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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

"I just saw Avatar" Thread

just saw it in real 3d on a regular screen. packed theater near cleveland ohio. i'm glad it's doing well and i enjoyed the movie but that has nothing to do with how good of a movie it is. it's not very engaging, at least on an intellectual level. emotionally, it was great. a thorough roller coaster ride that cameron never fails to deliver. the story and the characters however were too simplistic. before going into it, i suggested that my 6 year old nephew not come along because of the subject matter but after seeing it i believe he would have easily grasped the "good" vs. "bad" battles with no problem. some would attribute that to great storytelling but i'm not so sure. i still think there's context and age appropriate audiences for every story and this story could have been told in a more elegant or even subtle way. it should have been but never will and that brings me to the problem with 3d.

this movie had to succeed. there is so much riding on it. not just money but the next 5 years worth of 3d projects will be directly related to the box office gross of this movie. that's why it had to be "dumbed down" for mass acceptance. i'm not calling audiences who enjoyed it dumb. i'm only calling the 2d portion of it (story and characters) a bit simplistic. it could easily be compared to dances with wolves but that would be doing both movies a disservice. avatar is an event and a showcase for the technology above storytelling. it is not an epic story so much as it is an epic experience. it's a proud hollywood tradition which will soon fade into the background once 3d is no longer a financial risk and becomes a real storytelling element.

james cameron movies have often been described as chick flicks disguised as action movies for guys but i think avatar is more of a kid's movie disguised as an action flick for guys. not a bad thing but not nearly as cerebral as any of his other films.

that being said, one theme i did like was the idea of the avatar and its use in future military operations. this will certainly become a reality in our lifetimes (whether it's through cyborgs, robots or clones) and i liked the way the value of the avatars informed the military of their enemy's value too. this is a disgusting notion but so is war. i only wish they dwelled on this a little more and spent less time trying to find parallels to current conflicts.
 
Craig Schober said:
i'm only calling the 2d portion of it (story and characters) a bit simplistic.
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I've been struggling to find a way to express what I felt about the story, but I think you hit on it in your comments. To me the story felt much like a Disney animated movie, with the evil guys ripping up the forest, the happy natives living in the big tree. Problem is, I can't properly express what that Disney feel is, but that's the distinct impression I had when the thing was over, I just saw a futuristic and slightly more violent Pocahontas.

I'm afraid if the movie wasn't so darn visually compelling that it would have fallen flat, but they nailed the visuals. The whole time I kept thinking, "wow, this looks great" and let my eyes explore the frame, then I'd remember there was a story going on.

I thought the use of 3D helped make Pandora feel more alive, and added to the grand feel of a lush and untouched planet. I've never been an advocate of 3D, something about the idea seems gimmicky to me, but here it worked and I can't imagine it having been as immersive if I had watched in 2D. I'm not sure I want to see Shawshank in 3D, but for something like Avatar, it just added to the experience.
 
My head hurts.

I wish they would have used their creativity in the realm of storytelling and characters like they did with the cgi. This movie made me feel more like I just exited a roller coaster than saw a film.
 
"Avatar" putting up stunning numbers. Yesterday it raked in $28,550,000 domestically, more than it made opening day! (I told you, Shawn.) It looks like "Avatar" is only now beginning to stretch its legs. :w00t:

After thinking about this, I believe what I really loved most about this film was not the effects, not the battles, not the hot alien girl, but the sincere spirituality of the film.

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Spirituality is one of reasons I enjoyed "The New World" and "The Fountain" so much. "Star Wars" was the same way.
 
Absolutely agree with Tom! This is probably one of the only films that drew me into its spiritual realm with such ease!

Saw it again (second time) tonight in Real D 3D because one again, IMAX was sold out unfortunately. However something wasn't right.. I'm no stereo expert but it felt as if the theatre had something calibrated incorrectly as often times i found the image plane (that is supposed to be in focus) to be SLIGHTLY soft and almost (doubled).. It was so minute it was probably unnoticeable to the general public but it was enough to cause my eyes uneasiness. I'm definitely going to catch it in theatres again to look into this 'issue' (hopefully in IMAX this time).

Kudos to Cameron and his team for creating such a masterful work of art!
 
Tom L said:
After thinking about this, I believe what I really loved most about this film was not the effects, not the battles, not the hot alien girl, but the sincere spirituality of the film.

Spirituality is one of reasons I enjoyed "The New World" and "The Fountain" so much. "Star Wars" was the same way.
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Agree. There's more to that simplistic story than meets the 3D goggle-clad eye. From another perspective: who would gamble $400 million on an unproven story? The storyline, in addition to being archetypal, is also a safe bet. There was enough risk rolled up into the tech.
 
One of the few movies where I had to put the popcorn down and just watch.

Loved every minute of it, even if the story was relatively formulaic.

One thing I didnt get was that there seemed to be a few "Avatars" (ie navis in uniform)policing the human roundup with guns at the end. Who were they?
 
The idea that human beings were able to create Avatar is astounding to me. I was completely mesmerized. I looked at everyone's name in the credits and wondered if they, too, were humanoids from some crazy advanced Hollywood planet in the future.
 
Tom L said:
Spirituality is one of reasons I enjoyed "The New World" and "The Fountain" so much. "Star Wars" was the same way.
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Im right there with you on that one. To me, if a film can transcend the spiritual and psychospiritual bounds of humanity, I totally connect to it on a completely different level. I keep telling friends that Avatar isnt an action scifi, and moreso a spiritual romance (Spi-Ro?) film...
 
I thoroughly enjoyed the film. I think Avatar proves, perhaps more than any other movie in recent memory, how much a collaborative art film really is. If Avatar had to stand on its own as a novel or a screenplay, it would probably be good, but not great. It certainly wouldn't be putting up these numbers at the B.O.

But the many other disparate arts of filmmaking have propelled Avatar to a higher plane. After all, a film's purpose is to captivate audience attention, and the plot is simply one of the best tools for the job. Visuals and 3D added a potent device to the film's tool kit. The film's spiritual thematic underpinnings and James Horner's score represented other powerful means to engage viewers. We could go on about the set design, costuming, make-up, acting, cinematography, and so forth. But Avatar shows us that a film isn't just about what story you tell, but how you tell it.

There was a moment in the second act where I found myself thinking, "Wait, why am I enjoying this so much?" But then the music kicked up, mountains started to float, and I went the rest of the movie thoroughly entranced. I was hesitant to personally embrace 3D as a film-goer myself, but Avatar has showed me that the technology really can add an additional weapon to a movie's entertainment arsenal.
 
I admit, I'm skeptical of 3D. It has always come off as gimmicky to me and more spectacle than anything else. Not to say I haven't explored the technology a little bit, and I'm certainly working with client's who want to use it but I just wasn't sure what to think going into Avatar. I was expecting to be a bit disappointed.

After the first ten minutes my eyes finally adjusted and settled in. I still wasn't warming up to the characters yet. But once he meets up with Neytiri, I was engaged. And here's where I was really shocked. I actually cared more about the digital characters than the human ones. I have not been a big fan of digital actors, but for some reason I found myself connecting to them in this movie. I'm wondering if it is actually the 3D that is helping that. Maybe it's giving them more depth, more realism. Whatever it was, I walked out of the theater really surprised.

It's interesting based on a lot of the reactions to this film, it makes me wonder if we've all become a bit desensitized to the magic of filmmaking. If I had never seen a movie before and wasn't too familiar with modern technology what would my reaction to Avatar be? I would have to think my jaw would hit the floor. In terms of story, I get what people are saying about the familiarity of it, but that wasn't a distraction for me with this movie. I was into the characters and I actually thought the eco messages were hitting home with me. Especially as I exited the theater to loads of concrete, bricks, and parking lot and very few trees in sight. We may feel like we've gotten the message before, that it's old news, but the fact is that we're doing to the planet exactly what was happening in the movie. Without getting too political, substitute oil for the precious material in Avatar and you have a lot of thinking that starts to happen, at least it does with me.

So, I walked away happy I had seen the movie, and I'm more of a fan of 3D now than I was going in. In another thread I have been discussing 3D in dramatic filmmaking with Ketch and that's still an area that I am trying to understand the role 3D will play in enhancing the story. With a movie like Avatar I feel it did actually add something, sometimes subtly and sometimes a bit more in your face.

I don't consider myself to be that spiritual, but I did find that aspect of the movie interesting and emotional. One of the things that I have always found fascinating about movies is that even if something is presented in a simplistic manner, our brains have a way of filling in more detail, of taking a concept or a storyline and adding our own perspective to it, making it something more substantial than just the images on the screen. I was finding myself doing that during Avatar. I was letting myself go beyond the movie.
 
I just saw it this morning in IMAX 3D.

Gotta say, I actually said "oh wow" out loud about a dozen times. It blew me away.

The live action sequences in particular had so much depth, I nearly reached out with my hand.

Storywise - I agree with what most people are saying. It's very simple and predictable, but wasn't bad for the film. I mean, the dialogue and some of the one liners had me cringing a few times, but other than that I thought it was fine as a delivery device for awesome, eye popping visual spectacles.
 
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