James Cameron's "Avatar" (grading and discussion)
- Thread starter chrisspringob
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Yep. There will be people directing movies in a generation who will say "Avatar was the movie that made me want to do this."
Yeah, because they realize they can do it way better than a guy whose half-effort made a billion dollars.
Well, I'm not going to convince.. you're head is far too buried in the snad.. but I will say there is a difference between arty, subtle films and epic films. Sure, the Wizard of Oz doesn't habe the subtle edginess of No Country for Old Men or the topical subject matter of A Beautiful Mind, but they are all considered great films by many people and critics.
If you think you can do it better, why aren't you?
Yeah, because they realize they can do it way better than a guy whose half-effort made a billion dollars.
The Wizard of Oz is very edgy, full of allusions to silver backed currency.
As for Dennis' love for Avatar, he didn't get Star Wars.
People would watch Star Wars in the theatre, watch the credits roll, and then get in line again! Over and over they'd watch it.
Why?
Because it was the first movie in a long time that was in wide-screen and the first to have modern audio-quality, including bandwidth and stereo. Prior movies were in mono with a junky speaker positioned behind the middle of the screen. Far more significant than being immersed in the Star Wars universe, they were immersed in a new movie-going experience.
Avatar makes the same breakthrough. People want to see it because it's a 3-D spectacle. Seen on the small screen, in 2-D, it's a pretty lame flick. Not a bad movie, by any means, but nothing that would justify the hype, much like first seeing Star Wars on VHS on a 15" TV.
As for Dennis' love for Avatar, he didn't get Star Wars.
People would watch Star Wars in the theatre, watch the credits roll, and then get in line again! Over and over they'd watch it.
Why?
Because it was the first movie in a long time that was in wide-screen and the first to have modern audio-quality, including bandwidth and stereo. Prior movies were in mono with a junky speaker positioned behind the middle of the screen. Far more significant than being immersed in the Star Wars universe, they were immersed in a new movie-going experience.
Avatar makes the same breakthrough. People want to see it because it's a 3-D spectacle. Seen on the small screen, in 2-D, it's a pretty lame flick. Not a bad movie, by any means, but nothing that would justify the hype, much like first seeing Star Wars on VHS on a 15" TV.
If you think you can do it better, why aren't you?
Yeah, because they realize they can do it way better than a guy whose half-effort made a billion dollars.
The same can be asked of anyone here regarding the Star Wars prequels. Nobody on TrekBBS would've produced something as worthy of derision as The Phantom Menace.
I agree with some of your last point.
But they could also be seeing Avatar for other reasons. In that audio clip, they were talking about how people returned to Titanic - they know not only how it ends, but also all the beats of the story, having seen the film many times, but they are going again. and again, to watch the very craftsmanship of the scenes, how they are put together. Cameron might not be the master of subtlety, but he is a master filmmaker, painting his films on a large canvas. That's the craftsmanship people are seeing again and again on Titanic.
But they could also be seeing Avatar for other reasons. In that audio clip, they were talking about how people returned to Titanic - they know not only how it ends, but also all the beats of the story, having seen the film many times, but they are going again. and again, to watch the very craftsmanship of the scenes, how they are put together. Cameron might not be the master of subtlety, but he is a master filmmaker, painting his films on a large canvas. That's the craftsmanship people are seeing again and again on Titanic.
Exactly.
Well Avatar was certainly well-crafted. Cameron is a master of visual story telling and the unwritten language of how our brains interpret sequences of visual information to form a coherent mental image of action. My only complaint is that he should've spent another two weeks working on the script so our higher brain functions could enjoy the film as much as our monkey brains.
Cameron knows his audience too. He knows that not everyone wants the most complex and subtle characters out there. You might want them, and at times, I might as well, but he knows how craft an epic for everyone. People that are not into science fiction films are seeing something in Avatar just as people who didn't want to see Titanic ended up enjoying it.
But people who wanted to enjoy Titanic ended up floating in freezing waters of the North Atlantic. Now how fun was that?
In the Terminators he blew up LA and the rest of the world not once, but probably several times.
In Avatar he wiped out an innocent village for his profits.
He's a menace!!!
In the Terminators he blew up LA and the rest of the world not once, but probably several times.
In Avatar he wiped out an innocent village for his profits.
He's a menace!!!
ST-One
Vice Admiral
Do you really believe that? I know that is a common theory floated out there, but I have yet to see two samples presented that proves it.And Direhorses sounded like Velociraptors? That's a new one...
That is not a matter of believing... I can hear it.
If you see the movie again, you can hear it too especially in the sequence where the thanator attacks Jake when he crawls under those tree-roots.
The direhorses' snorting sound is the same that the Velociraptors make when they call out for each other.
The other point is that "higher brain functions" may not have stood any more story. I've seen "Avatar" twice now (would like to see it a third time). The people that I work with have noticed the same thing I did, when you go back a second time you see things, even whole scenes that you missed the first time. Avatar can be an overload.
One point I've seen made is that good books (and one can say good movies) stand up to repeated viewing. It doesn't matter if you know the ending or not, you will read the book or rewatch the movie. There are books that have been in print years and years like "Gone With the Wind", and movies like "The Wizard of Oz" that get watched over and over.
"Titanic" certainly got watched over and over (and I didn't care for Titanic myself but I can respect its audience enough to know that was a personal dislike and not something wrong with the movie). "Avatar" is also getting watched over and over, by an awful lot of people.
Brit
That truly is the mark of a good story -- but for me, Avatar isn't that good story. In my second viewing, the pace slowed, the dialogue was more grating, the characters (aside from Neytiri) were much less compelling (and in some cases more annoying). What was still enjoyable was Neytiri's character and Jake's first-flight sequence. Those held up remarkably well. Otherwise, the simplistic tale, caricatured characters and hackneyed plot and dialogue all became much more of a liability.
Had the story been presented with a bit more complexity or craft (it didn't have the be The Wire but it should have been more nuanced) then the added layers would have helped make the second viewing more enjoyable and enlightening. As it is, for me, repeat viewings only reinforce the flaws.
ST-One
Vice Admiral
And yet you spent not only time but also money to watch it a second time.
There must have been something to the movie that compelled you do that.
The only thing really simplistic about the tale was the ridiculous science. The floating mountains, characters surviving extreme falls, bizarre walkways in the sky, waterfalls without a source of water. Most simplistic of all, the Religion That Works, even if Grace drivels about ten to the twelfth. But in all these pages, no one complains about that. It's not real, it's not honest, it's just there for the happy ending. If Avatar has a fundamental flaw, that't it. But the white guys getting beaten by the blue guys isn't simplistic, some people just find it unpleasant.
The Indians winning isn't done enough to be hackneyed. This is as untrue as the idiotic claims the movie was predictable. Sully didn't save them all by exposing the nefarious corporation. Sully didn't defeat the evil suitor to win Neytiri's hand. Neytiri didn't save Sully from her father the ruler. The evil suitor died a heroic death, not a cowardly one. Said evil suitor didn't even argue against Sully from jealouy and spite. Sully didn't plan the strategy that won the battle. Sully didn't slay the evil Quaritch just as the villain was about to murder his lady love. Sully basically makes a confession of sin on behalf of humanity. Sully's massive white superiority doesn't make him a forceful, awesomely cool character who immediately impresses every character. Sully isn't the only one who plays the hero. Quarritch is awesomely bad ass but Grace is mean. The white guys ("we") lose. The white guys ("we") do the perp walk. The movie repeatedly defies cliches and predictability.
The fact that someone watching the movie can draw the proper conclusion from the Grace death scene merely means that Cameron foreshadowed a deus ex machina. This is widely held to take to make it not a deus ex machina. The continued inanity of chatter about predictability and caricature has demonstrated nothing. It's merely popularized the shameless pretense that large numbers of people remember Ferngully.
At bottom, the demand for nuance is a howl of outrage at white people/business/the military being portrayed as villains. There is a strange principle that the real world is supposed to be excluded from discussions such as this. But if it were allowed as evidence, it would soon be obvious that Avatar is quite restrained in its portrayal of villainy.
As good as Avatar's US box office is, the last time I looked, the foreign/domestic split was about 70% to 30%. Something like Dark Knight split it like 45% to 55%. And something like Star Trek split it like 33% to 67%. Isn't it interesting to think about why?
The Indians winning isn't done enough to be hackneyed. This is as untrue as the idiotic claims the movie was predictable. Sully didn't save them all by exposing the nefarious corporation. Sully didn't defeat the evil suitor to win Neytiri's hand. Neytiri didn't save Sully from her father the ruler. The evil suitor died a heroic death, not a cowardly one. Said evil suitor didn't even argue against Sully from jealouy and spite. Sully didn't plan the strategy that won the battle. Sully didn't slay the evil Quaritch just as the villain was about to murder his lady love. Sully basically makes a confession of sin on behalf of humanity. Sully's massive white superiority doesn't make him a forceful, awesomely cool character who immediately impresses every character. Sully isn't the only one who plays the hero. Quarritch is awesomely bad ass but Grace is mean. The white guys ("we") lose. The white guys ("we") do the perp walk. The movie repeatedly defies cliches and predictability.
The fact that someone watching the movie can draw the proper conclusion from the Grace death scene merely means that Cameron foreshadowed a deus ex machina. This is widely held to take to make it not a deus ex machina. The continued inanity of chatter about predictability and caricature has demonstrated nothing. It's merely popularized the shameless pretense that large numbers of people remember Ferngully.
At bottom, the demand for nuance is a howl of outrage at white people/business/the military being portrayed as villains. There is a strange principle that the real world is supposed to be excluded from discussions such as this. But if it were allowed as evidence, it would soon be obvious that Avatar is quite restrained in its portrayal of villainy.
As good as Avatar's US box office is, the last time I looked, the foreign/domestic split was about 70% to 30%. Something like Dark Knight split it like 45% to 55%. And something like Star Trek split it like 33% to 67%. Isn't it interesting to think about why?
Of course. That "something" was the fact that I actually like the movie. It's fun. It's a beautiful spectacle. But that doesn't mean that the film is without flaw or legitimate criticism. Nor does that mean that I'm not disappointed that so much effort went into an innovative story world that featured a story that was anything but innovative. The story itself isn't bad ... it's just not a great story, which is disappointing. I also went back to see if my criticisms were truly justified, or if I had missed something the first time through.
Put simply, I enjoyed the film as a whole. I'm happy that it's experienced so much success. The story works, obviously. But I surely wish the story had been something better. More nuanced. Less predictable. With better dialogue. Deeper characters. And so on. Liking a movie and being disappointed in parts of its production are not mutually exclusive.
My experience as well. This is, in fact, a very good story and well told; most of the dialogue is note-perfect (too much exposition in the beginning; "Shock and awe" was heavy-handed rather than direct and unsubtle). The movie would not be doing as well as it is, otherwise - people confuse not liking a story with it being a "bad story;" many people profess to have found Jack and Rose's romance intolerable.
I can't wait to get a copy of this script. It's a model for how to do this kind of sf movie.
In fact, I'd think that a big challenge for a sequel will be coming up with a story that works nearly as well as this one.
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