That, of course, is why it’s so popular.
Argumentum ad poopulum.
Argumentum ad nauseam.
I would just like to point out that I was the first in this thread to suggest it would be a runaway superduper hit.
a-thankyew…
You can argue that the movie has a thin plot or on other grounds, but very very few people have complained that it’s not “thrilling to watch.”
Seriously! It’s like saying that just because millions of people who’ve ridden it think that (whatever) is the World’s Greatest Roller Coaster, that their opinion means nothing just because Vinyl Turnip rode it once and thought it was “meh.”
Believe me, I’m the first to say that just because something is popular doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. You’re talking to someone who loves art-house movies, whose favorite films last year bombed horribly at the box office and are being pretty much ignored during this awards season, and is slavishly devoted to an artist that only a few hundred people in the world have ever heard, as well as loving other artists no one has ever heard or heard of (Noe Venable, anyone?).
But sometimes, something can be popular AND good. In my opinion, Avatar is good. Better than good. It just so happens to be popular too.
But in this case, we were specifically talking about how thrilling Avatar was, and anyone who didn’t think that discovering the world of Pandora was at least thrilling, no matter what they thought of the story or action, might be dead and should maybe go see a doctor about that.
Ahem…
Though to be honest, I was thinking of the dethroning Titanic bit as a best-case scenario with perhaps a 25% chance of happening. So I am quite surprised too that it will actually beat Titanic and perhaps reach 700 million.
I’ll retain my vinegar after this post, because it’s clear I’ve wandered into the wrong room. I thought the film was undeniably pretty to look at, and had some thrilling moments, but for stretches of it I was just bored. It may sound like the affectations of a serial contrarian/would-be film snob, but I honestly just didn’t like the movie that much. I wasn’t surprised by the pre-film hype—that was an obvious necessity, given the amount of money riding on its success—but I am a bit baffled by the slavishly breathless reviews by people who’ve actually seen it.
Maybe if I’d seen it in 3D, I’d be as emotionally invested in its unassailable groundbreaking awesomeness as some of its fans seem to be.
At any rate, congratulations to Mr. Cameron. He sure pulled it off.
If you haven’t seen it in 3D, you haven’t really seen it.
I felt much the same way. The movie would have sold me as a great watch if it had been a 120 minute film. To get me to watch a 162 minute movie it really needs to be engrossing storywise or I’m going to get bored no matter how pretty it is. And I did unfortunately get bored. If Avatar was written as a novel do you think it would receive any praise?
I disagree. I’ve seen Avatar in four different formats – IMAX digital, RealD XL (the bigger, brighter version that Cinemark markets as XD), regular RealD, and 2D 35mm – and in the Cinemark flagship theater where I saw the last three, the 2D was brighter and crisper than the regular 3D. I didn’t watch the entire film in all four formats, but I was impressed by how much better the image quality was in 35mm than I expected.
Ultimately it’s the story that carries the film, not the effects or the 3D. Avatar succeeds because its story works for people. The 3D may help make some people feel more engrossed for a while, but if the story doesn’t grab you, the 3D won’t save it.
And frankly, for all the talk about Cameron’s genius, I don’t think he uses 3D as well as everyone else seems to think. I’ve been watching 3D regularly for more than 20 years, and have seen every IMAX 3D film that’s ever been released, and virtually every 3D feature out of Hollywood since Chicken Little, and I don’t think he’s done anything especially remarkable with 3D in Avatar. It just happens to be the first 3D film that a majority of the public has seen, so he is hailed as a 3D genius.
Robert Zemeckis has a much better feel for 3D and demonstrated it with The Polar Express, Beowulf, and last year’s A Christmas Carol. Zemeckis went to the trouble of creating separate IMAX 3D versions of each of those films to take advantage of the special capabilities real IMAX theaters have that regular theaters don’t. That made a difference.
Cameron, on the other hand, not only didn’t do separate versions, he actually shrunk the image on IMAX film prints so that it fills only 80% of the width, and 60% of the height, of the screen. Apparently the problem with real IMAX is that it is too big. :rolleyes:
Same here. I don’t get people–especially people who claim to be film connoisseurs–claiming that this film is so incredibly fabulous. All of my friends seem to have aggreed with my assessment: visually stunning, predictable story, cardboard characters. Not to mention the “white guy saves primitive people by out-nativing them” trope we all know and love.
I saw it in 2D and then in 3D. (I wasn’t particularly invested in seeing it a second time, but the friends I was with on New Year’s Even wanted to see it, so I obliged.) I think the 3D was very well done, and greatly enhanced the experience, but in no way makes up for the shortcomings seen by people who were underwhelmed with this film. The objections are, and continue to be, about the plot, characters, and acting; more stunning visuals aren’t going to make those issues go away.
I disagree that there are any issues with the characters and story. So does the vast majority of the movie going public.
What kind of story and characters do you believe would have been any better?
Just because a movie is popular and a lot of the public goes to see it and say it was good doesn’t mean there weren’t issues with the characters and story.
If that was the case then I guess Transformers 2 didn’t have any issues either seeing it took in over $400 million. The vast majority of the movie going public can’t be wrong can they?
Ones that weren’t predictable, trite, two-dimensional, and, in some cases, woodenly acted. Those ones.
It wasn’t woodenly acted, so I reject that criticism outright, and it’s easy to say “do something unpredictable,” but that isn’t really a story idea, is it? I asked for an actual story idea.
What, for free?
Why not. There’s only like a dozen or so stories in the world anyway. It’s not like any story idea can really be original.
In a movie like this, which had to be pitched to a broad an audience as possible, the story had to be pretty simple and accessible. I don’t know what kind alternative people had in mind – a (complex political drama? A twisty murder mystery?) but nothing that wasn’t easily understood by people not just of any age, but in any country was not going to get made.
Right. And this is where criticisms of the film fall flat. The movie was brilliantly written. If of course you judge it by its own goals and not some ad hoc goals that the viewer wants to impose upon it.
OK, how about a story involving a blockbuster movie that become sentient in order to lavish praise upon itself, which then annihilates the irrelevant human “audience”?