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- Thread starter -Carlos-
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For once I am jealous.
Fed_Da_Man
New Member
that's cool that you got it in imax 3D. i heard he waited a while to make this movie because he needed some super-duper technology to do it. visuals should be awesome, have a good time ^_^
beer good
Well-Known Member
Space marines come to an alien planet looking for precious minerals. Encounter large, weird aliens that prove to be potentially lethal. Grab their big guns, big flying gunships and huge mechanical exoskeletons and go toe-to-toe with aliens who don't need modern weapons.
Cameron's done this before, hasn't he? Except this time, he does it from the other perspective: the aliens are the heroes, the humans the invading colonialists.
Right. So, Avatar has a number of problems. Let's just get that stated right away. The biggest of which is, we've seen it all before. Or to be more precise, we've never seen anything like it, but we've heard it all before. Under all the dazzling technical voodoo, which really is incredibly impressive, the story is clichéd going on trite; a soldier sent out to subdue a primitive tribe of noble savages for the sake of his colonial overlords starts to see things from the natives' point of view, falls in love with their princess and becomes one of them so he can lead them against his former bosses. It's Dances With Wolves, it's Little Big Man, it's Pocahontas, except with blue-skinned 3-metre catlike aliens instead of cherokees; complete with all the unfortunate White Man's Burden overtones, faux-Na(t)ive American talk where everything is connected to the great spirit and all animals are friends etc, and a plot so predictable it never once even tries to surprise you - except possibly with the lenghts it goes to to hammer home its rather over-obvious ecology and War On Terror metaphor. Seriously, it makes Dennis Hopper's character in Land Of The Dead seem subtle, and District 9 did the same basic idea much better.
Then again, of course, this is James Cameron and whatever Cameron's strengths and weaknesses are, that's what you expect. He's not an ironic postmodern deconstructionalist, satirist or artiste, he doesn't do moral grey areas or unreliable narrators; his heroes are Heroes, his villains are Villains, his weasely amoral corporate types are Weasely Amoral Corporate Types (though at least Ribisi adds some humour to his part), and there's always a big disaster and a big fight for something important where they get to show how heroic, villainous and weasely they are. The one original spin he puts on the plot, the idea that our hero can upload himself into an alien body and thereby really physically become one of them, could have been used for some interesting introspection and questions of identity and reality - it's very A Scanner Darkly - but then again, it's James Cameron, and so shit blows up instead.
However, James Cameron knows how to blow shit up, and even his best movies were never that original, plotwise; he knows how to pace an action movie so that 2 hours and 45 minutes fly by without ever feeling much too long, make you cheer for the good guys and want the bad guys to die horribly, and then fulfils your wishes. And while Avatar never really manages that "Get away from her you BITCH" moment where the entire audience stands up and cheers, it is consistently professional, competent, and entertaining as long as you don't think about it too much.
Plus, it looks good. Man, oh man, does it look good. Yes, as one of the characters points out in what I'm not sure is supposed to be a moment of self-irony, it's all shock and awe; bombard the audience with images so they're too busy marvelling at what's happening to remember that they know exactly what's going to happen next. Cameron's good at that too, of course.
As it is, it's a bit ironic how a movie that's this aggressive about its "respect other peoples and Sacred Mother Nature" message becomes mostly a vehicle to show how much we can do with computers. But hey, at least it's more realistic than Titanic.
Cameron's done this before, hasn't he? Except this time, he does it from the other perspective: the aliens are the heroes, the humans the invading colonialists.
Right. So, Avatar has a number of problems. Let's just get that stated right away. The biggest of which is, we've seen it all before. Or to be more precise, we've never seen anything like it, but we've heard it all before. Under all the dazzling technical voodoo, which really is incredibly impressive, the story is clichéd going on trite; a soldier sent out to subdue a primitive tribe of noble savages for the sake of his colonial overlords starts to see things from the natives' point of view, falls in love with their princess and becomes one of them so he can lead them against his former bosses. It's Dances With Wolves, it's Little Big Man, it's Pocahontas, except with blue-skinned 3-metre catlike aliens instead of cherokees; complete with all the unfortunate White Man's Burden overtones, faux-Na(t)ive American talk where everything is connected to the great spirit and all animals are friends etc, and a plot so predictable it never once even tries to surprise you - except possibly with the lenghts it goes to to hammer home its rather over-obvious ecology and War On Terror metaphor. Seriously, it makes Dennis Hopper's character in Land Of The Dead seem subtle, and District 9 did the same basic idea much better.
Then again, of course, this is James Cameron and whatever Cameron's strengths and weaknesses are, that's what you expect. He's not an ironic postmodern deconstructionalist, satirist or artiste, he doesn't do moral grey areas or unreliable narrators; his heroes are Heroes, his villains are Villains, his weasely amoral corporate types are Weasely Amoral Corporate Types (though at least Ribisi adds some humour to his part), and there's always a big disaster and a big fight for something important where they get to show how heroic, villainous and weasely they are. The one original spin he puts on the plot, the idea that our hero can upload himself into an alien body and thereby really physically become one of them, could have been used for some interesting introspection and questions of identity and reality - it's very A Scanner Darkly - but then again, it's James Cameron, and so shit blows up instead.
However, James Cameron knows how to blow shit up, and even his best movies were never that original, plotwise; he knows how to pace an action movie so that 2 hours and 45 minutes fly by without ever feeling much too long, make you cheer for the good guys and want the bad guys to die horribly, and then fulfils your wishes. And while Avatar never really manages that "Get away from her you BITCH" moment where the entire audience stands up and cheers, it is consistently professional, competent, and entertaining as long as you don't think about it too much.
Plus, it looks good. Man, oh man, does it look good. Yes, as one of the characters points out in what I'm not sure is supposed to be a moment of self-irony, it's all shock and awe; bombard the audience with images so they're too busy marvelling at what's happening to remember that they know exactly what's going to happen next. Cameron's good at that too, of course.
Avatar is mostly CGI. It doesn't look CGI. The characters are characters. The actors are recognisably themselves as 3-metre tall blue space cats, right down to the slightest facial movements. They can act. They are alive. That forest exists. It's jaw-droppingly beautifully done, 3D or not (and while the 3D is used well, I'm still waiting for someone to come up with a way to make it be more than just an extra effect). It's all window-dressing, of course, but it's very impressive window-dressing. As of Avatar, there is officially nothing you cannot show on a movie screen. I keep thinking to myself, just wait until a director with a unique imagination - say, a Gilliam or a Del Toro - gets their hands on this sort of technology and uses it for something we couldn't do before. That could be a gamechanger.Bill Hicks said:
As it is, it's a bit ironic how a movie that's this aggressive about its "respect other peoples and Sacred Mother Nature" message becomes mostly a vehicle to show how much we can do with computers. But hey, at least it's more realistic than Titanic.
lenny nero
New Member
Story was so-so, the eye candy more than made up for it.
beer good
Well-Known Member
Libra6Poe
New Member
:lol:Yikes!If it was too subtle, you can always watch it in 4D.