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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
Wonder why James Cameron is going with that title how about Return to Pandora or something why Na Vi I know it is Cameron's decision on what he calls the next film isn't it
 
Has Cameron sequelized any of his original stuff other than Terminator? Because if we're going by Terminator II then his proclivity with sequels tends to be to retell the first movie's story, bigger and louder and with elaboration.


"One" is a pretty small sample to generalize from. :p


Marian
 
Has Cameron sequelized any of his original stuff other than Terminator? Because if we're going by Terminator II then his proclivity with sequels tends to be to retell the first movie's story, bigger and louder and with elaboration.


"One" is a pretty small sample to generalize from.

Thankfully. ;)

Although the Titanic sequel was novel:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD4OnHCRd_4[/yt]
 
I swear there is going to be a generation of kids, who think that is a real movie. Not my generation, maybe not kids born today, but future kids.
 
Probably not.

The studio will probably really, really want "Avatar" as the prefix to whatever the title is. Nor is it completely unlikely that Cameron will have a Na'vi avatar character or two.

One way to keep the title is to have another bad avatar coming in and pulling all the heads off the flowers.

Or, they build a Jake Sully avatar and he goes to Earth and saves it from the bad people.

Despite what Andy Serkis says, are high calibre actors are less likely to want to do sequels if there is absolutely no chance of them getting any awards for their work? Should there be a special award category for peformance capture?

link
 
Probably not.

The studio will probably really, really want "Avatar" as the prefix to whatever the title is. Nor is it completely unlikely that Cameron will have a Na'vi avatar character or two.

One way to keep the title is to have another bad avatar coming in and pulling all the heads off the flowers.

Or, they build a Jake Sully avatar and he goes to Earth and saves it from the bad people.

Despite what Andy Serkis says, are high calibre actors are less likely to want to do sequels if there is absolutely no chance of them getting any awards for their work? Should there be a special award category for peformance capture?

link

Or Aywa creates an avatar of Grace.
 
Of course, avatars based on characters like Quaritch could be a major hassle for the Na'vi. There's nothing to prevent that, other than that the tech hadn't yet moved "out of the lab" and into military application - as far as we've seen.
 
The more I think about it the more I like the idea of the Navi driving avatars on Earth. The budget would be slashed. Hell you could have a TV series.
 
Avatar will lose a whole lot of domestic screens to Alice In Wonderland tomorrow, so its box office will drop precipitously.

Its box office records will probably remain intact at least until Cameron makes another movie - he gave the industry a twelve-year head start last time, after all, and no one could beat him. :lol:
 
Despite what Andy Serkis says, are high calibre actors are less likely to want to do sequels if there is absolutely no chance of them getting any awards for their work?
The chances for getting an award for acting in Avatar or one of its sequels are fairly slim. Sure, you could pull off a Heath Ledger and Dark Knight, but honestly, would he have got that award if he hadn't died?

Of course, if you are trying to get an acting award in a sci-fi film, Cameron's a good guy to place your bets on (hello, Sigourney Weaver's Aliens nom).
Should there be a special award category for peformance capture?
Possibly. It's been an idea kicked around for a while, didn't George Lucas say Frank Oz should have been able to get an award for his performance as Yoda?

Maybe in a couple of years when this is standardised and commonplace and the performance is wholly motion capture with few animation touches, but who knows?
 
These kinds of things have to overcome too much Academy inertia, custom and prejudice for it to be likely that actors can win awards for such work. Carving out special categories for them would be a recognition of that fact, for good or ill.
 
Maybe Serkis is just peeved that all that splashing around in freezing NZ rivers went unlauded.
 
Would Earth's atmosphere be poisonous to the Na'Vi? According to "Avatar: An Activist Survival Guide", Pandora's mainly Nitrogen/Oxygen atmosphere contains 18% Carbon Dioxide and 1% Hydrogen Sulphide, which make it poisonous to humans.

Perhaps Neytiri, Jake and other Na'Vi could travel back to Earth (shades of Pocahontas here methinks) -- either as guests or prisoners.
 
I doubt that the absence of poisonous gases would harm them - it's not that likely that they make use of Hydrogen Sulphide, just that life on Pandora has evolved to tolerate it.

Whether the lesser amount of carbon dioxide might affect their respiration in some way is a different question, but although higher CO2 levels stimulate human respiration lower levels don't depress it.

Note that one can't have discussions like this about Star Trek, since just about everything that walks and talks in the ST "universe" comes from environments so identical to Earth that it's irrelevant. All species eat the same food, breathe the same air and are usually interfertile except for the very occasional critter that's played by a special effect or a guy in a lumpy suit in which case no normal rules of physics or biology seem to apply at all - and the explanation offered in "The Chase" actually boils down to no explanation at all.
 
No, they won't.

In a slightly different context, an op-ed writer for the NYT proposed today that the "Best Actor/Best Actress" categories be eliminated and replaced with something like Best Actor - Drama," "Best Actor - Comedy" and "Best Actor - Musical" or some similar breakdown.

Basically, let Meryl Streep compete against Jeff Bridges and so forth.

That makes a lot of sense - it won't happen, but it makes a lot of sense - and might open up the competition to actors appearing in a greater variety of films in a wider range of roles.
 
I saw it recently. I'll agree with the consensus that the FX are stellar. However, the plot is recycled and lacking. How many times do we have to see the evil modern society vs the good natives who have a special affinity with a tree cliche? A good majority of the film seemed like a Terminator rehash, and even worse, why do the Na'vi need a human to save them instead of their own resources? There were too many things that made it look like an 80's action flick...this film would have been awesome if it had been released then...but overall, while the movie has grown on me...my opinion on first viewing was disappointment...I think Cameron should have just made another Terminator flick.
 
Sure, you could pull off a Heath Ledger and Dark Knight, but honestly, would he have got that award if he hadn't died?

I think that's being a little cold-hearted, don't you? The Academy loves nominating and awarding actors for villainous performances. Look at Fredric March (Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest), Anthony Hopkins (Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs), Javier Bardem (Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men) and most recently Christoph Waltz (Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds). Heath Ledger was just one in a long litany of many actors to get nominated and win an acting Academy Award for playing a villain.

Also, looking at the nominees that year, Ledger was pronounced unequivocally by several prominent critics as the actor to beat, posthumous consideration aside. Heath Ledger was the most deserving to win that Best Supporting Actor award, and he rightfully won, regardless of how his death played into things. Did it have some residiual effect? Probably, but to say that he only won because he died is writing off the immense talent that Ledger exhibited and the incredible performance he gave in The Dark Knight.
 
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