Agree. It’s a stepping stone, and a very good one.
This movie is not a generation-shift, like someone mentioned above. It pushed some boundaries, blazed some new trails, but more often took the familiar road.
That said, I freakin’ loved it. Loooooooved it. Holy crap, the hawk monster bonding thing is so awesome. The heli-plane things were slick. The big bad marine badass guy was so badass! He was ON FIRE for a good 15 seconds before he even bothered to glance at flames and angrily brush them out. When he stormed out of the building without his mask and shot the shit out of the heli-plane thing, I actually wanted to cheer for him, and he’s the fucking BADGUY!
Weaver’s character was really annoying, but her death scene was very good. “I see her! She’s real!” tugged my heartstrings. Didn’t care about the chief dying. Didn’t care about the angry alpha-male competitor-turned-ally guy dying. Didn’t care for the love story. Hated the jealous overzealous fuckup scientist guy. The final battle was a bit annoying. Those arrows didn’t penetrate the heli-plane windows the first time, so why do they penetrate now? We’ve seen the “goodguys get overwhelmed and seemingly lose the battle just before a massive unstoppable force of allies arrives to save the day” conclusion a million jillion bazillion times, most recently with the lame-ass invincible undead spirit army in Return of the King. If you have an invincible undead spirit army, why the fuck should we even bother to watch? We already know who’s going to win, and how. Where’s the conflict in utter, complete and irresistible annihilation without the possibility of even resisting?
Anyway, for all my criticism, I loved this movie (like I said before). I was completely blown away, and I think it’s not going overboard to say that this is the type of movie science fiction/fantasy flicks want to be. I’m sure it will stay massively popular for awhile.
Because they were making diving attacks, adding the speed of their mounts to the speed of their arrows, and they were also firing at right angles to the glass, making their shots less likely to just glance off the sloped surface.
This was my reasoning. She seemed to be assigned to them as “their” pilot.
Also, just want to say, I thought she was way hot. Rodriguez should only and always wear tank tops.
if you start poking holes in the plot there won’t be a movie left.
That was her assignment in the movie.
Yes, all of that. And when the tribe’s best warrior swooped into the plane with his hawk-thing, jumped off and and just started hurling bad guys off the ledge and annihilating everything in sight, I thought, ‘‘Jesus, that’s ballsy. And awesome!’’ Too bad it cost him his life… but what a way to go!
I agree with all that but the sad thing is, they weren’t really bad guys, they were just grunts following orders. They had to die because some assholes were greedy and cocky. I felt bad for all the regulars who were killed, almost as much as I felt bad for the Na’vi who were killed.
The only truly bad guys were $cienoBoy and Badass.
Then you saw a different movie than I.
Jees louise, it’s a fictional MOVIE. There were no heroes, nobody died, there were no greedy assholes raping Mother [del]Earth[/del] Pandora’s unobtainium cherry.
Fair enough, sure, but it’s not like the movie lingered on Trudy’s death or showed the other characters’ reactions to her death. You can assume they mourned Trudy after the battle was over, just as you can assume they mourned Tall Guy or Warrior Guy (I know I should look up names, sorry) but they didn’t show those scenes. Grace’s was the one individual death the movie lingered on, as is right. They lingered on Neytiri’s father too but that was more of a plot point to show Jake being rejected by Neytiri to send him to his lowest point. Not that it wasn’t affecting. I teared up, especially the 2nd time I saw the film, because of Neytiri’s reaction to his death. I tend to do that, feel worse and be more affected by the survivors’ grief than an actual death. So, I didn’t cry for Trudy. Her quick death was worth a “Damn, I was hoping she’d get out of there and survive” but not tears because no one was shown mourning her death, but I cried for Neytiri’s father, because of her reaction, and because I cared for Neytiri.
That was a bit convoluted but I hope it made sense.
Anyway, I think you’re focusing on Trudy’s death for some reason and I’m a bit baffled.
Edit to add, on preview, Magiver, are you ok? What’s your problem?
Welcome to Earth. We make things called movies, which are made for many reasons, but among them are entertaining people and creating an emotional experience.
Please take this knowledge back to your people and in return give us your superior 3d technical understanding.
Should I tell the adults or just the script writers?
Saw it on Christmas Eve and loved it. I loved how I never felt the transition from live to cgi land - it just felt like one movie. The effects were fantastic yet subtle.
The plot was a B - recognizable, plenty of Tropes, you knew where most of it was going. Nothing wrong with it, and I liked it enough.
My only REAL contribution to this thread - Pandora made me think of Alan Dean Foster’s Midworld. Midworld - Wikipedia
The natives (multi-generational human survivors of a spaceship crash) of Midworld live in a huge tree that helps sustain them. They bond to a local critter. When humans arrive, they initially help - but the humans are too stupid to safely travel in the jungle. The humans don’t recognize the importance of the jungle, and how dangerous it is. The humans want to harvest the soul tree, instead of unobtanium is all. The protagonist leads the local creatures to help destroy the human outpost.
I’m late to the party, and I haven’t read the rest of the thread yet (not wanting my impressions to be coloured by whatever debates already held) so forgive me if I’m repetitive of what others have said.
I loved the use of the 3d technology, the world was wonderfully immersive, but it was too long. One “swooping over vast panorama” scene is awesome, two is great, three is good …
The plot? Well, I’ll say this for it - I was cheering during the movie itself, but even as I cheered for the heros I knew it was cringe-worthy. Eeevil corporation versus noble savages, crass racist miners versus beautiful spiritual forest. “Shock and awe”. It’s like watching the original Star Wars in the '70s and having Darth Vader remove his mask only to find out he’s Richard Nixon.
The lamest cop-out though was the fact that the human hero can, through the planet network, become his Avatar. It’s as if the director detected the only hint of ambiguity and complexity in his plot and deliberately and with malice aforethought set out to murder it.
That being said, I still thought the ride was worth it. Only, it won’t have much re-watch value.
What the director clearly set out to do was to create a movie that was a visual feast worth going out to the movie theatres for rather than renting. In that, I think he really succeeded. People will go see it and be entertained. It will not however be a truly classic movie.
It does open the door to filming other science fiction plots using the tech. Personally, I’d like to see Harry Harrison’s Deathworld done using the same technology; for one, it lacks the groan-worthy cardboard heros and baddies; for another, it would just be hugely awesome to watch.
For me, that’s not true at all. I’ve seen it twice and I’m itching to see it again. The first time was to see it, and see and judge it in 3D, the 2nd time was to see it and judge it in 2D and to catch some details I missed the first time. The 3rd time will be to see and judge the IMAX 3D, besides just to go back and re-immerse myself into the world of Pandora.
And as far as I’m concerned, there never can be too many swooping over vast panorama scenes. I want more!
Just saw the thing yesterday. Basically I agree with the consensus. The plot was hokey and derivative, but the visuals more than compensated. My favorite bits were the times between his being chased over a cliff by the armored panther and the destruction of the giant tree. Maybe I’m getting older but I find scenes of pointless battles where a lot of good people die to be more sad than exciting. I thought the scenes where he was learning to fly the banshees were alone completely worth the ticket price. As with Titanic the attention to detail was breathtaking. It’s too bad it was all in service of such a hackneyed story. I re-wrote the plot twice in my head while I was watching it. Still It was quite something on the screen. I may see it again, since it would be pointless on my tiny home system.
I just saw it tonight. The 8:15 pm show with 3D was jammed, which is amazing.
I’ve only read a few pages but agree with the general gist, which was that the 3d was great, the CGI was convincing, but the plot I’ve seen before. I read LeGuin’s “The Word for World is Forest” a long time ago, but this was a lot like what I remember of that - good forest people and bad earth people.
Best line “I should take samples.” Funniest scene - the dinos charging, which reminded me of the stock footage of elephants charging which was used in Duck Soup, among other places.
I don’t know but I had to fight off the urge to lean over to my wife and go “eggs and bakey”.
Beefs:
The hammerhead rhinos. The hammerhead is so ridiculously huge that there’s no way the animal should be able to stay upright.
The six-legged beasts. There should have been some sort of evolutionary advantage demonstrated but instead it just seemed weird-looking for the sake of being weird-looking.
The seemingly perpetual waterfalls on the floating mountains. Ok, supposedly the superconducting nature of unobtainium allows for the floating mountains. Different planet, I can buy that, but where does this supply of water come from?
“Unobtanium”? I thought the term was used jokingly by the corporate hack but became annoyed like others when it was supposed to be the real thing.
The sex. I thought there was going to be some sort of intertwining of fiber optic hair thingies leading to mind-blowing 3D ecstasy (or at least a hint thereof) but instead it was the standard fare.
Modeling the NaVi after the plains Indian horse culture right down to war-whoops and bows and arrows especially in the battle scene at the end. That kind of took the picture into the realm of the absurd.
The gung-ho military-speak. Either by Sully or the Colonel. Although I suppose it’s interesting that The Wizard of Oz was referenced in the 22nd century.
Likes:
Pandora and the quality of the CGI and motion-capture. Just incredible.
Sully the human as a paraplegic. I thought it was touching how the Avatar released him from that. My sister was paraplegic, and I thought they did it well.
I thought the guy-scientist Avatar who expressed jealousy at Sully’s initial success with the NaVi might have sided with the military/corporation against Sully but they steered away from that, which was good.
Neytiri. I just liked her, that’s all. Especially her first contact with Sully.
The 3D. My first 3D movie, so I thought it was pretty cool, once I got used to wearing two pairs of glasses. I REALLY want to see it in Imax. It was sold out so we went to the regular 3D.
The first 3/4 of the movie.
The experience had a lot of staying power. It wasn’t like I saw the movie, did something else and had to remind myself I saw it. It was kind of weird driving home, like my mind was in some sort of 3D movie hangover.
The most plausible explanation I’ve heard is that unobtanium is some form of high-temperature superconductor, which is used back on earth to build fusion power plants, superconducting power lines, maglev trains, and other such things a world with a high energy consumption needs. Large amounts of superconducting material is the only plausible way I know to explain mysteriously floating rocks, and would also help explain the massive magnetic fields that were supposed to be screwing up communication and guidance systems. It’s also likely that the unobtanium deposit being right under Home Tree was no coincidence - the global communications network built into the trees may have required the unobtanium to work. It’s even possible that the unobtanium was being created by something in the ecosystem deliberately.
For me the biggest implausibility is why the unobtanium can’t be made artificially. There aren’t going to be any basic elements on Pandora that can’t be found elsewhere in worlds that don’t have angry natives living on them. Determining the atomic structure of even a complex biologically created material isn’t particularly hard for us even today. You would think that given the technology and power sources implied in the movie it should be possible to determine what the stuff is and make it artificially. Even if it’s the product of some Pandoran life form, the humans in Avatar have obviously figured out how to manipulate Pandoran biology well enough to grow entire organisms. It’s part of what I didn’t like about the movie - the world was amazing and beautiful, but the plot felt very forced.
I just recalled a nice, subtle detail- Jake’s thin, bare legs in several scenes. It was not overly on the nose, and it was very well done. I am inclined to believe that it was an effect of some sort rather than committed method effort by the actor, and given that, it was very impressive. Has anyone heard anything about this small detail? Did they handle this like Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump?