Avatar : A Movie Revolution?

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QtrHorse said:
Did you read about the little temper tantrum Cameron had when a fan asked for his autograph?

To this day, I still vow to punch Mark Mcgrath in the ear if I ever meet him for the way he treated a fan one day. Cameron's was not that bad but still uncalled for.

Oh well, the pressure of being rich and famous.
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Cameron has ALWAYS been a **** on and off the set, and has the five (failed) marriages to prove it. I don't give a rat's arse about him on a personal level. What difference does it make? I'm only talking about the movie.

Not only have I never heard of Mark Mcgrath, but I could care less about following any celebrity close enough, or getting amped up enough about them to punch anyone not directly threatening me.

I can't stand the vast majority of Hollywood directors, actors, or celebrities but I can compartmentalize their hypocrisy, disgusting ignorance, and amoral behavior from the art they produce. For example, I am actually able to see and enjoy Braveheart without being hampered by its anti-semitic director.
 
LuxLuthor said:
Cameron has ALWAYS been a **** on and off the set, and has the five (failed) marriages to prove it. I don't give a rat's arse about him on a personal level. What difference does it make? I'm only talking about the movie.

Not only have I never heard of Mark Mcgrath, but I could care less about following any celebrity close enough, or getting amped up enough about them to punch anyone not directly threatening me.

I can't stand the vast majority of Hollywood directors, actors, or celebrities but I can compartmentalize their hypocrisy, disgusting ignorance, and amoral behavior from the art they produce. For example, I am actually able to see and enjoy Braveheart without being hampered by its anti-semitic director.
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I'm sure you would never listen to Mark Mcgraths music. I would bet all my lights that his type of music in not your genre, especially his older songs. You would have to see the video to understand why I feel the way I do about him.

I am on the bottom percentile for people who follow celebrities. The Mark Mcgrath deal is just one of those things I guess. I only heard about the Cameron incident because I was scanning current events on the internet and it came up.

That's where you and I differ lux and I'm sure many other ways, such as time managment. I tend to not support something if I do not like the manufacture, director and etc... The problem is that I sometimes like something and then find out that the source is something or someone that I do not like.

I don't want to hit Cameron in the ear because of what he said to the fan. I just find it funny that he would treat his target group so poorly and this one particular individual with such detestation because they are the group that handed him the number one spot at the box office.

I"m not here to bicker with you about how great this movie was. I thought it was okay and still might watch it in 3D just to see what all the fuss is about.
 
QtrHorse said:
I'm sure you would never listen to Mark Mcgraths music. I would bet all my lights that his type of music in not your genre, especially his older songs. You would have to see the video to understand why I feel the way I do about him.
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Never heard of him, and nothing personal, but I'm not interested in watching "trash the celeb" videos in any case. None of them are worth the bother....whoever he is. Life's too short.

QtrHorse said:
I don't want to hit Cameron in the ear because of what he said to the fan. I just find it funny that he would treat his target group so poorly and this one particular individual with such detestation because they are the group that handed him the number one spot at the box office.
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Also no idea of your Cameron incident, or whether he considered his private space was being invaded by some paparazzi/stalker. Let me guess, there just happened to be a video camera ready and willing to capture the whole thing, and you don't think it was a staged provocation.

It also sounds like you think at all times, every celebrity should respond generously to every fan at any time they decide to invade their private space...despite the frightening history of stalking & physical attacks. A fan has a right to be entertained in the venue they paid for. They have no rights to seek or get any special individual attention from a celebrity unless they also paid for that service and it was agreed to.

QtrHorse said:
I am on the bottom percentile for people who follow celebrities. The Mark Mcgrath deal is just one of those things I guess. I only heard about the Cameron incident because I was scanning current events on the internet and it came up.
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Yeah, to me none of these celebrities are worth following on a personal/event level. Life's too short to worry about them.

QtrHorse said:
That's where you and I differ lux and I'm sure many other ways, such as time managment. I tend to not support something if I do not like the manufacture, director and etc... The problem is that I sometimes like something and then find out that the source is something or someone that I do not like.
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Yeah, we differ. I can enjoy the product on its own merit, and recognize that most artist/celebrity types are not role models or deserving of personal fan attention...with rare exceptions. Most of them are complete spoiled idiots.

QtrHorse said:
I"m not here to bicker with you about how great this movie was. I thought it was okay and still might watch it in 3D just to see what all the fuss is about.
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IMHO, as I have said previously this movie is not worth seeing unless in 3D, and if you didn't see it in 3D you wasted your money. I would NEVER see it in 2D or recommend anyone else see it in 2D. All of the people being WOW'ed by the movie are talking about the 3D version only.

Bringing in all the petty vindictive personality crap about Cameron or some other dude is truly irrelevant to the movie's revolutionary impact when seen in 3D. That other personal stuff belongs on National Inquirer forums, and is designed to trash this topic.
 
Just watched it in 3D yesterday (after watching it in 2D earlier).

My thoughts:

Wasn't up to what I expected (and no i wasn't expecting objects to come hurtling towards me). Thought it would be more 'immersive' but it wasn't, still it does seem to mark the beginning of 3D movies making the audience 'feel' like they're actually there.
 
The idea that 3D movies are supposed to have things "flying out at the audience" is sort of stupid. Those types of effects are just gimmicks used to make sure that people notice a difference between 2D and 3D video, and often don't add any value to the movie. A true 3D movie will give you depth perception, and should make the movie seem different without the use of those sorts of effects.
 
I saw the 3D version last night. After a half hour, the 3D slipped into the background. A good thing since I feel it shouldn't be the focal point. If it were scene after scene of things flying out at me it would mean that the effect is the star, not the story.

Now the story. YAWN. Seen it many times.

Star Wars: Living force, large mechanical war machines vs a technologically inferior population. And getting their clocks cleaned.
Star Trek: The Katra, the soul/consciousness of the departed deposited in some physic gestalt.
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Corp. A mega powerful corporation that is evil personified. See Robocop, Blade Runner, and many B movies for this easy foil.
There are also elements of Little Big Man and Dances With Wolves.

I guess when you spend all the money on special effects and green screen stuff you have to cut and paste story from wherever.

One question. If we let the earth get to the state that it is such a hell hole, how did this corporation ever get the money to fund such a huge expedition across millions of miles to mine a far off planet? For an element that the writers had no imagination in naming interestingly? Lamer than bad film school writers.

I like Science Fiction and Fantasy work but there must be substantial story there. I like the attempt in the Star Wars series but There is maybe a 4 hour story in all that 12+ hours of cinema. I wasn't a fan of Aliens, spent the time in the theatre calling out the plot minutes before it happened. No surprises there.

Not a movie I plan on buying. Or seeing a second time. YMMV. I should have seen Alvin 2 (the Squeakwel)
 
Yeah, even though I really enjoyed watching the show, Avatar felt like an advertisement for a video game.

Still, just like The Matrix, it is a milestone. Pretty soon we will be living like the Talosians in the pilot episode of Star Trek, spending our lives re-living other lives instead of furthering ourselves.

Which reminds me - I wanna go see Avatar at a real IMAX screen, before it is gone...

--Max_Power
 
It turned out that the trailer was misleading regarding the floating mineral ("unobtanium"). The mineral does not have anti-gravitational properties. It is just a superconductor (which levitates in a magnetic field). This is not explained in the Avatar movie itself.

Pandora Discovered (min 2:12-2:40)
 
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It's weird the mineral rock doesn't float on it's own but those islands with the birds do.

What made them float? Was it covered and I missed it?
 
The "unobtanium" mineral is superconductive and because of that it floats in a magnetic field. The floating islands are made (at least partially) from the same mineral and the islands are floating only in that area because the magnetic field of Pandora is stronger there (that area is called "The Flux" or something like that by the humans).
 
Finally, I got my chance to watch the movie in "real" (as advertised by the theater) 3-D. Not IMAX, though.

So one question is whether there is enough goodness in going from a regular sized 3-D projection to the IMAX size to justify paying again plus the effort to get to an IMAX theater. Any thoughts?

Amazing how spot-on the reviews plus prior info. were. The effects were mesmerizing, but the plot was predictable and kind of annoying toward the end.

Basically the only non-predictable plot element for me was how they were going to get around the problem of having their own marine fight against them when they (the corporate guys) had control over his physical body. In the end, they handled this pretty well, in a way that wasn't too implausible and in fact went in line with the rest of the plot.

Is the movie a "Revolution?" as asked in the OP?

In the end, I have to say...NO. The 3-D is over time going to become kind of a gimmick. It was best in scenes with a clear perspective view--for example, when you were looking into a rectangular room with the elongated size going away from you (like the craft the marines were flying in).

When you went to the jungle scenes, the 3-D effect was weaker. You kind of forgot about it because it wasn't that noticeable. Every now and then I would take the glasses off and check, and in the non-room scenes the 3-D effect was indeed pretty weak.

So, as far as the future of movies is concerned, I think that 3-D will not be the big saver theaters are hoping it will be.

There were previews of 3-D movies, like one of Alice in the Wonderland. Basically, it may be something for kids--but then kids and families go to movies if they are appropriate and good quality family movies. The 3-D aspect is not going to decide it for them either way, IMO.

I agree with other posters on the commercial aspects of the movie. I think it will be a big money maker, indeed as it will sell well abroad as well as here (in the US). I was kind of surprised as to how quickly the toy tie-ins showed up at McDonalds! On the plus side, the Avatar toys are generally decent quality (for McDonalds toys).

I got the 6-legged horse toy, and it produces a nice light effect--you never saw a bluer horse's *** for sure!!:laughing:

I agree also that the animation on the 6-leggers was kind of so so. I couldn't make out how many legs they had in fact, I think only 5 were easily visible. The toy made it clear that there are 6 legs.
 
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They have to be pretty happy at how well it is still holding up on the numbers charts. You can scroll through the dates at Box Office MoJo and see daily and running totals since it started on 12/18.

In terms of it being a revolution, we shall see. The more money it makes, the more will consider using/building 3D capability. I'm trying to imagine how a movie like Iron Man, Star Trek, or Dark Knight would have looked in this quality of 3D. In the past, 3D was cartoonish. This movie made it a serious adjunct to audience immersion.

I have now seen it 4 times in 3D, and will probably see it at least a couple more times which is unbelievable to me, given how much I hate going to movie theaters. Every time in my theaters, there was spontaneous audience applause which is not common outside of serious audience venues like in NYC. That fact and its ticket sales cannot be denied.
 
I saw the movie today at a regular cinema in 3D.

Would definitely recommend it to other people, I liked the story however, I thought the 3D was a bit of a gimmick (although it was refreshing to see a movie in 3D again - last time I did that was for Jaws in the 80s).

I found you had to look at parts of the picture that the director wanted you to look at. Trying to look elsewhere on short field of view shots gave rise to 'split images' (like looking at the picture with the glasses off).

Fo me, the movie will be just as good in 2D, and for this reason I'll be buying the HD version when it comes out.

Worth a watch. I can see why some are comparing this to StarWars.
 
LuxLuthor said:
They have to be pretty happy at how well it is still holding up on the numbers charts. You can scroll through the dates at Box Office MoJo and see daily and running totals since it started on 12/18.

In terms of it being a revolution, we shall see. The more money it makes, the more will consider using/building 3D capability. I'm trying to imagine how a movie like Iron Man, Star Trek, or Dark Knight would have looked in this quality of 3D. In the past, 3D was cartoonish. This movie made it a serious adjunct to audience immersion.

I have now seen it 4 times in 3D, and will probably see it at least a couple more times which is unbelievable to me, given how much I hate going to movie theaters. Every time in my theaters, there was spontaneous audience applause which is not common outside of serious audience venues like in NYC. That fact and its ticket sales cannot be denied.
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The upcoming Iron Man 2 would be great to watch in 3D.
 
Saw it in 3D.
I was mesmerized and didn't want to quit, to leave the experience behind. It was fascinating, it drew me in.

It sure wasn't the somewhat lame plot or CGI. I think it was the immense attention to detail and authentity of this world that draws you in until you loose the usual perspective somewhat. It makes you leave and arrive in a phantasy world more than any other film or game ever could. Which makes it addicting.

And which corresponds with the impression that the blue girls got more attractive with every minute of the film 🙂

bernie
 
Kiessling said:
And which corresponds with the impression that the blue girls got more attractive with every minute of the film 🙂

bernie
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I did not want to be the first to say that. The longer I watched the movie, the more oddly they became attractive to me.
 
I'm comfortable enough with my male humaness to admit that I wanted the blue babes too. 🙂 Plus, I like how they dress. Gotta love the tropical climates.

I saw it in 3D at an Imax. Maybe it was because I was pretty close to the screen, or off to the side a bit... but about half the time the 3-d stuff was jittery and blurry for me. The other half of the time it is rock solid and awesome. Maybe my eyes just don't want to go there?
 
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