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James Cameron's "Avatar" (grading and discussion)

Grade "Avatar"

  • Excellent

    Votes: 166 50.0%
  • Above Average

    Votes: 85 25.6%
  • Average

    Votes: 51 15.4%
  • Below Average

    Votes: 11 3.3%
  • Terrible

    Votes: 19 5.7%

  • Total voters
    332
You must have loved Starship Troopers! :wtf:

Hey, I loved Starship Troopers, that film's pretty much the same as District 9 and Avatar only it lacks a empathetic human lead. ;)

Unless you mean the Heinlein novel. In which case, er... yeah.
 
Wouldn't it have been easier to tow one of those floating rocks... which obviously has alot of unobtanium... tow one to the processing center...
 
Wouldn't it have been easier to tow one of those floating rocks... which obviously has alot of unobtanium... tow one to the processing center...

Maybe the amount of power you'd need to pull it out of place would make it impractical? The forces that keep those floating islands in place must be pretty strong to stop them from drifting and colliding (though they may do that anyway, and we just don't see any), and I have difficult imagining those dinky choppers towing them.
 
Wouldn't it have been easier to tow one of those floating rocks... which obviously has alot of unobtanium... tow one to the processing center...

They only stay floating in the flux. Pull them outside of that area (no easy feat), they'll crash to the ground. Plus equipment doesn't work will there anyway.
 
One of the comments on this thread mentioned me, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, as a proponent of the mixing of genres.

I found this board when google turned up a brand new review of my Vampire novel set on the Moon with an interstellar civilization, THOSE OF MY BLOOD (which is definitely mixed genre!) and this Avatar discussion as well.

Farscape, Babylon 5, Star Wars, Firefly (and Buffy) Vampires and all varieties of Science Fiction and Fantasy Romance are my perennial interests.

As far as AVATAR's action-romance is concerned (there really is a genre mix called Action Romance!), I should point out that Romancing The Stone -- and even further back, The Day The Earth Stood Still -- are ancestors of this type of mixture. Don't forget the TV series Lois & Clark! (today I'm really into Smallville.)

What's interesting about modern action SF/F is that the "damsel in distress" who was there only to be rescued so that the plot makes sense, has now become a plot-driving decision making, problem creating and solving element. That's the kind of female character I like to read, write, and view.

I talk about these trends in genre-mixing and character evolution on the Alien Romance co-blog with 6 other authors at http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/
 
I talk about these trends in genre-mixing and character evolution on the Alien Romance co-blog with 6 other authors at http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/

If any of you have any interest at all in the process of writing fiction, you need to go over to Alien Romance and look up Ms Lichtenberg's Tuesday Blogs. They are always interesting and very informative.

Brit (who has been a fan of this lady since 1975 and a book called "Star Trek Lives.")
 
Avatar keeps overachieving at the box office. It was underestimated by $2 million.

Actual 4th weekend number: $50,306,217 (Domestic total: $430,846,514)
(BTW, the previous record holder for 4th weekend was Titanic with $28,716,310)

Still #1 and going strong... It should hit $1.4 billion worldwide any day now.
 
Brit:

Thank you for the endorsement. People should also check out Kimber An's reviews at Enduring Romance (it's not all about weak sisters and mush!)

http://enduringromance.blogspot.com/2010/01/those-of-my-blood-by-jacqueline.html is Kimber An's new review of Those of My Blood, but she talks about many fascinating developments across mixed genres in her other reviews.

Novels have laid the groundwork for big box office films like Avatar. Many current novel trends have their roots in fanzine novels about Star Trek: TOS, and some of those classics are available for free reading at http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/

You want to figure out what the next Avatar will be, watch the trends on fanfic sites (especially graphic novels) that become trends in novels.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
 
I said "The Time Traveler's Wife" was IMHO more likely fantasy than Science Fiction, meaning others may judge is as Science Fiction and that would be ok. It is not however by "The Romance Writers of America" criteria - romance. By that same criteria "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is not romance either.
They can keep their definition. I'll stick with the good old dictionary: a novel, movie, or play with a love story as its main theme.

As far as TTTW goes, it's always treated as a real world genetic disease and the ending of ESOTSM is ambiguous.
 
Ya know... if they would have used the word planet instead of the word race...

"how does it feel to betray your planet"
then none of your arguements would hold water.... and that is exactly how I understood the sentence to mean instead of your stupid racist bull sh*it...
 
Ya know... if they would have used the word planet instead of the word race...

It wouldn't have been appropriate, for various reasons, not least of which is that Quaritch identifying his loyalty with his race can explain why he's presumably comfortable with us screwing up Earth.

And it is a racial thing. Jake has gone native, and is literally identifying himself as a blue-skinned alien rather than a human. What prompts Quaritch's line is Jake going so far as to hiss animal-like in Na'vi style, and his next action is to race off to kill Jake's human self as a reminder that that's the true him. That whole bit is him challenging the validity of Jake's racial journey, if not very subtly...

So yeah, race, not planet works here. I would also accept species, naturlich, but it'd have the same connotations.
 
I'd like to see a worldwide gross, adjusted for inflation. Avatar is much stronger worldwide than domestic.
 
^^^ I don't buy the adjusted for inflation line anymore.
1)I can watch just about any movie online within 48 hours of it's release.
2)I can buy or rent it usually within six month of it's release.

Those two points change the game completely. I am much more selective of what I will pay to see in the theater these days.

Avatar was one movie I gladly paid to see, after I watched it first online, to preview it. Did it ruin for me, nope. I just wanted to know the story without all the awesome effects, just too make sure I wasn't influenced just by special effects in my perspective. Especially after all the comments here about a weak plot overwhelmed by a dazzling screen effects in 3D.

And I will see again too in 2D just to compare, and maybe in IMAX too, just so I will have seen it in every format.

Do you think any of us would be doing that for "Gone With the Wind" in 2010. Not me I would either rent it or watch it online.
 
There are also twice as many peopel on the planet that watch movies than 70 years ago.

Inflation counts, most people still watch movies in a theater if they want to. Avatar was the first movie I watched in a theater in 5 years because the last several times i went the movies suck, cell phones and everything. Avatar is a great movie to see in a theater, but it still will not be the biggest movie ever, not even close.
 
I've only been going to the movies to see sfx that needs a big acreen for 25 years... anything else isn't worth it IMHO.
flamingjester4fj.gif
 
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