Saw it once. I don’t remember if it was in 3D.
Didn’t like it.
Still don’t.
Not just a movie screen and not just a IMAX screen. See it on Classic IMAX screen.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/05/thats_not_the_imax_i_grew_up_w.html
If you get vertigo during the flying scenes then that’s immersive.
Now that I’ve seen it I can definitively say that having a giant knife on the robot walker thing was indeed incredibly stupid.
Those things are called AMP suits, and we figured that perhaps the knife ordinarily functioned as a machete of sorts when the guys in the AMP suits were out working in the jungles of Pandora.
Yep, that explanation is part of why it’s so stupid. There is nothing a machete can cut that the walker couldn’t just brush away with its mecha strength.
Oh, I don’t know. I would think it would be better to cut foliage away and toss it aside rather than leaving crushed and torn crap everywhere that the human guys (they weren’t all in AMP suits, remember?) would have to slog through and perhaps trip over.
ETA: And it occurs to me that they might be inteneded as close combat weapons if attacked by those big dinosaur-type things.
Indeed. Or shooting arrows at gunships, and other steel-clad weapons of destruction. Although some did go through the glass and kill a driver or two.
Omniscient, please read my posts again. The first section you quoted is right in your post, and you still misquoted it. I said **ALMOST **universal agreement. YOU took that to mean universal agreement.
You are reading emotionally, which doesn’t permit you to read for comprehension. I understand. But that was an easy one.
I also say in my posts that I wonder if seeing it on the big screen or 3-D instead of on a TV for the first time would make a difference. I obviously can’t compare, since I didn’t see it in a theater, but others had.
I admit that I never finished reading the first thread, which was started right after its release and was a drooling fanfest. Which is fine, by the way. But I don’t recall that many dissenters in that thread, although I do remember a few.
Finally, thinking I wouldn’t change my mind if I saw it in 3-D or on the big screen doesn’t make me closed minded. I just know me. I don’t care for 3-D as a general rule, so I wouldn’t be crazy about seeing it in 3-D in the first place. On the big screen without 3D? Since I wasn’t crazy about the 2D version I saw on the small screen, I doubt I’d go and see it on the big screen.
You all better now?
I’m not criticizing your tastes. I just don’t watch movies for the visual effects. I’d prefer cheesy FX and a good story. I am biased though, I used to work in the computer animation biz, and all the artifacts stick out like a sore thumb. It’s easier for me to suspend disbelief when the there’s no pretense of realism. But if you liked it, great. And millions agree with you. So the producers knew what they were doing.
Perhaps movie making is like sausage making - you don’t want to know how it’s done. 
Reread the thread and count the number of distinct posters who agree with you versus the ones who say that seeing in the theater in 3D is the key. If you think that a lazy qualifier completely changes the meaning of your comment to reflect reality then obviously you can’t be trifled with details.
This explanation is also chock full of stupid. Any area a walker busted through would be plenty easy for a tiny human to get through afterward. Hacking stuff with a knife tends to leave it in place, just laying on the ground. By contrast, ripping it aside with a mecha hand gets it out of the way for everybody.
Based on its shape it was clearly intended to be used as a weapon, not clearing brush. And that is the stupidest thing of all. It’s even stupider if it was for fighting the fauna on that planet, which had hide so thick they were infazed by assault rifles.
Quite true. Once you see the man behind the curtain, the magic goes away. Tell me how the new Tron turns out. I was the model for Kevin Flynn. And if you squint, in a dark, smoky, room, from a distance, I still look a little like Jeff Bridges.
Allow me an attempt to fanwank.
The AMP suits were not purpose built. They are powered suits intended to extend the ability of the user to go people-like things. The hands, arms and legs all mirror the movement of the pilot. The pilot could be a miner, a warrior, a construction worker or a ballet dancer. As such, all the tools that the AMP suit wields are going to be oversized variations of human scaled tools. As you see the “gun” the AMP suits use isn’t mounted, it’s held like any other gun. As such it can be dropped and a backup weapon is logical, hence the knife. It simply mirrors the way a normal soldier would be outfitted.
In reality most modern day soldiers in real life carry boot knives that they almost never use for combat. In WWII with the unreliability of firearms and the close combat in the cities they go used, in the expanse of the desserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan they are glorified can openers. The same logic could apply to the AMP suits. They carry them because soldiers like to carry them and they might come in handy if a soldier needs to pry apart a door or open a giant can of grub.
I imagine the miners used AMP suits to repair the various tanks and dozers they used and probably had a pick axe and a giant wrench in that holster where the knife was.
Cool. I saw the original Tron in a theater at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. Went to see it with a friend who worked there. The facility was as much fun as the movie.
It seems to me that people continuing to slam the movie are just upset and possibly threatened by the very concept of a movie designed from the start to be a big screen 3d spectacle.
Clearly the focus of the movie was to build the world and let the audience experience it. Arguably, a more complex or surprising story would have just subtracted from this. The actual story was Dances With Wolves, sure, but that makes it easy to just experience the world.
Imagine a devious, twisty murder mystery set on Pandora instead. Doesn’t the story take away from the pure experience of being on Pandora?
It isn’t like Avatar is one of my favorite movies, but I did enjoy it (3d in theater) and I came away believing that “world-building spectacle” is a viable movie genre. The main issue here is that some people don’t want to accept that kind of movie.
The painful truth for Avatar-bashers is that the vast, vast majority of movies (including Avatar and almost everything else) have underwhelming stories, but very few provide a compelling experience of a created world.
Did I stumble on a fan boy?
I’m not counting posts. The general theme of this thread has been that it’s not as universally loved as I thought. Almost is not a lazy qualifier. It is a qualifier. Just because it makes you wrong doesn’t make it lazy. It makes you sad. And wrong. I stand by my post. You do the counting.
I’ve also conceded that it may be more enjoyable in a 3D theater. That doesn’t change the fact that the majority of posters in this thread thought it was over-rated, disappointing, etc. Get over yourself. :rolleyes:
It also doesn’t change that it’s a meaningless metric.
All movies create their own world, some try to mimic an existing milieu, some historical ones, some purely imagined worlds and others any number of combinations (of all) of them. It’s true that an intricate story isn’t a necessary prerequisite for everyone in the audience to enjoy a compelling experience – neither are CGI or 3d.
The question is always the same: Is the movie capable of making you accept the deceit? Undoubtedly, Avatar has found a large audience that answered with a “yes”. That turned it into a successful movie.
Why this specific fantasy found so many who were willing to join it, while others stayed disengaged, is quite interesting and, imo, not sufficiently answered at all by technology.
Avatar looked amazing, outstanding, breathtaking, incredible, etc in 3D. Most people aren’t arguing that. But the actual story was definitely lacking, and if the movie had been released purely in 2D as a Sci Fi Action-Adventure Movie then I don’t think it would be nearly as well regarded by so many people as it currently is.
Saw it in 3d in a cinema, effects were excellent, the story pathetic and predictable.
It would be nice if they used the same amount of resources used for that movie to make something with some adult writing.