron wanted us to feel like we were on Pandora; that, 3D IMAX goggles or not, we were just as immersed in a world of funny-looking plants and blue giants as Jake Sully and the other characters who didn't matter enough for me to remember their names. As someone who plays a lot of games, I found myself incapable of experiencing the degree of immersion Cameron wanted me to feel. Immersion isn't just about seeing a bunch of cool stuff and feeling that the world is believable; it's about feeling that you are a meaningful part of that world, even if you're not able to change the world on a fundamental level.

ere

My experience of viewing Avatar felt like an implicit conversation between James Cameron and myself. I get halfway through the movie and Cameron yells, "Here! Look at these floating mountains! Isn't that shit fucking cash?"

"Yeah," I respond. "Can I spend some time around here? Hang out and get a closer look at them?"

"Nope!"

"But I wanted to explore--"

"SHUT UP AND WATCH JAKE SULLY HAVE PG-13 SEX WITH THIS BLUE CHICK"

And then the conversation ends because in my mind he's playing air guitar and has begun to ignore me.

Of course, this isn't James Cameron's fault – the demands of narrative film in general forbid the audience from ever truly exploring or examining anything at their own pace. In film, audience is subservient to the director; he shows us what he wants us to see, and decides how long we can look at it, before we're tossed along to the next scene. The very nature of immersion and exploration runs counter to these demands.

Even if a hypothetical Avatar game (I haven't played the actual game yet) consisted of nothing but a bunch of pretty, contiugous locations that I could walk through at my own pace, it'd still be more immersive than Cameron's flick.

In games, the player is more important than the creator (even if the creator doesn't want to admit it). Within twenty minutes of booting up The Saboteur, I can look out onto the Paris skyline, see a monument I want to check out, sprint there, and climb on it/shoot at it/blow it up at my leisure. My ability to pace my own experience -- to decide that, actually, I won't check out the Eiffel Tower until much later because I wanna hang out on the Champs-Elysee and stab Nazis for a few hours – is one of those things that make games such a unique, beautiful medium.

Even as flawed as a game like The Saboteur is, James Cameron will never, ever be able to make a film that surpassses its immersive qualities. Ever. All the Na'vi and Marines and lush, CG landscapes in the world simply cannot compete with allowing your audience the simple ability to move around in your world at their own pace, unrestrained by the demands of narrative pacing.

Of course, that argument inexorably leads into an indictment of the current direction games are heading in – that, say, more and more games are seeking to replicate the linear thrills of movies rather than utilizing our medium's unique strengths. If movies shouldn't try to ape techniques games can already do much better, one could reasonably argue, games should probably stop aping movies for a little while if only so we can see what our medium is truly, individually capable of. Great power, great responsbility, etcetera. I'll beat that drum until a game comes along that convinces everyone else of what Spelunky and Far Cry 2 already revealed to me, and roughly six other people.

But seeing as it's Christmas -- otherwise known as the time when you're supposed to be less of an unbearable shit than you usually are -- I won't say another word about that. Instead, I'll end with this: I'm incredibly happy (and terrified, and angry, and demanding, but mostly happy because it's Christmas) that games can do things that even one of the best directors in the world, with a near-unlimited budget, cannot ever hope to emulate.

Avatar can go fuck itself."

not that i totally agree with everything he's saying, but still:

why the FUCK do people care about this movie? it still hasn't clicked with me

[Necrometer]

Gamers... ugh. I'm not sure if there's anything worse than "gamer journalism" - an industry of total morons who get lots of attention because their audience (gamers) are by definition people with too much time on their hands. I thought the movie had plenty of exploration, and more contemplative moments than might be expected. Author can't grasp the concept that movies are not choose-your-own-adventure yet? Fuck him. Andrew if anyone would like the movie, I think you would. Only one way to find out...

That 60%/40% split is 99% certainly bullshit. The only stuff that was "real" was the humans and the indoors. Everything outside was fake, all vehicles were fake, etc.

Can you promise that next year you'll pick a better movie to defend with your life?

TRON 2? Hopefully you'll enjoy it more! Was that post really a defense? Different people certainly see it different ways... I am totally fine with people thinking it's shitty and gay. I really hope I didn't mislead anyone into seeing it. Friends?

[Foot Foot]

http://www.destructoid.com/why-avatar-d ... 8534.phtml

that article seriously made me do this;



"Video Games are Better than Movies" for 15 paragraphs. thrilling stuff.

[guardianoftheblind]

maybe i can get him to post here...

[Foot Foot]

maybe i can get him to post here...

we already have a Skyclad.

[Necrometer]

hehehe

skyclad