Avatar Soars Into $1-Billion Territory 782
Suki I writes " Avatar soars into $1-billion territory. 'Strong foreign ticket sales help make the science-fiction movie the fifth in history to pass the watermark. ... One of the riskiest movies of all times is now officially one of the most successful at the box office. When Avatar opened, its solid but far from stellar results left 20th Century Fox uncertain about whether the $430 million that it and two financing partners had invested to produce and market the 3-D film would pay off.'" Given that the big alternatives were Sherlock Holmes or Alvin & the Chipmunks, I think the winner was clear.
Didn't see Avatar... (Score:4, Interesting)
Can't wait for the DVD/BR. (Score:4, Interesting)
Alvin & the Chipmunks (Score:3, Interesting)
Why are adults so critical of kids movies? Of course they're simple and stupid, but such movies were not made for you. Unless you are under the age of 8. Alvin & the Chipmunks was a movie for young kids... and to even analogize it with an adult movie such as the Avatar is moronic.
A more analogous slam would have been The Blind Side. I can't for the life of me figure out why people consistently pay to see Sandra Bullock movies. Sure, she's hot. But her movies are also consistently crap. Look at her list of movies here [wikipedia.org]. There's not even one worth watching. But yet they always make money.
Great movie (Score:5, Interesting)
I just came home from seeing Avatar in 3D and I must say it rivals Watchmen in sheer visual splendor. The story is a bit predictable, but I didnt really think about that until afterwards because I was so immersed in this beautiful world Cameron has created. It could have used a better soundtrack but then it would have been a completely different movie. Definetly worth the money, and well worth seeing again on the big screen.
I disagree with the "not science fiction" thing, the fact that they didnt combobulate the parallell deflectors and set phasers to stun but instead treated technology as an everyday occurence makes it more believable. The idea of the planet as a network is neat as well, one can imagine the whole thing as a Post-Singularity society, with a sentient network of biological entities as the collective conciousness of the planet.
Re:Science Fiction? (Score:5, Interesting)
I watched it twice.
The "science" part of the science fiction was actually a subplot running throughout the movie. The biologists were studying electrochemical links between trees from the beginning of the movie. I picked up more on that the second time through.
It's a direct rip off from Asimov's Foundation series. The Gaia concept presented in the latter part of that series shares an enormous similarities with this movie.
But I wouldn't consider it fantasy in any sense. They try to root it in the scientifically plausible, yet unlikely, ideas.
BluRay Won't Cut It (Score:4, Interesting)
So Avatar is to film what DKC is to video games? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not bad for an update verion of "Fern Gully" (Score:5, Interesting)
The aliens are still too stiff, their faces are too uniform, their movements are too smooth - they need pores, facial hair, creases, loose skin, etc - but it is still the best I've seen. Some of the new humaniod features were imaginative, like the neural connection in the pony tail, but overall the alients were pretty standard - "good" aliens must look human for us to identify with them, they must have the same mannerisms (e.g. identical emotions), and other real differences must be superficial. For example, the aliens were more like humans than the Indians in "Dances with Wolves" were like Costner, a movie which shares a number of connections with Avatar. I suppose if I want imaginative, I should just go watch La planète sauvage.
Overall though, I think this movie marks the latest in the "spectacle over plot" shift in filmmaking. Cameron has always been at the forefront of this change, right there with Michael Bay, so I should've expected it, but so it goes. Avatar did have a lot more plot than Transformers, GI Joe, and some other recently popular films, but it was still simpler than the Cat in the Hat - subtle & not-so-subtle political statements notwithstanding. Between visual effect and good writing, I'll take the latter, but why can't we have both?
Overhyped, but well-timed (Score:4, Interesting)
The scenery was cool, but not all that impressive. If you've ever played the Myst series of games, you'll know that striking visuals and landscapes like that have been done before. In fact, my first reaction on seeing Pandora was that it looked just like something I'd expect to see in Riven, and that's nearly a decade old.
The graphics were...ok. Sorry, but I really expected better. The cgi rendered reflections in the soldiers' face masks was a nice detail touch, but it made them look artificial. No stray strands of hair, 'flat' skin (just texture, not topographically modeled), and odd lighting effects looked unnatural.
The physics weren't all that great either. Turn your hand around quickly and you'll notice it 'jiggles' for a moment after you stop it. Not in the movie.. flesh didn't behave as I expected. Watch closely in the background when they are climbing up to choose their flying mounts, you'll notice their movements look like insects. We're introduced to scarface while he's lifting weights so he can keep in shape in the 'low gravity', and yet I saw no low gravity effects.
The sounds were the killer though. Whoever did the sound effects needs to be fired (upon). All of the flying craft used ducted fans for propulsion, and yet they all made the sounds of a helicopter. That, to me was the most distracting element, especially because there were so many scenes with flying craft.
It was good, yes. But not great. It was't realistic enough for me to believe... I kept getting jarred back to reality by the incongruities. You notice something isn't quite right, and maybe you can't put you finger on it, but it still nags at the back of your mind to remind you it's fake. And all of that could be forgiven if the story were compelling enough, but I've read too many similar 'persecuted aliens' stories to be impressed. It was, at least, worth the price of admission, which is something I find is all too rare these days.
Re:Science Fiction? (Score:3, Interesting)
They try to root it in the scientifically plausible, yet unlikely, ideas.
Watch how fast I can make is plausable.
What if the biosphere of Pandora was deliberately manipulated at some point in the past? What if the planetary network is a designed thing, as is the ability of Pandorian life to interface with it?
Re:Science Fiction? (Score:3, Interesting)
What if the biosphere of Pandora was deliberately manipulated at some point in the past? What if the planetary network is a designed thing, as is the ability of Pandorian life to interface with it?
This is exactly what I was thinking -- and I suspect it will play a role in the Avatar sequel. You think the humans are just going to run away and never come back?
Re:Didn't see Avatar... (Score:5, Interesting)
unobtanium is actually a wry nod to the nasa (and other) engineers who used this term as a substitute for a part of the design that needed a material with impossible characteristics (for example the bottom of the shuttle until they invented a material that was light, unmeltable at 3k C, etc.).
But what does Cameron have up his sleeve? (Score:3, Interesting)
I read that after Titanic, Cameron said he had his "f*ck you" money. Now it looks like he's got his "f*ck you and the horse you rode in on" money. So, what's next? Piranha 3 - Sushi from Hell?
How come the Thundersmurfs were unique? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's possible to make sympathetic characters that don't look at all like a human. See, e.g., District 9. But apparently they didn't feel like it here.
I enjoyed the movie well enough. But scientifically, it was just bonkers.
Re:Alvin & the Chipmunks (Score:3, Interesting)
I heartily agree. There are great kids movies from the past, and there are still some getting made (like your examples, though I didn't see Meatballs - well, I did see Meatballs, but that's not a kids movie ;)
Problem is that film studios realized it's easier to pump out cheap crap, because kids are dumb and will want to watch it anyway because it's got talking dogs (or whatever). These are not films that kids are going to watch multiple times growing up, and then watch again when they're adults and still enjoy it (and enjoy it on a wholly new level mostly invisible to kids with the really good ones).
However, there's selection bias - we don't remember all the crappy kids movies from the past. I can think of a couple from when I was growing up, and would probably recognize the names of a lot of them if I saw a list, but I don't really remember them, and would certainly not watch them again (or let my future kids watch them, for that matter). Nostalgia naturally filters out the crap. But - kids movies are very noticeable these days, usually because they're so bad. I don't really know if the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies are bad (I did watch the cartoon as a kid...) but I can tell they're not classics. They're mediocre garbage that kids will beg their parents to take them too.
However the previous guy does have a point - what kids enjoy and what adults enjoy are very different. I'm not sure it's always necessary for a kids film to be enjoyable by adults to be great. However, the truly great ones (that adults think are great) kids also usually like the most, so it's a fair bet that if it's actually good, adults will enjoy it too.
Finally - the interesting thing about Pixar films is that I don't think most people think of them as kids films anymore (at least I don't). Some of the earlier ones are (and I don't really like their earlier ones anyway), but Up, Wall-E, and even Ratatouille aren't kids films - they're just great films that happen to also appeal to kids.
Re:Science Fiction? (Score:2, Interesting)
Definitely in IMAX 3D (Score:2, Interesting)
Definitely see it in real IMAX 3D (no comment on the smaller, LieMAXes). The RealD was a little more fluid, but it's not worth losing 25% of the screen, and the IMAX version definitely felt more immersive. The IMAX versions have the full 1.78:1 cut, while the rest have 2.35:1. I haven't been able to confirm what cut the LieMAXes show, but from what my friend said, it sounds like it has the 2.35. It's possible it varies from LieMAX to LieMAX as well.
http://blog.ronhsu.com/2010/01/01/best-seats-for-avatar-3d/ [ronhsu.com]
http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/05/30/cameron-says-avatar-wont-be-shown-the-same-size-everywhere/ [firstshowing.net]
To the GP, personally, I thought it surpassed Star Wars, considering the relatively limited time he had. It definitely fleshed out the love arc a lot more (although that would have been ultimately extra creepy if Lucas had as well). The story is complete. Cameron doesn't need to make two more if he doesn't want to. I'm hoping there won't be sequels, since I believe sequels usually ruin things (there are exceptions).
Re:Science Fiction? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Science Fiction? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not sure. I was talking to a friend in Australia and he said when he watched the film and someone referred to the Na'vi as "aborigines" who needed to be civilized or killed or something (I haven't seen the film yet), the entire theater full of WASPy Australians freaked out.
The film could equally be seen as targeting the massive amount of racism aimed at Australian Aborigines, no?
Re:Floating Mountains (Score:3, Interesting)
"Unobtanium" is an engineer's humorous way of referring to a material with desirable properties that either simply doesn't exist, or is so expensive/difficult to obtain that it's infeasible to actually use for what you want.
My pet theory is that at some point in Avatar's past (our future), "unobtainium" entered the public lexicon as a potential solution to some kind of crisis: some prominent scientist said "sure, we could [desalinate the ocean/filter the atmosphere/whatever], but to build the reactors, we'd need a mineral with properties we've never seen... let me know when you find that unobtainium!", and headlines followed like "Desperate Senators Propose Searching Space For 'Unobtainium'". Then once a mineral with those properties was actually found, the name "unobtainium" stuck.