Glad you liked it! Were you holding out because you didn’t want to succumb or just hadn’t had a chance to see it until now?
I couldn’t agree more about how stunning and wonderful that movie is. I can’t begin to imagine how Cameron was able to marshal everything that was necessary in order to film it.
As far as the story goes, so what? It’s frickin’ entertainment! Not every movie has to be deep and make you think.
I saw James Cameron on Larry King’s show a couple of weeks ago and he mentioned that the movie was doing well all around the globe, that despite cultural differences people everywhere were responding to it pretty much the same. Clearly he knows how to make movies people that enjoy watching, and to me that’s enough to make the effort (and the movie) worthwhile.
I wanted to wait for the crowds to abate some (and it was still pretty crowded for a 4:20pm showing today…but I absolutely adore our little Greendale Cinemas, IN theater. Its new, modern, has a 3D projector…and its hardly ever crowded at all) but also I have been using this movie as a means of enticing my son into better behavior at school, and he didn’t accomplish that until this week, so the reward was later in coming than I had hoped. He gets really good grades but he’s struggling with following direction and listening. His mind wanders…a lot.
Anyway, yeah. I’m glad we finally went and saw it before its theater run was over. The 3D was awesome. I really like how most of the modern 3D movies are using that technology less as a vehicle for “gotcha” moments and more as a means of adding depth to the viewer’s perception of what they are watching.
I absolutely got vertigo a couple times when they were in the floating mountains, or high up in the trees to the point where I was feeling the urge to “step back from the edge” while sucking in my breath. It was really immersive. The 3D really shined in the scenes where they were in the control rooms, with all the computers, and whatnot.
I also really liked that “laptop” where the one scientist was looking at something and “grabbed” the flat computer pane off of the workstation and was carrying it around. That was a neat trick of CGI.
In short, I thought it was amazing. The funny moment while we were watching came when about 2/3rds of the way through I leaned over to my son and I said “This movie is awesome!” and he replied “Yeah…and its pretty long, too!”
How would you like to have Cameron’s resume?
“Yes, I’d like to make a movie for your studio, I’m James Cameron, perhaps you’ve heard of me…I directed the top two grossing movies of all time, and did that little Terminator deal, and…”
Bumped because I finally saw it yesterday in 3-D IMAX. I pretty much saw it for the effects and not the story. I enjoyed it but I don’t think I would’ve liked it as much if I saw it on a conventional screen or TV.
I found the scene where the Home Tree was destroyed especially chilling because it reminded me of the collapse of the WTC on 9/11. Did anybody think the same thing? (This might’ve been mentioned previously but I have not read all the entries in this thread.)
Yes, I did. With all the ash raining down and the Navi running around panicking and wailing I’d wonder how anyone could see that scene and not think it looked like 9/11.
The falling tree reminded me of the boat snapping in half in Titanic. Same pacing and reaction from the protagonists.
The way they did the smoke before the tree fell, too.
Bump just to say I was close. 
There’s still a little bit of box office trickling in (it was still in ~1700 theaters as of this past weekend) but it’s mostly run its course at a current haul of $2.63B worldwide and $731M domestic.
Of course, when DVD sales hit they’re going for a whole 'nother round - it’s going to be released in 3 stages. Heh.
$2.63b worldwide? Holy fuck! I never thought it would be that big! Earning this kind of money Cameron will probably start buying countries one after another until he is the actual, literal king of the world. 
Is there even a standard yet for 3D Blu-Ray, or are they just going to release it with the expectation that whatever format they use will become the de facto standard? With any other movie, that’d be arrogant, but Avatar just might be able to get away with it.
This settles it into 14th place on the all-time adjusted list. He and Lucas both have two films in the Top 20; Spielberg has four.
A big difference though is that as of tomorrow it’s only been out for three months!
When was Star Wars released again? Gone With The Wind?
And then you have to consider what it has to compete with now that the others didn’t: Netflix, cable TV, HD TV, DVDs, Wii, etc.
Why do you hate Avatar, Archive Guy? 
(Nevermind, you already answered that. Several times.)
Well, conversely, the other films didn’t have the advantage of opening on thousands of screens across the country simulataneously, nor benefitted from the premium pricing that 3D automatically has to inflate the numbers. And yes, it’s been out for 3 months, but a year+3 months won’t change those numbers much at all.
But I thought you’d be glad, SA, to know that there are some movies even more popular than Avatar out there.
I think they should rank movies in pre-DVD and post-DVD era. I have a projector with 92 inch screen at home. I hadn’t been in a movie theater for several years before Avatar came out. I saw it twice in Classic IMAX. I convinced my friends to drive an extra 30 minutes to see it in Classic IMAX instead of Multiplex IMAX.
I wonder how many people saw Avatar who haven’t been in a movie theater for over a year?
I’m one. I haven’t seen a movie inside a theater for the last three years or so.
I’ve seen Avatar three times in the last month.
And I’ll likely go see it again this weekend while it’s still playing, which it probably will be because it sold out three days in a row last weekend at the theater I last saw it in and the theater decided to keep it a little longer.
Didn’t they? I would have thought many more theaters existed the the thirties, forties and even up through the seventies than exist now, plus they held a lot more people. And then of course there’s the fact that the population was much lower then, and so how does that figure into it? On the one hand, movie-going was a much more standard and popular form of entertainment for the populace as a whole, but there were fewer of them. So you have fewer people but a greater percentage of them were attending movies, and in theaters with a much larger capacity in terms of seats. So how does that stack up with today’s ticket sales? And then you have to figure in that some of the movies listed have been released two or more times.
So all in all, there are just so many variables involved when you try to compare current movie sales with past movie sales that it’s virtually impossible to compare them. But the fact remains that Avatar is a fabulous and phenomenal movie (and that’s not just hyperbole; it really is a phenomenon) and it, as well as Cameron and his team, deserve every one of the accolades coming their way.
True, but then it took Cameron 2 1/2 years and who knows how many millions of dollars to create the technology it took to make the movie and to make it in 3-D. I’m sure the movie has been making a profit on the 3-D but but still I iimagine most of the extra ticket price goes to cover the cost filming in 3-D.
Maybe, maybe not. But if so I don’t care. I just enjoy it for what it is, which is an utterly extraordinary piece of film-making.
The thing about CGI is that the characters and animation have to be modeld in 3D anyway; releasing it in 2D is dumbing it down. For example, IIRC they still have the original data for the Toy Story movies and all they have to do to show it in 3D is extract the data already archived. This, I think, may be the driving force behind the present move to 3D.
Yeah, for a computer-generated movie, the only extra expense in making it 3D rather than 2D is a little more processor time to render from a different angle, and processor time is a heck of a lot cheaper than the various sorts of human artists that make a film happen.
I’ve read quite a biit about Cameron and his team having to spend 2 1/2 years tweaking the technology and 3-D cameras and so forth just in getting them to the point where they could even begin to start filming (if “filming” is the right word; was Avatar recorded on film or on discs of some sort?).
Then up to 150 manned cameras were employed to record the performance capture work, plus another 1 1/2 years of work was necessary once the acting was completed. The CGI from Weta down in New Zealand, which handled the animating for the living creatures but not Pandora itself, is said to have required over 900 people and 10,000 processors working in a facility several acres in size. I have no idea what was needed in order to create Pandora or to integrate Weta’s work with it.
That movie was a massive, massive undertaking and took 4 1/2 years to complete from start to finish. Frankly, I’m surprised they could make it for just $250 million.
Amazon is taking preorders on Avatar now. I ordered the Blu-Ray/DVD combo and I don’t even have a Blu-Ray drive yet. I figure for $8 more, it was worth it, since I’ll get a Blu-Ray drive for my computer eventually and besides at $25 is qualifies for free shipping.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_kk_1?rh=i:dvd,k:avatar&keywords=avatar&ie=UTF8&qid=1268948297