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

[Kegg]

Look, I'm the first to admit that my tastes are very, well, common. I'm not sophisticated. I don't WANT to be. Hell, my favorite version of BSG is the original, that ought to tell you something! I fully admit that I want the easy way out at all times. I know I'm not likely to get it. But I can still hope. I would just like to see the occasional absolutes - where we know exactly who is good, and who is bad, and who to trust, and who to root for and against. Don't I have the right to enjoy that?

Sure.

So why don't you like Avatar? It's very much a film rooted in absolutes, it's as 'these guys = good, those guys = evil' as the original Battlestar Galactica itself.

You're entitled to think and like whatever you want, surely, but I can't wrap my head around your arguments here.

So this is what makes me mad. They created such a great setting just to ruin it with $hit for a plot.

I felt the setting elevated the plot, but they also organically grew into each other. Pandora is an environment designed from concept-level up for the Avatar story to work, right down to the mystical (sciency) bond of nature.

 

[BorgLady]

I voted that the "Avitar" movie was terrible. My boyfriend and I watched it on Christmas Eve, and we were both terribly disappointed.

Don't get me wrong. The visual effects are spectacularly brilliant, unbeatable as of now. And if you go into the movie for the effects only, you'll come out wide-eyed, and probably teary.

But if you go into the movie for the storyline, the characters, and/or the immersing effect of it as a whole, you'll come out disappointed.

As my boyfriend put it- "save you're money- rent 'Ferngully', throw on some 3D glasses, and you've basically got 'Avitar.'"

 

[Tom Servo]

I voted that the "Avitar" movie was terrible. My boyfriend and I watched it on Christmas Eve, and we were both terribly disappointed.

Don't get me wrong. The visual effects are spectacularly brilliant, unbeatable as of now. And if you go into the movie for the effects only, you'll come out wide-eyed, and probably teary.

But if you go into the movie for the storyline, the characters, and/or the immersing effect of it as a whole, you'll come out disappointed.

As my boyfriend put it- "save you're money- rent 'Ferngully', throw on some 3D glasses, and you've basically got 'Avitar.'"

Avatar...not Avitar...


I swear the more I hear people complain about the supposed lack of plot, and characters in the film, I wonder if I watched the same film. Because the film I saw, while it had a classic, and well used plot, it was done in an interesting way, while giving us some fun and interesting characters.

 

[Captain Craig]

In regards to any sequels using the basis of 'the tech is created/ the F/X ground work laid' so sequels will be cheaper. Ok then, where is that Ghost Rider sequel? How about the Incredible Hulk sequel. I'm sure we could list other break even movies where it took $$$ to create a character and yet the studios didn't rush to create more. Why is that?

Because they didn't make as much money as hoped?

Of course, a sequel to Ghost Rider is in development, expected in 2011.

It's true that The Incredible Hulk didn't make as much money as hoped (though it was still profitable with 263 million worldwide theatrically off a 150 million dollar budget), so Marvel has the character on hold while they exploit a more profitable character (Iron Man) or a potentially more profitable character (Thor) in anticipation of the big Avengers movie, which will probably include Ed Norton as Banner/Hulk.

Because they didn't make as much $$$$ as hoped.
Duh?
Did you not grasp that was my point?
I stated those broke even. Avatar, should it only make a Billion is around break even, thus not making as much as hoped. Irony being it made a lot just not a lot in the profit margin.

 

[Harvey]

A billion dollars strikes me as a little high as a margin of profitability for the film. The film's reported budget (production+marketing) is 400 million dollars, according to this site. Assuming a 50-50 split between distributors and exhibitors, anything over an 800 million dollar take would lead the film to profitability. Considering the film has earned $623,575,721 (domestic+international) in just ten days of release (with only a 3% second weekend drop), the profitability mark of 800 million will likely be reached by next weekend.

And that doesn't even begin to factor in the ancillary profits of DVD and Blu-Ray sales (The Dark Knight earned in excess of 300 million dollars in this market according to the article I've provided), not to mention the tie-in video game and other items (I assume the film has spawned action figures, a tie-in novel, and other materials).

 

[Docbrown777]

I voted that the "Avitar" movie was terrible. My boyfriend and I watched it on Christmas Eve, and we were both terribly disappointed.

Don't get me wrong. The visual effects are spectacularly brilliant, unbeatable as of now. And if you go into the movie for the effects only, you'll come out wide-eyed, and probably teary.

But if you go into the movie for the storyline, the characters, and/or the immersing effect of it as a whole, you'll come out disappointed.

As my boyfriend put it- "save you're money- rent 'Ferngully', throw on some 3D glasses, and you've basically got 'Avitar.'"

Avatar...not Avitar...


I swear the more I hear people complain about the supposed lack of plot, and characters in the film, I wonder if I watched the same film. Because the film I saw, while it had a classic, and well used plot, it was done in an interesting way, while giving us some fun and interesting characters.

"classic well used plot" is what we use to describe unoriginal and overused these days eh?

Interesting characters? The characters were one dimensional and amazingly unamazing! All of them were cookie cutter characters. Evil military commander, evil corporation head guy, nice scientist lady, nice lower level military girl, tough but nice native girl etc.

 

[Harvey]

They certainly sound two dimensional when you describe them so blandly. I thought at least the characters played by Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, and Steven Lang had depth. Well, Lang not so much, but his perfromance was so delicious in its scenery-chewing that I didn't mind.

 

[Captain Craig]

A billion dollars strikes me as a little high as a margin of profitability for the film. The film's reported budget (production+marketing) is 400 million dollars

Commentary about believes it to be higher based on comments Cameron put his own money into this. That is why speculation is more like a Billion. The truth will be in how fast/slow an actual sequel develops. If we see one inside 3yrs, actually in production in 2yrs then it was profitable enough.
We are in an age where sequels get discussed and promised before all the chips have fallen. It took over a year for Superman Returns fans to really grasp all those telling them the movie failed, expect no sequel.
Could be by the time the DVD comes out a significant # don't care about it. More people keep coming into this thread not liking the movie but went based on hype. For every squeaky wheel there are more keeping to themselves somewhere but relating to the sentiment.
No one, certainly not me, is calling Avatar a financial failure....yet. Could happen though.

 

[Kegg]

^
I'm with you there CaptainCraig - we'll know whether or not this film is deemed a success on the basis of whether or not Avatar II gets greenlit. Well, here's hoping.

Depth was all in the performances, mostly, though to Cameron (as a writer)'s credit Worthington got some nice lines and a well constructed arc.

Frankly, the issue isn't whether or not the story is original or whether it's well told, and I think the directing and acting as well as the special effects raise this well above what it could have been. Neytiri is a triumph of all three: In the text, she's literally nothing - just your usual native girl who falls for the hero, a total non-entity with no personality. Saldana plays her well and the SFX/person performance really sells this as a character. Is she the go-to girl now for sci-fi heroines? I submit she might as well be.

Besides, some of the best sci-fi movies have 2D characters. Nobody's going to wax rhapsodic about the complexities of J.J. Adams in Forbidden Planet, are they? Even Walter Pidgeon's Morbius, the film's most complicated character, is basically Prospero the Mad Scientist. And Star Wars is famous for its simple, iconic characters - the hero, the princess, the pirate, the wizard, the dark lord, etc.

My chief problem with the characters - as observed before - is that we have character deaths played for melodrama that feel decidedly unearned because those characters are so poorly sketched out.

 

[Harvey]

No one, certainly not me, is calling Avatar a financial failure....yet. Could happen though.

I think straight financial failure is out of the question at this point, but it could certainly fall off before turning enough of a profit to warrant a sequel (a la Superman Returns). Note that in the article I linked to, it mentioned that Spiderman 3 (which opened strongly but was panned by critics) still made over 100 million dollars in DVD sales.

 

[davejames]

Maybe "interesting" isn't the right word, but I did find the characters in this to be pretty compelling and dynamic. Maybe it had more to do with the actors than the writing, but they still took hold of the screen and commanded your attention all the same (like most characters in a James Cameron movie tend to do).

Jake was incredibly sympathetic and easy to root for from the start, and the Colonel could not have been any nastier.

Plus which, Cameron has said many times this was supposed to be a throwback to the pulpy scifi of his youth, which was more about fun and adventure than complex characters or moral quandaries. I'm a huge fan of that era too, and I thought it captured that spirit perfectly.

 

[Shurik]

I went to see it for the second time and loved it, again. This time I didn't mind that the story is simple and was filmed hundred times before, everything in this movie works perfectly.

And damn, Pandora is beautiful.

 

[Tom Servo]

I voted that the "Avitar" movie was terrible. My boyfriend and I watched it on Christmas Eve, and we were both terribly disappointed.

Don't get me wrong. The visual effects are spectacularly brilliant, unbeatable as of now. And if you go into the movie for the effects only, you'll come out wide-eyed, and probably teary.

But if you go into the movie for the storyline, the characters, and/or the immersing effect of it as a whole, you'll come out disappointed.

As my boyfriend put it- "save you're money- rent 'Ferngully', throw on some 3D glasses, and you've basically got 'Avitar.'"

Avatar...not Avitar...


I swear the more I hear people complain about the supposed lack of plot, and characters in the film, I wonder if I watched the same film. Because the film I saw, while it had a classic, and well used plot, it was done in an interesting way, while giving us some fun and interesting characters.

"classic well used plot" is what we use to describe unoriginal and overused these days eh?

Interesting characters? The characters were one dimensional and amazingly unamazing! All of them were cookie cutter characters. Evil military commander, evil corporation head guy, nice scientist lady, nice lower level military girl, tough but nice native girl etc.

Nope, it's used to describe a plot, that while classic, worked for this film. Aliens had an unoriginal plot too...and that is heralded as a great movie, as it should be.

As for the characters, while none of them were extremely deep characters, so say they were one dimensional is something I disagree with. I enjoyed watching all of them, Sully, Grace, Netyri, Seffridge, and Quatrich...

Not every movie to me is a character piece, and this wasn't nor did it had to be. Nor was Aliens, however, they were both god damn entertaining and great flicks. Not every movie has to have characters of gray, and deep personality conflicts. This was the good guys, vs. the scenery chewing bad guys, and I LOVED every second of it. And yet, Cameron wrote the characters in a way were I enjoyed watching them, I cared for them, and I loved following their exploits.

This is the difference to me, and something like Transformers 2. I enjoyed the first one ( not even nearly as much as Avatar, or any of Camerons flicks), but the second one stunk. The characters were shallow, and I ALSO didn't give a rats ass about any of them.

Avatar was designed to be a world building epic, the same as as Star Wars. If anyone tells me Star Wars characters are deep, I will laugh at them, cause that is totally wrong. They are not that deep as well, but like Avatar, I loved watching them, cause they were fun. It was as much about the world being built, as the characters.

 

[USS KG5]

No one, certainly not me, is calling Avatar a financial failure....yet. Could happen though.

I think straight financial failure is out of the question at this point, but it could certainly fall off before turning enough of a profit to warrant a sequel (a la Superman Returns). Note that in the article I linked to, it mentioned that Spiderman 3 (which opened strongly but was panned by critics) still made over 100 million dollars in DVD sales.

It is also worth mentioning that Avatar through its massive expense and every penny of it being on-screen has really seriously got bums on seats for a film you MUST see in 3D at your local cinema.

I think in an industry that ultimately works on "event" movies, getting the "evening out" dollar and wowing people, it holds a value way beyond its own numbers.

 

[Blue_Trek]

I think people's expectation for plots these days are way way too high. Come on guys for around 75 years Hollywood has been making movies, 99.9% of the plots have been used. A good 25% of them have a sure success rate (re: action, bad guy, good guy, romance, hot woman).
People want these amazing new plots, guess what, if they existed they would already be made. That's why Hollywood has turned to reboots. Even the The Dark Night's plot wasn't so new and exciting, but it had enough edge to it that people generally really liked the movie. And do we even need to mention Titanic.

What I see from these posts is expectation on plot is at an all time high, because special effects and CGI are maxed out.

This movie reminded me a lot of the The Last Samurai in plot, so I recently viewed it again, you know what, it's still a great movie with an old plot.

People with these super high expectation of Hollywood plots are bound to be disappointed in the coming years, as a plethora of super hero and old movie reboots are made.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

Yes, yes ... lower our expectations, we must. Too high, our expectations for plots are. Elude us, the reasons for a glut of bad movies do.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Yes, silly you for not understanding what "one of the goals" means (as in not the only one; being entertaining is certainly another), for assuming that your narrow vision of what scifi should be is the only way it could possibly be entertaining, and for continuously taking the easy and unchallenging path in all things.

I'm not saying everything must be like this. You can have your fancy complicated existentialist twaddle or whatever you call it. I'm just telling you what I prefer. Would you presume to tell me what I can and can't enjoy? How tolerant that must make you feel.

You're the one who said that trying to understand motivation equals justification; that complexity of character and a lack of clear black and white villains and heroes was a negative, which is what I was disagreeing with. Where did I say that you weren't free to enjoy whatever type of story you wanted? I didn't, and you know I didn't. How do you make the leap of logic between finding something silly and telling you that you can't like it? You frequently assume that every general comment people make are somehow ordering you to do something, which is absurd.

Look, I'm the first to admit that my tastes are very, well, common. I'm not sophisticated. I don't WANT to be. Hell, my favorite version of BSG is the original, that ought to tell you something! I fully admit that I want the easy way out at all times. I know I'm not likely to get it. But I can still hope. I would just like to see the occasional absolutes - where we know exactly who is good, and who is bad, and who to trust, and who to root for and against. Don't I have the right to enjoy that?

There are still stories like that, even with the darker, more ambiguous tone of recent scifi offerings.

Whenever we emerge somewhat from this funk of terrorism, government stamping on rights, bitter ideological divides, and economic downturns I'll expect you to get more of the type of unambiguous villains and heroes you enjoy. Not that it will ever completely go away (nor will the problems themselves, which simply ebb and flow), and the generation growing up now will influence future scifi with their own impressions of the societies they were raised in.

 

[Kelso]

Besides, some of the best sci-fi movies have 2D characters. Nobody's going to wax rhapsodic about the complexities of J.J. Adams in Forbidden Planet, are they? Even Walter Pidgeon's Morbius, the film's most complicated character, is basically Prospero the Mad Scientist. And Star Wars is famous for its simple, iconic characters - the hero, the princess, the pirate, the wizard, the dark lord, etc.

Yeah, really. I'm a little surprised at the amount of criticism this film is getting on a BBS where film franchises like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Star Trek are regularly heralded.

 

[Hyperspace05]

Besides, some of the best sci-fi movies have 2D characters. Nobody's going to wax rhapsodic about the complexities of J.J. Adams in Forbidden Planet, are they? Even Walter Pidgeon's Morbius, the film's most complicated character, is basically Prospero the Mad Scientist. And Star Wars is famous for its simple, iconic characters - the hero, the princess, the pirate, the wizard, the dark lord, etc.

Yeah, really. I'm a little surprised at the amount of criticism this film is getting on a BBS where film franchises like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Star Trek are regularly heralded.

Indeed. But most seem to grade on the how the film lived up to hype (or their idea of the hype)... not on the film itself. Strange, but I guess some do it that way.

But still, 80% of TrekBBS users rated it as 'excellent' or 'above average'. Yet, it is the remaining 20% who do the most posting here.

 

[Harvey]

To be fair, advertising has been heralding it as nothing short of a revolution in filmmaking. So that brings certain expectations. Rather high expectations.