I heard 2 Wilhelm screams the first time I saw it. I wasn’t paying attention the 2nd or 3rd times. One is when they’re just about ready to drop the explosives on the Tree of Souls, but Jake’s bomb makes the shuttle tilt backwards so the first pallet of explosives slides back and crashes into the 2nd pallet. Too bad for the guy in between the pallets who lets out a Wilhelm. I forget where I heard the other one, but I specifically noted on my first viewing “Ha, there’s the Wilhelm” and then later “Wow, they used it AGAIN??”
For some reason, the thought that Cameron spent all that money on high-tech effects, and still used the Wilhelm scream is cracking my sh!t up. 
Avatar just surpassed Titanic for highest grossing movie ever on the day that I saw it (Sunday).
I haven’t read all 19 pages of this thread, so apologies if I’m rehashing others’ opinions.
This movie honestly made me feel like a kid again. I still get kinda giddy thinking about it. About halfway through the movie, the 3D started looking natural to me, like every movie I’m seen was that way. Beautiful visuals and sound sucked you in and wouldn’t let you go. I don’t think I blinked for two and a half hours. Enough has been said about the graphics and cinematography that anything I could offer would be a repeat of a repeat.
The plot was merely passable, yes. There are a lot of fair comparisons out there to Dances With Wolves, and rightly so. We’ve gone through the whole white-man-joins-a-tribe-of-savages-falls-in-love-and-leads-them-in-an-attack-against-his-own-culture. It’s not a bad story, but given the sheer amount of energy poured into the production of this movie, you’d think they would’ve added a little more spice. One film director (Duncan Jones) asked, “…At what point in the film did you have any doubt what was going to happen next?” and for the most part, he was right. Jake was a little too successful in his endeavors. Not enough bad things happened to him.
In a more positive aspect, James Cameron had his Na’vi play both sides of the field: They were xenophobic toward Terrans trying to relocate them from their home, yet they loved and trusted Dr. Augustine. Cultural relationships do blur the friend/foe line, and Cameron thought his audience smart enough to accept that. I disagree with the notion I read (I’ll look for a cite if asked) that some feel the Terrans were portrayed as one-dimensional capitalistic warmongers. Col. Quaritch and Parker Selfridge (the fast-talking corporate brains behind the Pandoran mining expedition) may have been, but I think the average schmoes serving on Pandora were there because they didn’t really have any other options. Earth in 2154 is not much better than Earth in 2010, according to Cameron.
I look forward to the sequels Cameron revealed he intends to make. Pandora is way too big to be contained in one movie.
Well, to a degree. Remember, they stopped going to her school, and she was never even allowed near Home Tree until Sully interceded on her behalf.
So why didn’t Sully try and warn the natives ahead of time? Why didn’t Grace? They knew Sully was working with the mercs.
Okay, of course I know that. What I mean is that if one treats this world as if it were a real place, there isn’t anything in that ecosystem that would account for the discrepancy, which ONLY leaves your (meta)explanation – and that pinged my waitaminute meter.
I finally saw it in 3D Sunday and have been reading this thread ever since. I went expecting exactly what I got: and amazing visual treat with a very basic storyline. I loved it and would like to see it again.
After reading all 19 pages of this thread, I’m surprised nobody mentioned that the plot is similar to Dances with Wolves
I wasn’t bothered by the use of the word unobtainum. I’m a chemist, and if i ever get to name an element I’m gonna call it unobtanium. I wasn’t bothered by any of the other things people mentioned here, either. I just went along for the ride and loved it.
The only thing that did bother me is the same as in Starship Troopers: Why, after mastering insterstellar travel, are humans still shooting bullets with firearms. Really? We haven’t invented an energy weapon or at least a railgun in the next 140 years?
Bullet-throwers are handy, reliable, mature technology that get the job done. I actually tend to appreciate sci-fi that keeps the tried and true and practical instead of trying to shove gee-whiz tech into everything.
Apparently, there are railguns back on Earth (or “ferro-magnetic weapons”). I don’t have a cite, it’s just taken from TVTropes’ Just Bugs Me page. The prime reason the corporation uses conventional weaponry on Pandora is cost efficiency, including the ability to manufacture their arms on-site.
There’s no reason to assume that the weaponry on Avatar was in any way up-to-date - in fact, those flyers and battlesuits are probably the equivalent of Bell Hueys and M113 APCs; leftover stuff from two wars ago. Why bring anything more advanced against guys with bows and arrows?
Stephen Lang needs to stop leading those charges.
I see what you are saying but I don’t agree. I think a more apt analogy would be sending our modern soldiers into battle with muzzleloaders. I understand the guys in Avatar were mercenaries not soldiers but I can’t believe they would be stuck with 140 year old technology.
Still, it’s a minor annoyance. I loved the film.
Weren’t muzzleloaders in use for over 400 years?
Some of the guns we issue our soldiers today are over a century old in design. There’s only so much you can do to perfect a slugthrower.
This is the thing about this movie and the discussions it has inspired- though this could be considered “fanwankery”, it is a logical leap that is in no way inconsistent with what we were presented- the simple nature of the script and the lack of exploration of circumstances and technology allows for some thoughtful development that makes the whole piece deeper. I tend to think that Cameron will not have a “Star Wars Prequel” experience with these movies, intentionally or not he has left himself plenty of room for a thoughtful deepening of the universe from the first movie, and inclusion of some of the more interesting ideas from his initial scriptment.
If it was me, I’d just say that the current state-of-the-art for directed energy weapons, coilguns and the like uses unobtainium for the power systems. A high-temperature superconductor seems like just the thing to jump-start energy weapon development.
I’d also point to Firefly as precedent. The Alliance had a lot of high-tech weaponry, including stun guns that knocked people out but caused no property damage as well as highly destructive laser weapons that could destroy buildings. Yet out in the frontier worlds, you were more likely to find good old reliable, cheap slugthrowers than any of that fancy stuff. The fancy stuff was reserved for the government and the rich.
Here’s a photo from a scene that was cut out of the movie. It would seem, and I haven’t read the script/missing scene treatment, that the two guys who told Jake about his brother found him in the gutter after a bar fight. It makes sense that it was cut. While it does give Jake a bit more backstory, especially with regard to his bitterness and bad attitude, it’s unnecessary and it’s too similar to the bar fight scene in Star Trek.
Plus, pre-production is supposedly already beginning on the first sequel.
Check out the Avatar Legos down the page. Ha! I hate to admit it, but I kinda want some of those. 2, 6 and 10 especially. Look at the brain in the jar in 11!
Saw it last night, and pretty much agree with Sam Stone’s assessment. And I’ll point out re: contrast/brightness etc that the polarizing lenses in the 3D glasses eat about 1EV worth of light, which is absolutely going to have an impact on dynamic range.
I mean, burning the guy up in a cardboard coffin? Jakes brother was a Ph.D.-that cremation looked like a charity disposal!
Plus, it was so “un-green”! At least the Na’vi planted their corpses near tree roots.