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

[Robert Maxwell]

I just wanted to get back to one point...if surgery existed to repair serious damage to the spine, soldiers would be the first ones to get it. People like Jake Sully wouldn't have to worry about not having the money to pay for it. But Cameron insisted on going with the one-dimensional, wacky liberal interpretation with this one.

You're assuming he had some special skills that made him worth the expense. Why spend the money to fix one man when you could spend it training a couple more to replace him?

The only reason he ended up having any significance at all was just dumb luck, being the identical twin of an avatar researcher.

 

[Gepard]

^They also mentioned the Earth having a shitty economy early in the film, so one could take that as a blanket cover for the government not having enough money to pay for a veteran's medical care.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

^They also mentioned the Earth having a shitty economy early in the film, so one could take that as a blanket cover for the government not having enough money to pay for a veteran's medical care.

He specifically said VA benefits don't cover spinal repair. So, yeah, sounds like government budget cuts to me.

One wonders if this little Na'vi uprising helped to further tank Earth's economy. No more unobtainium, company goes under, thousands lose their jobs, and the government has to cut back the military since they no longer have Pandora to worry about.

Sully, you selfish bastard!

 

[MarianLH]

Saw it yesterday. The 3D effect made me ill.

I found the movie to be exactly as all the reviews (and most people here) have described it: an incredible spectable wrapped around a mediocre story. It hits all the Mighty Whitey cliches so note-perfect it's like Cameron made a checklist.

I give it an average.

The film is depressingly accurate about its portrayal of colonialism, though. Unlike some people in this thread, I found it entirely believable that the soldiers were willing to massacre the natives. And the use of marines as the company's muscle makes me wonder if Cameron's read War Is A Racket, the 1935 book by retired USCM general Smedley Butler.

And, with those mechs... can we get a Battletech movie now?

Hear hear!

I need help.

Why? You already found it.


Marian

 

[Stiletto]

"Nuke the tree from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" would have robbed us of the final battle, which was awesome, but logical for the corporation.

 

[Kaijima]

"Nuke the tree from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" would have robbed us of the final battle, which was awesome, but logical for the corporation.

Actually, the story makes it clear at several points (including the book Grace is holding she wrote about the Na'vi) that Pandora is a famous discovery for humanity, and the Na'vi are probably well known all over Earth - after all, if people discovered intelligent aliens, wouldn't everyone on Earth be fixated on knowing more about them?

Because of that, unleashing the nukes across Pandora would probably never be an option whatsoever because of the popular opinion backlash. Like most corporations, RDA would probably prefer to manipulate public opinion and perception as much as possible while performing whatever ethically questionable activities under the table - even if those activities are not actually illegal.

In short, one could hypothosize that Earth is treating Pandora with kid gloves, relatively speaking. Too many people on Earth know about the Na'vi, and maybe even have a positive, sympathetic view of them thanks to people like Grace. Mr. Company Man (I forget his name) looked pensive as he finally gave the order to attack. For all his bluster about making the dumb savages get out of the way, he clearly had a lot of concern for how their actions would be seen back home. He smelled a PR disaster in the making.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

"Nuke the tree from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" would have robbed us of the final battle, which was awesome, but logical for the corporation.

Actually, the story makes it clear at several points (including the book Grace is holding she wrote about the Na'vi) that Pandora is a famous discovery for humanity, and the Na'vi are probably well known all over Earth - after all, if people discovered intelligent aliens, wouldn't everyone on Earth be fixated on knowing more about them?

Because of that, unleashing the nukes across Pandora would probably never be an option whatsoever because of the popular opinion backlash. Like most corporations, RDA would probably prefer to manipulate public opinion and perception as much as possible while performing whatever ethically questionable activities under the table - even if those activities are not actually illegal.

In short, one could hypothosize that Earth is treating Pandora with kid gloves, relatively speaking. Too many people on Earth know about the Na'vi, and maybe even have a positive, sympathetic view of them thanks to people like Grace. Mr. Company Man (I forget his name) looked pensive as he finally gave the order to attack. For all his bluster about making the dumb savages get out of the way, he clearly had a lot of concern for how their actions would be seen back home. He smelled a PR disaster in the making.

Yeah, I doubt anyone on Earth would care about the destruction of a tree, but he was clearly concerned about the "collateral damage" involved in firebombing the place. If word got out of a high Na'vi body count it wouldn't look good. If they were not concerned about this, they wouldn't have bothered with the science team at all.

 

[Kaijima]

Upon further reflection, it's almost not fair to say Avatar is "just average" if you discount its visual effects. Now, this is not defending a bad story; there are bits of the story I'd personally polish up, and there's some bad, bad dialog in there that Cameron is going to regret a few years down the line when the cheap political references he's making are no longer relevant.

However, the story is supposed to make you care about Pandora, about its environment, and about the Na'vi. Hell, it has the problem of selling a modern day, and very human audience, on an "adult" movie staring fictional alien cat people as its main characters. Who are on screen most of the time.

One half of Avatar's "story", then, is a visual story. You couldn't tell it without a convincing world, without Pandora being a real place, and without the audience feeling both awe at the world and regret at seeing it damaged. A good example is the scene where the (smaller) trees of the ancestors are bulldozed over and Neyteri cries in shock and anguish. Without showing us a sight we would appreciate for its beauty the previous night, the scene of just another random kind of funny looking alien tree being knocked down would have seemed pedestrian and trite. "*snort*, it's just a stupid message about tree hugging!"

Some people will still react to the story that way regardless. But it stands a greater chance of having the story elements taken seriously if we can take the characters and the fictional world seriously. This is where the movie succeeds and where too many similar sci-fi and fantasy movies with a message failed to varying degrees; not able to present a vista you can believe in. At least, now without being a big sci-fi and fantasy geek and being used to suspending your disbelief when you see a fake looking alien world with some trees splashed with purple paint.

It's kinda like saying Jurassic Park is an average movie without the pretty visuals. As translated into screenplay form, the story is a lot weaker than the novel in many ways. It's much more average. But half the point of the movie is making you believe the dinosaurs are real and that a t-rex is really chasing the characters. The half of the story told with images and not dialog, succeeds.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Even though the story was simple and familiar, I "bought" it. I didn't want their forest to be razed, I didn't like seeing their "home tree" brought down. I was glad to see the Na'vi band together and give the humans their comeuppance. I have to say, though, I think I felt more sympathy for Pandora itself than I did for the Na'vi. The Na'vi weren't characterized that well, aside from Neytiri and a couple others. The planet, on the other hand, felt like an entity unto itself (which it was, for the purposes of the story), and the mining company/military goons felt like parasitic invaders into a healthy organism.

 

[AJBryant]

You know, I'm really tired of the whole "white man turns his back on his evil society and joins the Noble Savage in a quest for redemption" story line. It was old when it was "Dances With Wolves," it was old in "Dances with Samurai" (er, "Last Samurai," sorry), and so on. Basically, this is Fern Gully with a big budget.

Yeah, it's pretty.

But, sorry. I can't turn my mind off and ignore the black and white cliche story.

 

[Hyperspace05]

I must say I love seeing all this newfound love for original stories. Hopefully the same analysis and grading will be applied to future films you see.

Otherwise it seems like many are grading this on 'hype' - and while that isn't exactly wrong (your grade is your grade), I get the distinct feeling that quite a few are grading this lower than TF2 and/or 2012. And that just blows my mind.

With or without hype, this is certainly the best film I have seen this year - beating out "Star Trek" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (ok so sue me - I just saw it on DVD for the first time recently)

 

[Danoz]

Truly nothing short of the best movie I have ever seen.

 

[sto vo kor]

Saw it yesterday and it was brilliant, will probably watch it tomorrow too.

 

[DarthPipes]

Looks like Avatar did better than expected. According to Box Office Mojo, it grossed just over $77 million.

One other thing...perhaps another reason they didn't nuke the planet was concerned about damaging the "assests." At the very least, I can't imagine it being very fun to pull minerals and resources out of a nuclear wasteland.

 

[Hyperspace05]

Looks like Avatar did better than expected. According to Box Office Mojo, it grossed just over $77 million.

One other thing...perhaps another reason they didn't nuke the planet was concerned about damaging the "assests." At the very least, I can't imagine it being very fun to pull minerals and resources out of a nuclear wasteland.

While it is not explicitly stated in the film, the RDA does have limitations on what it is allowed to do: (see the pandorapedia here: http://www.pandorapedia.com/doku.php/the_rda ) A quote:

The Resources Development Administration (RDA) has monopoly rights to all products shipped, derived or developed from Pandora and any other off-Earth location. These rights were granted to RDA in perpetuity by the Interplanetary Commerce Administration (ICA), with the stipulation that they abide by a treaty that prohibits weapons of mass destruction and limits military power in space.

Otherwise the RDA doesn't really have much infrastructure there. No space station, other than visiting starships every few years, which are limited to small cargo. Almost all their equipment is manufactured in-situ. The Pandorapedia goes into a lot of detail on it.

And like militaries are known for being cheap on equipment, corporations are even worse.

 

[Stiletto]

OK, maybe not NUKE, how about Mass Driver? Drop a rock on it from space where the Na'vi can't fly up to?

I guess I am nit picking but I did enjoy the movie a whole hell of a lot!

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

The problem with this movie is it borders on almost cliche. Hell, even the 'enemy' was paper thin at best.

I would have liked more of a internal conflict.

So the rocks they wanted is worth money? Meh. Now if the rocks were important to the redevelopment of mankind, that would be a very interesting conflict.

 

[Dark Gilligan]

The problem with this movie is it borders on almost cliche. Hell, even the 'enemy' was paper thin at best.

The technical achievement of the film is more important than the story. A new threshold has been crossed. Yes, the narrative is light-weight at best. That was never the point. Cameron's purpose was to create a new benchmark in cinemetography, and he did.

 

[Hyperspace05]

So the rocks they wanted is worth money? Meh. Now if the rocks were important to the redevelopment of mankind, that would be a very interesting conflict.

Cameron on purpose is vague about what Unobtanium is used for. It is a decision he made - because it just wasn't important to the core plot. It is just another valuable compound (like gold, diamonds, oil, and more) that causes conflict when 'belongs' to someone else.

But is implied in the film that Unobtanium is not crucial for Earth. It will not save Earth. It is just a very expensive resource the RDA is making big bucks off.

One of the ironies is of course, like Grace notes, that they are blind to the greater treasure around them.

 

[Jax]

Don't know if reported due to am skimming posts because I don't see it till tommorow...

FOX REVISES FIGURES: 'AVATAR' No. 2 December Record With $77.025M Domestic; Opens To $242.3M Worldwide

Good start and so close to beating I Am Legend to best Opening weekend over christmas.