It was a very impressive technical achievement, but for the story itself you’re better off watching the five or six better movies Avatar stole ideas from.
Saw it in 3D theaters twice and own the 2D Blu-ray, have watched it a couple times and watched all the Special Features a few times. I think the Rotten Tomatoes assessment hits it about right: 83% Thumbs Up. Visually stunning and then some, decent story overall, above average romance, pretty cool action and below-average acting/character potrayal (with the exception of Zoe Saldana, who I thought was excellent for a blue cat). I liked the whole American native motif/a living, breathing earth (planet) philosophy. As has been mentioned, subtlety is not Cameron’s strong point. But everyone seems like to bash Avatar for that, but hail Star Wars like it’s something amazing. Go figure. (Full disclosure: I thought Titanic was outstanding.)
Why would someone who has no desire to see the move give a crap about what others thought? Never mind, no need to answer.
It was a beautiful film. I’m glad I went and saw it in 3D. The plot was pedestrian and the message was ham-fisted, but it was nice eye candy.
What Susan said, pure fluff, but fun
The story did a very good job at what it set out to be, which was a framework to hang the pretty effects onto. No, it wouldn’t be a very interesting story if you tried to tell it without the visuals… Which would be a fair criticism if Cameron had tried to do that, but he didn’t.
Seems a pretty solid consensus.
I thought it was spectacular and terrible.
The plot was entirely predictable. I had the entire outcome pegged 30 minutes in. There was not even a single twist.
The motion capture effects and believability of the creatures was truly amazing though.
I hated this movie, total waste of time and money.
Every time I put forth this opinion some knuckle-head pipes up, “But did you see it in 3D!?” Look, crap in 3D is still crap.
I’ve also never seen it. I heard so much about it at the time that it made me not really interested in seeing it. At this point I have no plans to watch it.
Oh, now…“The Abyss” isn’t the canyon on the ocean floor. It’s the space between the two leads.
And I think the stuff in Terminator 2 about Linda Hamilton discovering she’s BECOME a Terminator and lost her humanity, meanwhile the real Terminator (Ah-nuld version) is showing more humanity than her is fairly interesting.
Eye candy is a perfect way to describe it.
I’ve seen it twice, both on TV. It’s long. The acting is nothing to write home about. But it is visually stunning.
Eeye candy, yes. I saw it in 3D in theaters and when it ended, I walked back home feeling disorientated, I had truly felt immersed in another world for a couple hours. So wonderful visuals.
Never seen it, no desire to see it.
Anything that gets so hammered with advertising immediately makes me not want to see it. It was almost every single time I turned on the tv, listened to the radio, damned popups pop unders autoplay vids online … something is shoved down my damned throat, I refuse to see. Also refuse to see Titanic and Moulin Rouge as well. Nope, just not going to fucking do it.
It’s the only movie I’ve ever seen that I would honestly say it’s good in the theaters, but not on the small screen. The story is basic, the acting competent - both not bad, but not good either. The visuals are tremendous, however, and the movie well worth seeing - but only on the big screen.
Saw it in the theatre in 3-D. Agreed with most of the previous posters: Absolutely fantastic use of 3D, showing what the possibilities of the technology are, and showing how great 3-D can be when used well.
However, the frame where the visuals were hung was VERY lacking, in my opinion. Ham-fisted message is ham-fisted, and that kind of delivery will hurt the message itself (even if it is considered to be worthwhile). Also, the acting was not really good.
I saw it, was happy I got to see really well done (and really well used) 3-D in a film that also showed off fantastic world design… But I won’t watch it again. The story is not that interesting to me.
(Somebody told me a nickname for this movie: “Dances with Smurfs”, which I must confess made me laugh perhaps more than was warranted. Also, am I the only one to think that, given that humans are presented as a bunch of bastards in that movie’s universe, the next move on the part of Earth will be to return in 50 years or so with their whole fleet, nuke Pandora from orbit until every single living thing on its surface is exterminated, and strip-mine the place for “unobtainium” to their heart’s content?).
Evil white men/humans invade brown people/noble savages/aliens home and rape/kill/steal anything of value and then move on to their next conquest without remorse. The end.
It was a really pretty movie though!
I partially forgive you Mr. Cameron only because Aliens is one of my favorite movies.
Most of what I’ve wanted to say (but got to the thread too late) has been said. I generally don’t pile on if my point has already been stated, but this kind of thread is an indication of how many people feel a given way, so here goes:
1.) Cameron has been and can be a superb filmmaker, in all senses. It’s impressive to be able to helm a science fiction film, and to convince the powers that be to let you make it, and to get the funding, to get a decent story, ac decent script, good actors, state-of-the-art special effects, and to put it all together. To make the dialogue believable and the characterization good, to be aware of what’s been done in science fiction and refer to it as needed, to not lose the audience in needless technical stuff or fanwanking or handwaving – all of that is a gift. Cameron blew me away with The Terminator, and cemented it with Aliens. terminator 2 was that rare thing, a sequel that stands up to the first. The Abyss was too damned long (but excellent in many ways). I didn’t care for true Lies at all, but, despite the mawky sentimentalization, I liked Titanic (which is really about the love affair between Cameron and the doomed ocean liner – forget about Leo and Kate).
2.) so, knowing what I do about Cameron and his strengths, I was hoping for great things fro his return to science fiction.
3.) Even before I stepped into the theater, from what I saw in trailers and read about the film made it sound like Ferngully for Adults. But I wanted to give him a shot.
4.) The visuals and the world-building (in its fullest sense, the Earth people as well as the Na’avi, the technology and Pandora) was really well done. the visualization of alien biology (based on sea life, the six-legged framework) was well thought out.
5.) And the film was conceived as 3D and executed with an eye to exploiting that feature throughout – a detail that usually gets lost or ignored in discussions of the film. I’ve always felt that 3D ought to be a real feature of the movies, and properly used – something that hasn’t always happened. but Cameron’s film isn’t a gimmick-fest.
6.) But that said, the plot really WAS Ferngully For Adults. No doubts about it. You can call it Dances with Smurfs or Smurf Kitty Princess or whatever, it fits. And the problem with a film that you can learn so much about from this kind of terse capsule description is that it’s not really telling you anything new. If you can almost write the dialogue as you’re watching it, what’s the point? If the moral of the story is clear before you even walk in (Techno bullies shouldn’t ruthlessly exploit noble savages just because they can), what have you learned? And it really doesn’t help that it’s a message that has been told a zillion times (And continues to be ignored)
7.) Because of the above, I haven’t seen Avatar more than once. I don’t own a copy on DVD. Even though I’d probably enjoy the Roger Dean-esque imagery*, the imagery and the superb CGI aren’t enough to make me sit through that story again.
*Dean has taken Cameron to court over this. I could see the similarity immediately. I think Dean has a stronger case than Harlan Ellison, who I think wasn’t as right as he thought he was. Roger Dean (artist) - Wikipedia
This one time, I didn’t watch a popular tv show (Game of Thrones, to be specific). I didn’t make a forum thread about it, though, because it was such a nonissue.
I’ve never seen it, either. The first time I saw a preview for it, I actually thought it was a joke. Some sort of fake, bad on purpose, movie within a movie type of thing.
I’ve never seen an episode of Lost, Game of Thrones or The Wire and have no intention of doing so anytime soon. Somebody tell me at length why this indifference is justified so I can ignore them.
There’s a big difference between Avatar and Dances with Wolves, though. In DwW, the technologically-inferior society manages to fight off the more advanced society that’s invading them. In Avatar, though, it’s the technologically-inferior society that’s invading, and the side with the higher tech fights them off.