Avatar - astonishing!

[Kirstie]

PMSL!
I went to see it in an Imax, and it got to the point where everything that happened I just got the giggles.

Script - atrocious
Characters - ironically one dimensional
Plotline - not an original idea in there; cross between pocahontas, dances with wolves, every other colonial film you have ever seen
Music - just the same schmaltz as titanic. In fact, I was expecting to see a giant ship blasting its hooter lurching out of the screen at me through my 3D glasses.

Yes it was visually stunning, and the 3D imax part you really did feel the depth of it (there was one section with lots of ledges - yikes!) and for that it was a squillion pounds well spent. They must have spent one day of its ten year production schedule on all the other parts though.

 

[tdr1nka]

It's basically a re telling of Pocahontas.

 

[rich p]

It's basically a re telling of Pocahontas.

.....and Dances with Wolves

please see post above

 

[Kirstie]

.....and Dances with Wolves

please see post above

Yes, yes come on tdr1nka keep up old chap...

 

[trustysteed]

enjoyable braineye candy though

 

[tdr1nka]

Yes, yes come on tdr1nka keep up old chap...

And Fern Gully.

I made the Pocahontas connection in a thread started by Fab Foodie when Avatard first came out, now who's slacking?

 

[Piemaster]

But surely it's not enough to just look good as a movie that cost £400m. Or am expecting too much to ensure that the dialogue is above that you'd expect a 8 YO to write?

There must have been a chunk of the budget that went on the technology as its had to be developed for the film to be made.Think of the advances over the last 10 years even on a domestic front - blu-ray and HD don't even go back that far.

lowest common denominator

Yup. Studios are there to make a profit. Bigger the appeal the more they make. If they can make one that does that and happens to appeal to whatever we individually regard as a good film so much the better.

I'm very much with Cubist on the film. I went, ate popcorn and enjoyed it. But then I've always enjoyed sci-fi/fantasy escapism. And spaghetti westerns - were dialogue can be virtually non-existent.

How the hell can anyone go and watch a sci-fi fantasy film and expect highbrow intellectual material for philosophical debate. It's a film FFS. Go and be entertained, suspend belief and enjoy, or spend the cash on a copy of Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward. That'll give you something to think about.

 

[Jaye]

The reason the earthlings are on the planet and trying to oust the smurfs from their treehouse is to collect a powerful energy supplying source that is not found anywhere else. So what do the scriptwriters name this stuff UNOBTANIUM PMSL 399,999,999 dollars spent on effects and actors 1 dollar spent on a bunch of bananas for the scriptwriters.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

How the hell can anyone go and watch a sci-fi fantasy film and expect highbrow intellectual material for philosophical debate. It's a film FFS. Go and be entertained, suspend belief and enjoy, or spend the cash on a copy of Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward. That'll give you something to think about.

Well maybe because film is a medium that has all kinds of possibilities and has produced works of great depth and complexity - it's different from literature, but not somehow intrinsically worse. And, believe it or not, there are great and profound SF and fantasy (which are different things, BTW) works.

Unfortunately though, you are right that the cross-over between great film and great SF is still rather a small field. There's plenty of enjoyable throwaway SF films but almost none I would say were truly 'great' (and Avatar is certainly nowhere near, however pretty it is).

 

[Piemaster]

The reason the earthlings are on the planet and trying to oust the smurfs from their treehouse is to collect a powerful energy supplying source that is not found anywhere else. So what do the scriptwriters name this stuff UNOBTANIUM PMSL 399,999,999 dollars spent on effects and actors 1 dollar spent on a bunch of bananas for the scriptwriters.

All cyclists fault again then isn't it. Banana eating scriptwriters - everyone knows cyclists much through bunches of them. Coupled with the latest 'must have' frame material - cycling hippie scriptwriters again. And they come up with a script that attempts to wipe out an indigenous population.

I'll take a saddle made from skin from that flying lizard thing too.

 

[Yellow Fang]

The reason the earthlings are on the planet and trying to oust the smurfs from their treehouse is to collect a powerful energy supplying source that is not found anywhere else. So what do the scriptwriters name this stuff UNOBTANIUM PMSL 399,999,999 dollars spent on effects and actors 1 dollar spent on a bunch of bananas for the scriptwriters.

That is pretty poor. I'd have thought beryllium or platignum would have been worth mining for a start. If they wanted an energy supplying source then why not Uranium? If it was a young solar system then it would probably already be of the enriched variety. Not that they'd need it if they got fusion cracked. Helium 3 or tritium or lithium might be other possibilities. I sometimes wonder why Sci-fi script writers don't run things past scientists (apart from providing techno-jargon for their widgits).

 

[Flying_Monkey]

To be fair to Cameron, he knows what he's doing with the 'Unobtanium' thing - which is an sf in-joke. It's the word used by some critics to describe material of physically impossible qualities in bad sf. It's doubly ironic then that that Avatar is quite bad sf...

 

[4F]

I thought it was overhyped crap.
Fair enough, looked good, but that's no big deal, you expect that with modern computer stuff. The 3Ds not exactly earth shattering great, its distracting more than anything and headache inducing. Still at least with the glasses on nobody notices you dozing off.
The acting was very average, the plot terrible and hackneyed and it's waaaaay too long... Dances with Smurfs basically.

Thanks for the honest review. I was undecided to see it and my impression that it was most likely to be a load of old pony has been confirmed.

 

[Jaye]

Titanic vs Avatar............FIIIIIGHT

 

[Fab Foodie]

Titanic vs Avatar............FIIIIIGHT

No contest IMO.
I could, if forced at knife-point watch Avatar again... If forced to watch Titanic again I'd hurl myself time and time again at the knife point 'till I was dead.