that’s not an accurate statement. He was one of 3 people responsible for the screenplay along with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.
I don’t understand why Cameron would intentionally insult the people he made this movie with and how you know that he did .
Ok, well, see the movie and don’t aggregate the comments in this thread, thx.
I don’t understand how you’re intending the term “non-existent” so as to make this statement meaningful.
I mean, I get (and agree) that the plot of Avatar is less complicated or involved than, say, the plot of Oliver Twist or Cloud Atlas. So if by “non-existent” you mean “simpler than many other plots”, then your statement makes sense. But that’s a far cry from the usual interpretation of “non-existent”.
Obviously, the movie Avatar does in fact have a plot. Specific events happen in it with characters in specific situations, and those events form a narrative about those characters. If you don’t remember the details that plot from seeing the movie 13 years ago, you can look up one of the many summaries of it.
As for the thinness or otherwise of the plot of the second Avatar movie, as I said, I found it hard to tell because there is so much unresolved stuff that seems to be meant for subsequent movies in the series to address.
OK, I thought it was an obvious emotional exaggeration but yes yet it had some kind of plot. To call it thin doesn’t adequately describe the childish nature of it.
I don’t understand why the creator of “Titanic” would willfully FUBAR the plots of the Avatar series.
Just saw it last night. Is there a word that means “both amazing and awful”?
I mean, I’d heard the plot was thin, but this could have been done in a couple of 45-minute episodes. Instead, we get three-plus hours and it doesn’t even have a proper ending!
The main conflict and setup are just stupid. Sully knows the humans can wipe out the Navi’i, so he runs away? And, instead of just imposing their will and taking over the parts of the planet they need through sheer might, the humans send their valuable avatars and a shit-ton of other resources on a personal vengeance mission with no strategic value?
And the last hour especially is so bankrupt of ideas that kids-being-tied-to-the-rail-of-a-sinking-ship gets used twice, and one of the kids even complains about it. It felt like the ending of Blazing Saddles, with the characters crashing through walls into the sets of Titanic, The Abyss and even the non-Cameron Poseiden Adventure. Only it wasn’t supposed to be funny.
And was I the only one reminded of Spongebob’s friend Sandy the Squirrel by Spider?
All that said, it was a pretty amazing experience for the visuals and sound. I suppose I just wasn’t stoned enough to enjoy those without rolling my eyes at the plot and the dialogue throughout.
As I sat there watching it, the plot was familiar to me as a typical James Cameron movie: a close-knit group tries to avoid fighting the Big Bad, only to be forced to do so in the end. Everything is done with broad strokes, the dialogue serviceable (and sometimes, sometimes, memorable), and it all goes to what Cameron wants to do with this movie…
Let’s do an exercise- what is one or two words which describe a directors oeuvre? Perhaps not every film, but enough of them…
Spielberg- Sentimental, nostalgic
Scorcese- Moralistic
Tarantino- Structured
Lucas- Bloated (sorry)
Malick- Philosophical
Cameron? His goal is to overwhelm, to immerse. He doesn’t want to make a thematically complicated movie because that would reduce the immersion aspect to which he is trying to achieve. He doesn’t want you guessing who the bad guy is, he doesn’t want you asking “what did he say?”, he just wants to create the most overwhelming experience he can for his audience.
And I’m fine with that. I walked into this film knowing exactly what I would get, and I got it. And all because I know who Cameron is and what he wants to achieve.
And I’m going to say one other thing: as a lover of space operas as a literary genre, I am thrilled that at least ONE person is able to make a space opera out of original IP and not yet another rewarmed, rewritten, remake of something I fell in love with when I was ten. Avatar might be as poorly plotted as a 1942-era John Campbell toss-off, but that doesn’t mean I will treasure it any less.
You have admitted you have not seen this film, and even admitted that you are merely regurgitating selected opinions of others in this thread.
So, I guess… why? Why openly argue from a position of admitted ignorance, and why should we care about what you’re saying if you’re just repeating what we have already said?
Nobody has given the film any credit for having a good plot. So it’s a sampling of people who LIKED the movie and not a hit piece of ignorance.
My input has generated others to weigh in on the issue of the plot. It serves as a precursor for others who are going to see it. Lower your expectations of a plot and enjoy the CG imagery.
nm Discourse
Actually, I did. I thought the plot was fine (though maladroitly handled in its details at times, e.g. the ending.)
OK, I stand corrected. I took that as a “meh” and not a thumbs up.
I lol’d at this.
I saw it. I was weary of the movie long before it reached the end. Yes, the message is 99% of humans are terrible, I get it. Bluntly hammering that message home 157 times eventually causes it to lose emotional impact and it just becomes boring. Also, I don’t like movies with kids repeatedly in peril. I work with kids who often come from (and may be likely to return to) crappy circumstances. I don’t find it entertaining.
Oh, it was pretty and I liked the fishies.
And the not-whales and not-sharks.
@ $1.7 billion worldwide, including over $500m from the US, $2 billion is all but assured:
Should become a profitable film venture any day now.
I was surprised by how bad the story was. I mean, “it looks pretty, but the story is weak” was what we all said about the first film, but I think the sequel is significantly worse than that.
First the positive, as many have said: it’s a beautiful film, and often feels hyper-real. I saw it in 2D, yet it really seemed to pop out the screen a lot. And all the weird alien creatures seemed real and solid, and fit fine with the human actors.
Secondly, the main, and obvious, negative: it’s too long. There’s just so much that could have been cut, and action sequences are ridiculously long. It seems they started with a plan of making a 3-hour movie, then struggled to fill it.
Finally the negatives about the story (spoilers)
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The contrivances to set up a plot the same as the first movie are pathetic. The colonel, who died in the first film, is back, because they made a navi of him that we’ve never seen before. And the colonel even saved a message telling that navi to avenge his death. I think that was the “buckle up” moment for me.
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Leading on from the previous point: a lot of the character motivations don’t make sense. e.g. you get the colonel referring to sully as a “half-breed” but…you’re a navi with the memories of a human, dude. Are you not just the same kind of mix as Sully? And doesn’t the fact that you have a navi body now change anything about your views?
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One of the things you’re left wondering after the first film is how humans will approach future conflict(s) differently, and with different tech. The answer is: not at all. e.g. They’re still in planes where the pilots can be killed with arrows.
(yes, they have submarines too, but in terms of the battle theatres that we’re familiar with, it’s same tech, same tactics). -
The plot of Sully being in hiding, and the humans needing to get him, I don’t get. Either Jake is leading the resistance, or he isn’t.
If his plan is: “let the humans do what they want with impunity, so that I can hide”, then hasn’t he already lost?
And are 100% of the humans following sully to the beach now? Are we supposed to assume that the jungle is just fine now, in sully’s absence? -
As long as the film is, it goes from point A to point A. If you think about where the story was left at the end of the first film, well, it’s the same at the end of the second film. Possibly backwards even, as the colonel is, essentially, alive.
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Lots of other things. I had a long list as I left the theatre, but it seems I’ve forgotten a lot of the issues now. Which also says a lot.
Saw it on Sunday. Looked great, but none of the main action drivers made sense.
- Why is Pandora the best place to move humans? It is poisonous and occupied.
- Why don’t they care about the magic metal anymore?
- Why didn’t the wildlife attack the Marine avatars? They attacked Jake, and they attacked regular Na’vi in the first movie.
- Why did the Sully family run? If they thought Spider would sell them out, they were either leaving all the rest of the tribe to die, or they could have moved to a different floating island with the whole tribe. The bird analogues would still attack the ships as they came in. The avarines may have been able to raid after they learned to fly the birds, but they would have been overwhelmed by the Na’vi if they tried anything significant.
- Why did the humans care that the Sully family ran? Why open a new front in the conflict instead of concentrating on eliminating the resistance?
- Why were they still harvesting the immortality juice? Unlike an exotic element, they should have been able to synthesis it. Either way, it would destroy the human society. Either it would be affordable to all, and (assuming humans avoided ecological collapse) the youth would rise up and kill the older generations, or it would be hoarded by the rich and the poor would try to topple them.
Ah yes, that was one of the plot flaws that I forgot just now.
Strange that this got through. A lot of the point of the original movie was about how hostile the environment was, and Jake Sully being “like child” and needing not to trigger such threats.
But…on googling, I was reminded that at the end of the first movie the wildlife all rose up to fight the human invaders apparently in response to Jake praying to a deity for help.
So in the second movie…the fauna remain under the control of the deity?
Yeah, at best, it’s unclear.