MeanJoePhaser
Admiral
Is this movie still out? 
James Cameron's "Avatar" (grading and discussion)
- Thread starter chrisspringob
- Start date
What's an Avatar?
I'm just shocked by how many people have seen Ferngully. I feel like the only person who hasn't seen it.
Well, I didn't see any evil as I define it. I saw greed, ignorance, violence, militiarism, jealousy, destruction, intolerance, hypocrisy (many of these from members of both races) and I saw a distressing act of terrorism/destruction/eco-vandalism in the toppling of Hometree. I didn't see evil, as I define it. That always pleases me.
Both humanity and Na'viity (so to speak) were treated with respect in my view. Indeed, saving Pandora from the exploiters was the work of humanity and na'viity together. Some of Jake's actions, even after "becoming" Na'vi, were entirely and utterly human. Humanity saved the day just as Na'viity did. And both races had their assholes and their friendly types.
Oh, speak for yourself. I actually quite like Quarritch.
The hilarity of hanging around on a Trek board is being able to click in a moment from a forum where adults are seriously arguing over whether a mildly clever and adequate movie from the 1980s called "Star Trek II" is more timelessly brilliant and deserving of uncritical adulation than a mildly funny and adequate movie called "Star Trek IV" over to a forum where some of the same people call Avatar derivative crap. Christ, I'm a Trek fan but I can still tell that Avatar is at least fifty times the creative effort and success that any of the old-style Star Trek movies ever were.
Agreed. Compared to the petulant Nero, Quaritch was much more calm and calculated of a villain.
he became... the planet learn't him some lessons... he almost got his jujubeads ate... then he never wanted to leave... how long was he there? how many tours of duty... I wouldn't expect the next clone to be as psychologically damaged as the original was.
The scene where Jake tames and then flies on the creature felt too long and not emotionally connecting or compelling. The animals that initially separated Jake looked a little too computer-generated.
I also felt some scenes were too-Pocahontasy, especially Neytiri first guiding Jake and when the other tribes were informed.
I thought it was fairly popular in its day. Most people I know have seen it anyway.
1) I never claimed to be speaking for anyone other than myself.
2) I enjoyed Avatar. It was a very well-done movie. Unfortunately, for me, when you strip away the awesome visuals and just examine the story, it's really nothing special. Yes, it's good, and it's still one of the better things out there right now, but I found most of it to be very predictable.
3) I think TWOK is horribly overrated as well. Hell, as much as I like Star Trek, there are dozens of things I would rank higher than any of the Trek movies or shows. I've been exposed to so many things since I watched Trek regularly that it's actually kind of hard to impress me anymore, which is probably one of the reasons that Avatar, while a very good movie, doesn't even break my Top 10.
Part of the problem seems to be that people accept the stuff that they're initially exposed to in youth as essentially original - any awareness that it was all being recycled from earlier generations is apprehended only much later, and then only intellectually. So you have people pointing at recent movies like "Pocahontas" or "Dances With Wolves" as if they're the archetypical tellings of some very, very old tales.
You try to tell kids that everything except the visual extravagance of Star Wars was old and familiar to an adult on opening night in 1977 and they don't get it.
Just little bit about the Gone With the Wind
There is no doubt that it has very impressive ticket sales.
If you take it's unadjusted total gross and divide it by the price of a movie in 1939 which is .23 cents here is what you get.
$198,676,459.00 / .23 = 863,810,691 tickets sold
Of coarse this is the absolute optimum in ticket sales because it was re-released many times at higher ticket prices. But not much higher. Gone with the Wind was given theatrical re-releases in 1947(.40c), 1954(.45c) and 1961(.69c) It was re-released in 1967($1.20). That's an average of about .60 cents.
$198,676,459.00 / .60 = 331,127,432 tickets sold
Now Avatar
2 Billion / $7.46 = 268,096,515 tickets sold
Adjusted to the estimated 2010 average ticket price of $7.46.
But 1939 is VERY different from 2010, in what we have to entertain ourselves, back then they had cinema and radio and that was just about it. Look what we have today.
Comparisons are interesting to make but these two movies can't be compared, it's like saying what is the best professional sports team of all time? And then you compare the New York Yankee's in baseball with the Montreal Canadians in hockey. It's a pointless debate.
There is no doubt that it has very impressive ticket sales.
If you take it's unadjusted total gross and divide it by the price of a movie in 1939 which is .23 cents here is what you get.
$198,676,459.00 / .23 = 863,810,691 tickets sold
Of coarse this is the absolute optimum in ticket sales because it was re-released many times at higher ticket prices. But not much higher. Gone with the Wind was given theatrical re-releases in 1947(.40c), 1954(.45c) and 1961(.69c) It was re-released in 1967($1.20). That's an average of about .60 cents.
$198,676,459.00 / .60 = 331,127,432 tickets sold
Now Avatar
2 Billion / $7.46 = 268,096,515 tickets sold
Adjusted to the estimated 2010 average ticket price of $7.46.
But 1939 is VERY different from 2010, in what we have to entertain ourselves, back then they had cinema and radio and that was just about it. Look what we have today.
Comparisons are interesting to make but these two movies can't be compared, it's like saying what is the best professional sports team of all time? And then you compare the New York Yankee's in baseball with the Montreal Canadians in hockey. It's a pointless debate.
Exactly so.
Well, let's examine what Star Trek could learn from Avatar.
The hero of the movie needs to be a moronic fuck-up. Let's use Lt. Barkley, even though Sully makes him look like Einstein.
Aiding him should be a girl who turns her back on us, such as Ensign Ro Laren.
So Barkley goes native and he and Ro blow up the Enterprise and kill most of the crew, taking the rest prisoner and shipping them to Romulus. The audience cheers and the movie makes more than any four Star Trek movies combined.
The hero of the movie needs to be a moronic fuck-up. Let's use Lt. Barkley, even though Sully makes him look like Einstein.
Aiding him should be a girl who turns her back on us, such as Ensign Ro Laren.
So Barkley goes native and he and Ro blow up the Enterprise and kill most of the crew, taking the rest prisoner and shipping them to Romulus. The audience cheers and the movie makes more than any four Star Trek movies combined.
Well isn't that pretty much Avatar's story? Sully is presented as a moron who wouldn't even be there except that his brighter brother had been killed. Everyone makes fun of him as an incompetent boob, similar to the way Lt. Barclay was treated on Star Trek. So with the help of other malcontents, Sully goes native and rebels against his own people, fellow former Marines and such. Ensign Ro Laren could fill the roll of Dr. Grace Augustine, and together they could rebel against the crew of the Enterprise and destroy the ship in an epic battle, taking the survivors prisoner and then smooching.
My question is that if this is the kind of plot that makes a blockbuster, why can't Star Trek pull it off? Is it because Star Trek villains are either people or people wearing bumpy forehead ridges instead of being completely CGI? Are Star Trek villains just not blue enough?
You can't really blame Star Trek plots because Avatar's plot was completely predictable and stale.
My question is that if this is the kind of plot that makes a blockbuster, why can't Star Trek pull it off? Is it because Star Trek villains are either people or people wearing bumpy forehead ridges instead of being completely CGI? Are Star Trek villains just not blue enough?
You can't really blame Star Trek plots because Avatar's plot was completely predictable and stale.
Yeah, because in Avatar Jake rebelled pretty much out of the blue (no pun intended), without any reason, just because he liked to be a blue cat dude. The Earth people were harmless colonists who had absolutely no intention to harm the natives and the natives were just a primitive half-animals who didn't understand the wonders of a human civilization. So when the Na'vi rebelled, they blew up the Earth colony and used the surviving humans for slaves.
Sounds just like the Avatar I've seen, twice.
The reason he gave was that he fell in love with the forest, of all things. 
He'd already agreed to help destroy the Na'vi in return for some new legs, so it's not like he had any morality to begin with. It's not like he was defending the natives because he'd already failed at that. He just wanted to send the humans a message.
Of course, more evidence that he's a moron is that he doesn't seem to know anything about Western history. Whether in Africa, North America, or Asia, whenever natives without foreign support and foreign weapons dealt a crushing blow to a small Western military unit they just got steamrollered by ten to a hundred times more Westerners. The outcome was almost always the same.
In essence, all Sully did was help lead the charge against General Custer. How did that work out in the end?
He'd already agreed to help destroy the Na'vi in return for some new legs, so it's not like he had any morality to begin with. It's not like he was defending the natives because he'd already failed at that. He just wanted to send the humans a message.
Of course, more evidence that he's a moron is that he doesn't seem to know anything about Western history. Whether in Africa, North America, or Asia, whenever natives without foreign support and foreign weapons dealt a crushing blow to a small Western military unit they just got steamrollered by ten to a hundred times more Westerners. The outcome was almost always the same.
In essence, all Sully did was help lead the charge against General Custer. How did that work out in the end?
To show you the absurdity of your argument, I'm going to say this: Not too long ago, in some parts of the world, you'd be regarded as a black person if there was any traces of black ancestry in you family tree, despite the fact you'd look as white as can be. Common sense, though, would have made you a white person.
The Indians totaly pwned him at the Battle of Little Bighorn?
You need to watch this movie again, you obviously missed the point of it.
Jake's views and opinions of the situation changed through his dealings with the natives and chickie-alien and he realized what the humans were doing was wrong (which it was.) He then helped the aliens defend their planet from an the invading humans.
Yeah, the Indians won The Battle of Little Bighorn but in the grand scheme of things lost the overall war. And look at the Indians now, there's hardly any! We utter defeated them. We (the white people) marched onto their land, kicked their asses, and have raped their land. Go us. Sorry, we're in the "wrong" in this situation. Now, at the same time what happened here was just a simple case of us being better equiped. What happened was evolution at play. The stronger beating the weaker.
But Avatar's situation is completely different. The Natives and Colonists were both part of the same planet, what happened was one members of the planet being better able to conquer than the others. That all changes when you cross interstellar distances and start kicking around natives. We had no right to Pandora in any evolutionary sense.
I know what you're doing here, gturner, I'm familiar with your tactics and postions from your posting in TNZ. You're taking the extreme asshat approach against a popular opinion. You're trying to stir up shit. Plain and simple.