Haven’t had the chance to read the entire thread yet but I will.
In short I enjoyed the movie (having waited for years for a new James Cameron sci-fi film) though I thought it did drag in places and I found the overblown and ecological anti-humanity preaching a bit irritating.
And ‘Fight terror with terror’ and ‘shock and awe’…come on…
I did think, and would have preferred, that they were building up to having the female attack-helicopter pilot do a suicide run on the bomber to take it out at the last moment while Jake Sully took out the command ship and commander.
Though one thing did take me out of the story and that’s the floating mountains, the film was really far more of a fantasy movie than sci-fi, did they give any psuedo-scientific explanation for them?
It was very Alienesque in places and I wonder was it set in the same story-universe? I don’t really see why it couldn’t be.
Edited to add that I don’t know why Jake thought he’d won, he’d bought a respite and nothing more, was I the only one to think, “Nuke the entire site from orbit, its the only way to be sure”
My fanwank for this is because Unobtainium is a powerful superconductor, it might take only a bit of electricity/magnetism and a bit of unobtainium and maybe some supporting roots to make the island float.
This is total bullshit. Star Wars had a complex and intricate plot that was executed poorly. This is an internet meme that seems to be gaining currency but is completely baseless.
The story of two sleeper agents (R2D2 and Chewbacca) working with two hidden priests (Obe Wan and Yoda) trying not to be caught by the forces of the Emperor and Shogun (Palpatine and Vader) in order to form a resistance that can ultimately restore a Democratic Republic from the clutches of despotism, is hardly a plot devoid of intellectual substance.
I’m really beginning to doubt people’s ability to appraise Science Fiction based on this thread.
Star Wars is one of the most epic in scope and subtle stories that has been created in the past several decades. If you guys think it was a silly swashbuckler you really didn’t pay much attention to what you were watching.
That’s fine, but at $20 million a kilo I would think that accessing a huge new deposit would defalte the price tremendously. That is why I think if they were really smart they would make sure nobody else could have access to it and would keep it in the gorund. I mean the stuff could not possibly be $20 million a kilo if there was a lot of it around.
You don’t know what demand is like. Maybe people would absolutely love to do things that unobtainium is crucial for, therefore supply is only a fraction of demand so even if they disassembled the entire moon of Pandora they would barely touch the demand.
You can’t seriously argue that there’s anything in the diegesis of Star Wars (1977) that is substantially more original or complicated than that of Avatar (2009.)
Star Wars was a straightforward pastiche of story elements from Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress, The Wizard of Oz, and Dambusters, tied together with a little jazz from Joseph Campbell’s popular mythology, and effectively sold through a rock-solid aesthetic and spectacular film-making tech. It all added up to a huge “Wow!” for folks looking up at that screen.
I could bore the tits right off you enumerating the details of Star Wars. It is many Grand Things, with feet in several different nerddoms – and it is also a silly swashbuckler. This is why it is sublime.
Avatar’s comparisons with Star Wars are natural and inevitable.
You still don’t get it. Mining and storing more unobtainium cannot adversely affect demand, because nobody outside the corporation will ever know the difference. Besides which, mining a huge new deposit doesn’t force them to mine more - the can just choose not to mine two smaller deposits to compensate, saving a whole lot of money while still getting the same amount of unobtainium.
Evil military leaders are unbelievable in a fantasy movie, but believable in real life? I don’t follow military leaders, evil or not, but I’d think a list could be made of military men going above and beyond the call of duty to wipe out natives. I’m not the one to make such a list, but some names come to mind. Custer? Genghis Khan? Alexander the “Great”?
Originality is meaningless in terms of judging film. But Star Wars has an incredibly intricate plot if you follow it from the beginning to end. Basically think of R2D2 as the protagonist next time you watch it and it will make a lot more sense.
Yes, and all of those movies were inspired by other stories that the filmmakers had read or seen or whatever.
Of course, but Avatar’s plot is far less sophisticated than Star Wars. We’ll see what’s revealed in the future.
Well, just got back from a screening (Real 3D/digital projection) and although it set a personal record for how much I’ve spent on a single film ticket (14 bucks), I felt I got my money’s worth. As no doubt dozens have said already, the depth, level of detail, and photorealistic imagery and movement puts this way ahead of just about any CGI-heavy film I can think of.
As has sometimes been the case with films by Cameron, the behavior of some of the actors is childish in its simplicity, and the whole ‘noble savage’ thing is older than dirt, but that really didn’t put me off much. The floating mountains were a bit much; apparently in addition to unobtanium, Pandora also has quite a lot of upsidaisium.
Just after I got home I called up a friend on another subject and got to talking about the film. He told me about an acquaintance of his who went to see it the other night, and got up and left about an hour in. Why? Can’t stand Sam Worthington, apparently.
As for me, I’m very excited, because at last the technology exists to do justice to one of Iain M. Banks’ novels on film. Consider Phlebas or Feersum Endjinn next, please.
I knew that a lot of people like it, and for me it is a visual master-piece, but it left me unmoved. (The most moving movie I had watched the whole of this year is Wally. Was it this year?)
The reason, is, well my suspension of disbelief is very hard to invoke at times. I was wondering why on earth do they need the Avatar at the beginning. Is it to disguise themselves as one of the natives to steal important information? Infiltrate somewhere? Unfortunately, watching the movie, it seems the only thing is to…eh…uh, not to wear a rebreather mask.
The story could use a little depth. I was waiting for Jake to make a choice between recovering his legs and having a new found freedom on an alien world, and to dwell more into the dream/reality aspect. I think the whole premise is good, has potential, but it is a waste that it is used for a “Indians with flying horse” movie.
Maybe the audience in the US could relate to it because that was a part of their history. Me, not so much.
You guys seem to be overlooking one very important detail. We have no way of knowing how much $20M is in this world 250 years in the future where interstellar travel is apparently somewhat routine. Unobtainium is obviously very valuable and rare, but the supposition that the giant reserve under Hometree would undermine the current market is a stretch.
If I found a hunk of gold the size of the Sears Tower in my parents back yard it wouldn’t cripple the gold market to the point that I’d be foolish to sell it.
What do you mean “desperate to get it right then”? They RDA had been working with the Na’vi for years in an attempt to come to a diplomatic solution. What we saw was simply a snapshot of the eventual straw that breaks the camels back. There’s no reason to think that there was any pressing urgency beyond the need of the RDA to eventually turn a profit.
It’s never more profitable to ignore a resource than it is to exploit it. That defies any and all logic. Don’t you think that the RDA ran the numbers and did the cost-benefit analysis on mining the reserves there before committing to that huge installation and staffing? If mining those reserves was unwise financially they’d have never even gotten a mining crew there let alone a mercenary army.
In this effort to nitpick the movie you’ve completely diverged from any realistic rationale. You argument doesn’t even pass the most basic of sniff tests.
Well, for one thing, I think the original idea was that the locals might be less hostile to persons who look and act more like themselves, than the puny humans. Granted, that hadn’t seemed to work very well until Worthington’s character came along. Secondly, it was clearly stated several times that Worthington was getting information, by being inducted as one of the Na’vi, that would have been extremely difficult to gain otherwise, both scientific and tactical. Would the scientific or military factions have given him as much autonomy as he seemed to have? Probably not, but I still thought that whole aspect of the film was reasonably well thought out. Well, except, maybe, as someone mentioned, for the mysterious disappearance of most of the other avatars shown near the beginning.
For a few thousands of dollars Cameron could have bought the rights to any of countless great sci-fi short stories with original, thoughtful and/or moving plots.
