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AVATAR Trailer is here!

I dunno, it will probably look even better in 3D, but from what I've heard about the 15-20 minutes of film seen by preview audiences they weren't too thrilled with the dialogue. I've heard it's a bit wooden. And aside from the "avatars", the story certainly isn't original. Heck there was an animated movie that came out a year or two ago with a very similar premise as far as I can tell. It's a human invasion story told from the point of view of a human protagonist who has taken the side of the aliens being invaded. Yes I'm aware Cameron has been floating this idea around since 1995, but if you want we can start with the story of Pocahontas or a hundred other similar sci-fi tales.

Battle For Terra. Stylistically different, but thematically very similar. I think the environmental contamination of Earth and pressure from a military-industrial complex is even the main motivator for conquest in both movies, but I'm not positive about Avatar.
Hell, I wrote a short story in high-school with a very similar plot. The noble soldier rebelling to help the helpless fight a futile war against his own people wasn't even a new story when Dances With Wolves came out.
 
Well that looked awful.

It seems like it couldn't decide if it was an animated movie or not.
I absolutely adored Up and some other computer animated movies, and obviously have no problem with them being all made in a computer, but this movie, and movies like it with too much poor CG ( I don't care how many hours and dollars went into it...it hits my eye wrong) insult the audience to a degree. They don't look real, but try to pass themselves off as real. And yes, I know none of it's real.
It's like if I order an expensive steak and you give me a really good hamburger. It may be OK, but it's not what I asked for or expected.
 
This kinda reminds my of insurrection where the hero is sent to a planet where his government wants to take something from the natives, then he gets the hots for a native woman and helps her people.
 
Looks okay, though the first thing I thought of when we see the choppers or whatever go in the the mechs was, they really should just blow them up from a distance with carpet bombing, orbital strikes or artillery instead of going in nice and close which would appear to suit the aliens.
 
Well every "we must take their planet for the minerals/tactical location/colony world" suffers from that problem. Why bother with a long and costly ground conflict when you can just blast away from orbit and move right in unhindered.
If you put your mind to it, it is quite possible to prove that no story should ever be told.
 
I am eager to see this. Really. An actual sci fi movie that someone imagined, and didn't remake hook line and sinker (though that may be debatable) and they put a lot of money time and effort to do it the best they could. that's enough to sell me a ticket.

However, I got a Phantom Menace feel from this trailer. The work in Phantom Menace was exquisite, especially for the time, but the problem was that there was too much of it. they did not use it sparingly or economically. With so much of it on screen your eye noticed how synthetic it was no matter how good the individual parts were. If it had been used for a select few gimmicks in the film, it would have been great, but the artifice that they tried to portray never took hold because they tried too hard. I never doubted that there was a hanger bay on Yavin 4 in Star Wars, despite the fact that most of it was dark and they just moved two ships around depending on the camera angle. It felt like a real hanger bay, and it felt BIGGER and more believable than Theed's hanger bay in Episode 1.

Well the problem with TPM was that the movie was just too damn overpopulated. The screen was crammed full of so many ships and distracting little creatures that it was hard to focus on either the story or characters (which weren't all that exciting to begin with).

Hopefully Cameron won't fall into that same trap, and will keep a much stronger focus on the story than Lucas did.
 
I didn't scroll through and read all the comments on this, but I just saw the teaser-trailer, and I want this to be good. It reminds me of Tron, as it's obvious he's really trying to push the tech beyond what's possible, and if he achieves a great story, it will be a blast. James Cameron's got chops behind the camera.

//That said I still worry that this could come off as Final Fantasy to the general audience with disturbing uncanny valley problems. District 9 escaped that problem with the prawn design. This alien world looks like it is molded from the same bright, shiny CGI plastic that the Speed Racer aesthetic uses. That was visually impressive, but mind-numbly meh.
 
I'm feeling a bit of Deja Vu here...

- The release of a trailer for a hyped sci-fi film.
- The influx of a legion of suddenly developer CG experts decrying effects as "awful", "worse than a video game", and so on.

Ah the joy of the internet age!

All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again. :D :D :D
 
Gorgeous, and I couldn't care less about the technical side of things. :techman:

Incidentally, the trailer reminded me of the Dinotopia books, and from there led to my discovery of Journey to Chandara. :D

I dunno, it will probably look even better in 3D, but from what I've heard about the 15-20 minutes of film seen by preview audiences they weren't too thrilled with the dialogue. I've heard it's a bit wooden. And aside from the "avatars", the story certainly isn't original. Heck there was an animated movie that came out a year or two ago with a very similar premise as far as I can tell. It's a human invasion story told from the point of view of a human protagonist who has taken the side of the aliens being invaded. Yes I'm aware Cameron has been floating this idea around since 1995, but if you want we can start with the story of Pocahontas or a hundred other similar sci-fi tales.

Battle For Terra. Stylistically different, but thematically very similar. I think the environmental contamination of Earth and pressure from a military-industrial complex is even the main motivator for conquest in both movies, but I'm not positive about Avatar.
Hell, I wrote a short story in high-school with a very similar plot. The noble soldier rebelling to help the helpless fight a futile war against his own people wasn't even a new story when Dances With Wolves came out.

Someone should tell Hollywood that originality is a prerequisite for entertainment, they'll close up shop overnight.
 
I'm feeling a bit of Deja Vu here...

- The release of a trailer for a hyped sci-fi film.
- The influx of a legion of suddenly developer CG experts decrying effects as "awful", "worse than a video game", and so on.

Ah the joy of the internet age!

All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again. :D :D :D

There's always that one CGI/live action movie that dares to be " teh revolutionary"

Star Wars Ep I

The Matrix
 
The CG certainly looks ... very CG.

It's just a teaser, of course, but I'm getting way more of a cartoonish vibe than I imagined the film having.

And I mean cartoonish not only in the quality of the CG, which I'm sure in the end will be remarkable (though it looks pretty standard in the teaser) - but also in the aesthetic. "Islands" floating in the sky? Sparkling Na'vi that look like fairies from a kid's movie?


If significant fractions of the film are going to be 100% CG, that CG really needs to be "revolutionary" and "photo-real" as Cameron said it would be ... otherwise you feel like you're watching an animated film (and that's fine! But don't bill it as a live action film!).

We'll see - it's just a teaser - and it certainly looks extremely creative. I'll be there opening day regardless.


I am still excited about this movie but I have to agree this movie does look a bit cartoonish in many ways.
 
Finally got a chance to see it...and I liked it. I agree that it's nothing spectacular, at least not from the teaser, it looks like a regular CGI/live action sci-fi flick with an interesting story. I'll go check it out.
 
Gorgeous, and I couldn't care less about the technical side of things. :techman:

Incidentally, the trailer reminded me of the Dinotopia books, and from there led to my discovery of Journey to Chandara. :D

I dunno, it will probably look even better in 3D, but from what I've heard about the 15-20 minutes of film seen by preview audiences they weren't too thrilled with the dialogue. I've heard it's a bit wooden. And aside from the "avatars", the story certainly isn't original. Heck there was an animated movie that came out a year or two ago with a very similar premise as far as I can tell. It's a human invasion story told from the point of view of a human protagonist who has taken the side of the aliens being invaded. Yes I'm aware Cameron has been floating this idea around since 1995, but if you want we can start with the story of Pocahontas or a hundred other similar sci-fi tales.

Battle For Terra. Stylistically different, but thematically very similar. I think the environmental contamination of Earth and pressure from a military-industrial complex is even the main motivator for conquest in both movies, but I'm not positive about Avatar.
Hell, I wrote a short story in high-school with a very similar plot. The noble soldier rebelling to help the helpless fight a futile war against his own people wasn't even a new story when Dances With Wolves came out.

Someone should tell Hollywood that originality is a prerequisite for entertainment, they'll close up shop overnight.

I guess my only point is this...

Cameron hasn't done shit in mainstream fiction for years. He has been working on this movie for years. He has literally been hyping this movie as the very first hyper-real CGI film, something so jaw-droppingly gorgeous to look at that you'll forget about every movie you've ever seen. "I want to show them something that they couldn't have imagined for themselves" is a direct quote I just heard out of his mouth on TV. With a movie like that, as long as the plot and dialogue is serviceable he just might make back his absolutely astounding budget. Original plot or not, it would be fun to watch, and I'm a big subscriber to the notion that it's not necessarily the basic plot of a story that's most important, it's the execution. Then again, if he's had 15 years to work on the script I'd expect better than a case of Lucas-itis.

But people are starting to get worried because, while not ywt seen in 3D, it just looks.... a bit played out. Plasticky. Not much better than what we've seen before in other places. We've seen the trailer, people have seen the 16 minute preview, and it quite simply doesn't look as real as Cameron claimed it would. Add in the fact that it has a generic plot and some (thus far) average dialogue and it makes people nervous. We're a bit past the point where CGI "wows" alone can draw in a crowd, if word gets around that it's boring or that parts of it are "creepy" because of uncanny valley issues or "cartoony", it's done for. People are also worried about what I mentioned before: Lucas-itis, which is what happens when you get so wrapped up in the technical side of things you forget everything else that makes a good movie and run the risk of over-using special effects.

Oh, and I absolutely hate Michelle Rodriguez, that doesn't help from a personal perspective. Her sour face ruins every scene she's in, whether it's real or computer generated. :)
 
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