It seems weird you’d make your fake Na’avi bodies able to reproduce. That’s attention to detail!
Every once in a while, I might hear somebody refer to a mythical, superstrong substance as unobtanium." But, yeah, other than that, I can’t recall ever hearing anyone refer to or quote anything from the movie.
And that’s not even original to the movie, but a pre-existing joke among physicists and engineers. I was modeling compound lenses made of unobtainium in undergrad (long before the movie).
Very briefly after the movie, there was a community of people who claimed they were otherkin Na’vi. But that faded pretty quick, and even at their peak, they were probably outnumbered by the self-described Jedi.
It’s a lot easier to make a copy of an existing living organism than it is to tweak that copy, by doing things like removing the ability to reproduce.
Now, making a copy of another species, that nonetheless displays the traits of a human template body, that’s tricky. But that’s where superior intelligence and technology comes in: The Na’vi were specifically designed to make that sort of thing easier. It’s never stated explicitly, but I’m pretty sure that Eywa created the Na’vi specifically for the purpose of interacting with humans, and Eywa probably anticipated that we humans would try something like the avatars.
This is easily my biggest complaint about those who complain about the movie. Many scientists and engineers I’ve known would totally actually give such a material a name like unobtanium if they discovered it. That or they’d go super nerdy and reference some comic book or science fiction novel. It’d depend on what it’s like and what it did.
Oh, sure, calling a newly-discovered wonder-material “unobtainium” is plausible. It’s just not original. You can’t criticize the movie for using that name, but you can’t praise it either.
Sure, but I’m not looking for complete originality in all things. I agree that the plot was generally an old one done many times before (which to me is not inherently a problem) that was serviceable enough to support a massive tech demo. While I’m not that surprised that the movie had little lasting influence, I found it to be a perfectly enjoyable movie for a night out. I’ve had no real desire to see it again but I plan on seeing the new one in a theater, probably sometime next week. Especially if I can pull my old 3D clip-ons for my glasses from wherever I put them.
If this turns out to be true it would make a lot of other things about the setting make sense. The movie makes it pretty clear there’s a planetary consciousness that interfaces into every plant and animal, but I hadn’t considered that it might be so powerful as to create an entire civilization. It would certainly explain why the Na’vi are so humanlike, as opposed to most other creatures on the planet with their six limbs and multiple eyes.
Just got back from a non-IMAX 3D showing.
Definitely a mixed bag. The amazing stuff is really amazing, the action is great when it gets going, but - and this is a huge but - it’s very long and it feels very long. The movie could’ve easily lost 45 minutes and been much better.
I actually liked the story in this one better than the original. But I guess that’s not saying much since the big knock against the first one was the somewhat derivative script.
The 3D was great but not mind-blowingly great (at least at my local theater; I’ll bet the IMAX version is worth it).
So: see it on the big screen if you were a fan of the original, but you can probably wait for the Blu-Ray if 3D isn’t an option.
Pandora is definitely a garish place, but once you’re in the movie you adjust easily and it’s actually pretty great. Remember that the colors are HDR in the theater, and the stills online are not (trailers too unless you have the equipment), so the movie colors aren’t reflected accurately.
Definitely this. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but there was stuff that could be greatly compacted.
I intentionally saw it in 2D and it looked amazing. And as said above, the onscreen action was outstandingly choreographed.
One more slightly negative observation: the main characters all look alike. At times it was a struggle to keep track of who was who and what they were doing.
Just got back from a Dolby 3D showing so I could see it in HFR as intended and the visual were stunning. Just incredibly gorgeous. Everything underwater was so beautiful to look at. That said, the movie did not have to be 3 hours 15 mins long. The story basically just felt like the same exact plot from the first one, just tweaked a bit. I mean,
They still have Stephen Lang as the Big Bad being as prickish as possible trying to kill Jake. Again!
If you want to it, seeing it in the best possible big screen 3D format is the only reason to do so. Waiting for it to be on Disney misses out on what is actually special about it.
Hey, so I’ll ask a spoiler question, probably from the first chunk of the movie…
Is Stephen Lang really back as the same character. If so, how? Dude died at the end of Avatar.
Is Sigourney Weavery also back as the same character? Uh, if so, how? She also died in Avatar.
I’ve read that Cameron submitted a 9-hour movie before cutting it down to 3.
Does he think everyone else is as in love with his worldbuilding as he is?
Submitted to the studio or the very first open edit of the footage that is just all the rough footage cut into a basic loose edit?
From the article I skimmed it’s the footage he wants the VFX team to work on before editing. I can’t drop a link now but I will find one when I get home.
Yep. To both questions.
For Stephen Lang, the military group conveniently has a copy of all of his memories stored on a fancy flash drive that they can put into his own Avatar!
Sigourney Weaver’s Avatar body was found to be pregnant after the end of the first film, so she comes back here playing her own daughter.
And she also appears in a brief afterlife/dream scene playing the mother AND the daughter.
I enjoyed the movie; found the first hour rather draggy but then was surprised to glance at my watch and see that two more hours had passed. Most appreciated moment: the Moby Dick homage when Bad Captain gets lashed to his boat with a harpoon line, heh heh. “On alien moon, fish plays YOU!”
By the way, I saw the 3D version and it looked cool, but having twenty minutes or so to kill before leaving the theater to catch my bus I dropped in on another screen showing the 2D version, and is it just me or did the colors show up better in 2D?
It’s been 10 years since I’ve watched a movie in 3D, but my recollection is the 3D process eats half the luminance shown, which dims the movie to the viewer. I don’t have a technical explanation handy, but it doesn’t seem unlikely to me that the colors would wash out or be otherwise inaccurate because of this dimming.