Who cares that some guy’s wife who worked on the film think it will be good? She *worked *on it, of course she’ll say it’s good. I want to hear from impartial viewers whether or not it’s worth it.
It hasn’t come out yet.
Great Debates starts with a G, you’re in the wrong forum lady. ;p My credibility is irrelevant.
My credibility begins and ends with: Aliens riding dragons fighting space marines in power armor = cha ching!
Well like I said, like and dislike doesn’t factor, she in her professional opinion likes the narrative. There are lots of properties she’s worked on that you’ve heard of that she thought were absolute shit. I can’t say which those were because of that pesky NDA. Clients don’t mind it when you say their product is awesome, but they don’t like it when you say their product sucks for some reason. 
You’re asking for an opinion that simply doesn’t apply. Whether or not a narrative is structured well has little relevance to whether or not someone enjoyed the movie. Both my wife and I liked Batman Begins even though the narrative was awful.
To put it simply, it would require a whole discussion of the qualitative nature of what makes a narrative good and what doesn’t. Internal consistency is the biggest issue.
I’ll drop one hint though: She liked Pirates of the Caribbean. Even if you dislike the third movie’s Dadaist mushroom trip to the abyss, it’s still internally consistent with the overall narrative cohesion in a way that fleshy waterbags standing next to the microwave bomb that boils the water mains, is not.
Do they wanna come see Avatar with me?
For a good compare and contrast of the value of narrative, Batman is our one-stop shop. The narrative in Batman Begins was pretty crappy, whereas the narrative in The Dark Knight was pretty good. Inconsistencies? Sure. But overall it didn’t egregiously violate the terms they setup themselves within the context in the way the microwave pulse bomb did in Batman Begins.
Not if you want your posts to amount to something more than masturbation, it’s not.
You can’t mix it up with some films you know she liked or disliked that she wasn’t involved with? Or she’s never, ever, in any context, for as long as she shall live allowed to tell anyone her opinion of any film she’s worked on, even after its release?
No, they think your taste in movies sucks. 
Again, you made a wrong turn at the forum’s leaderboard.
No, it’s not that. It’s that movies that she LIKES are irrelevant. But I did tell you one anyway.
LOL They hated Shaun of the Dead then?
But lets see, I’ll give you some TV serieses that we both think have great narrative.
The Shield
Sons of Anarchy
The Sopranos
Deadwood
The Tudors
In terms of film, it’s a tougher question, because I think you are still looking at it as a matter of taste when taste has fuckall to do with judging narrative.
Starship Troopers. Serenity. Alien Resurrection. Aliens vs Predator. Planet Terror. Doom. etc, etc, etc.
Cha-ching indeed.
Batman Begins–at least by your example–was internally consistent. Just because a plot device behaves in a manner not consistent with real-life (which is the case for many, many movies) doesn’t mean it’s not internally consistent. Had the movie established that the device was non-lethal to humans directly, but then used it in such a manner, that would be internally inconsistent.
Despite this, for the sake of the argument, let’s say it was internally inconsistent, much as you concede Dark Knight was also. Neither can be more objectively egregious than the other, as what we deem to be “egregious” is a subjective thing–this cannot be argued. As such, I found Dark Knight to be an inferior movie to Begins. But I’m not going to swagger around pretending that this is an objective case, hiding behind the appeal to authority of the “professional opinion” of my wife.
If you’re accusing me of something, please do so, instead of mincing around your point.
One movie means nothing. I’m trying to establish a trend. So, I’m asking for a list of movies she likes and movies she dislikes, so that I can compare them to my own preferences, and thus decide whether or not the fact that your wife thinks that *Avatar *is a good movie will in any way influence my current prediction that it’s going to blow.
No, they liked it. They just can’t get over this *Avatar *thing.
Should’ve had power armore but didn’t.
Not even applicable. No dragon riding aliens fighting power armor.
The lowest rent of the Alien movies up to that point. Again, lack of dragon riding aliens and power armor.
Followed in hte tradition of Alien Resurrection. They didn’t give it near the love it needed to be a good movie. Again, lack of dragon riding aliens and power armor.
Did alright for what it was.
Video game movie that didn’t have the budget it required.
If narrative is your issue then James Cameron has not put out a single movie that has a crappy a narrative as any that you described EVER in his career. Maybe some of his early work that I haven’t seen. But in general his narrative is always passable. Serenity is the only movie that you mentioned that had a passable narrative, and it was plagued by all sorts of production problems due to the fact that Fox hates Joss Whedon for some reason.
I can say with confidence that the narrative of Avatar will be superior to every movie you mentioned except Serenity. Just based on the director’s past performance.
Also, if you think Avatar will do poorly what Christmas blockbuster do you expect to defeat it at the box office? Because generally the most prominent blockbuster on Christmas vacation always does well.
If the narrative is as good as Die Hard 4 or Batman Begins teenagers will be seeing it a dozen times.
Of course we’ll all get people saying Avatar flopped if it makes less than $ 300m, and even then some people will still call it a flop.
Are you aware that you’re the only one to use the word “narrative” in this entire thread, besides me in my responses to you?
I think you’re arguing something no one else is.
What am I mincing exactly? Your facile attempts to hold me up to GD style scrutiny in CS are underwhelming. Sorry if I wasn’t clear about not giving a shit whether or not you find me credible. I am just talking about a movie that I think looks cool.
I’m kind of bemused because it seems like the majority opinion on this board is that people WANT it to fail.
I’m all for Dances With Wolves meets Fern Gully meets Halo.
Right, but you are ignoring establishment criteria. Like I said, she LIKES ‘The House Bunny’ but what does that have to do with any of this?
As I see it this argument has three issues that are important to the success at the box office:
- Rule of Cool
- Brand recognition
- Narrative
They are important IN that order. Justin Bailey makes a point that James Cameron is an unknown quantity to youngsters these days, a valid point, but number 2 is trumped by number 1. Number 3 is more important to adults than it is to kids.
lol
Narrative has synonyms such as story or the related critique of ‘writing’. I was assuming that you knew what the term narrative meant, and as such could understand the argument I was making. I’m sorry if I got all industry jargon on you. 
I never appealed to the authority of my wife. I simply stated that I have high hopes for this movie because she and others who work with her, whose opinions I trust said it was cool. You guys are actually far more guilty of what you are accusing me of.
If you want to discuss narrative with me then you’ll have to accept that it has rules, and then we can discuss ‘Rule of Cool’ exceptions. Until you can accept that narrative has actual structural consistencies regardless of whether or not you liked the movie, we can’t discuss the topic.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear with my criticism of your posts–if you don’t care what any of the rest of us think, why are you even posting here? The purpose of a debate is to convince other people that your position holds merit, no? So when you say, “I know it’s going to be good because my wife likes it,” but then are unable to provide any examples of what other films your wife likes or dislikes, then you might as well have said, “I know it’s going to be good because I flipped a coin and it landed tails-up.” Thus, masturbatory: it amuses you while contributing nothing to anyone else.
You do realize “story” and “narrative” aren’t perfect synonyms, right? Sorry to go all basic english 101 on you
The “:p” means I can say whatever I want and get away with it.
I am posting my opinion of a movie. You’re the one that’s going all “Justify your existence!” on me.
I am stating my opinion, and it will be born out if I was right or not around January 1 when the movie has been out for two weeks. Until then we are all speculating based upon the information available to us.
And I never said, “I know it’s going to be good because my wife likes it.” I said my wife worked on it and vouches for the quality of the story. These are two completely separate things. I never expected my recommendation based on my wife’s opinion to be that important to you. You’re blowing up an aside I made into something very different. Her personal opinion of movies and her professional opinion about the quality of the writing in a script she’s read are two different things. She never said the script is mind-blowing and amazing, just that it’s decent and she thinks it will be a cool movie. IE, it’s up to James Cameron’s par, which is good enough for me.
Those perfect synonyms they are rare. So it might not be ‘perfect’ but it’s at least as adept at being perfect as ‘faultless’.
You can! That’s the great thing about geeking out.
So. You fuckers are not going to convince eachother anytime soon. I’m pretty sure we’ve established that by now.
Put the thread to rest until it’s been out for a while, THEN you’ll know who was right. Blabbering about it is pretty much useless if you haven’t even seen it.
It’s a discussion of whether we think the movie is going to succeed or not. If you want to just talk about what you think and then not have anyone respond to it, get a blog. (And disable commenting.)
Let’s go back to what you did say:
Now, I personally am of the opinion, from my admittedly limited exposure to the movie in the form of the trailer, that the story is trite to the extent that it will make the movie unwatchable for me. You, however, believe that the story will be enjoyable, based on your wife’s opinion of it. So, I’m trying to ascertain whether or not your wife’s tastes and mine match up, so I know whether or not to bother with the film.
ETA: Yeah, MostlyClueless, but mswas’s wife **has **seen it. Which means that I can get a much better idea of whether or not I should bother with it… *if *I can get mswas to give me the slightest indication of his wife’s taste in films.
What does utility have to do with anything?