Avatar (2009)

[Rothgar]

Finally saw the movie today in 3D IMAX. I had no idea the technology had advanced so far!

It was fantastic! When I say that I mean it in two ways. 1: it's a science fiction fantasy story- it isn't a hard science film which means it's going to require some suspension of disbelief. 2: as a film in 3D it was amazing. I haven't been drawn into a film like that in years. Is it perfect? Of course not. But there is real character development and as the story progresses you really care about these characters when they and their world are facing total destruction.

For those who complain about it not being 'original'- What truly is completely original these days? Yes, it has similar story elements to 'Call Me Joe' and 'Dances with Wolves' but you can relate it to a lot of other stories also. 'The Last Samurai' with Tom Cruise, 'Aliens' with the evil corporation messing with a world they don't understand, 'John Carter of Mars', 'The Matrix' running around in bodies that aren't your own, 'Starship Troopers' with beefed up mech suits, 'Dune', there were even a couple moments that reminded me of 'Excalibur'.

The bottom line is that this movie can stand on its own. If you don't care for it that's fine, but decide that after you've seen it.

 

[Mary Hoffman]

Saw it last night with husband, who goes to very few films, and both really enjoyed it. The dialogue is clunky and the plot predictable at every point. And the 3D did not add much to the film in my opinion, but the characters were attractive, especially when they were Na'vi (is that where the apostrophe goes?).

The images linger in the mind.

 

[Parson]

Let me say that I am glad I did not read this thread before I went to the movie. I loved it and I'm not sure I would have if I had known about all of the carping about the details. I sat on the edge of my seat with my heart pounding the whole time. Okay, you knew how it had to end. But I had to reassure my wife, she was ready to walk out because she was afraid of a bad ending. I would not hesitate a second to recommend this movie to anyone who wants to see a good movie. For me this movie ranks right up there with the original Star Wars movie, which to me, is far and away the best SF movie I've ever seen.

 

[bobbo19]

I've seen it, that is to say I saw it. I hope you guys don't mind if I get a little bit critical. Ok it looked amazing, particularly the flora, the alien plants and the world did look amazing, the fauna, the animals look pretty good too. I liked the black panther/dog things, I liked the hammerhead rhinos too. But I didn't think it was that good a story, I don't even think the 3D added anything to the film.
It looked great, but the 3D sometimes got in the way of the fast paced action. The story was predictable, but at some points very tense. I liked it when Jake was eating as his avatar was about to be squished by the giant JCB things.
I laughed out loud when I saw the general holding a cup of tea (coffee) as they go into battle. But so many problems.
Unobtanium was almost irrelevant, why blow up the tree when there were floating mountains, why were they floating? it didn't really say, they would expect us to assume that they were mountains of unobtanium, but then why not drag a mountain back to thier base instead of blowing up a massive tree that was 'sitting on the largest pile of unobtanium for 20 clicks'
Isn't a click about a mile or a kilometre? so are they that lazy that they can only be bothered to forage for this immensely expensive (imaginary) element within a radius of 20 kilometres on a forest moon light years from earth.
Where was this moon, it took 6 years to get there but they didn't say how, or where it was.
how come the general was able to breathe the air for more than 20 seconds, unlike everyone else he could just stroll out in it and start shooting (with his breath held?)
what was going on with the hair thing, how can a plait (I think thats the spelling) somehow include the optic fibre things that can act like brain wiring neurons? They just plait the hair together and magically the end has some things that talk to all the creatures, and then Jake even shaves some of his head, so how does that not effect the plait things?
I see James Cameron has upgraded his robot suit things from Aliens, cool.
the end battle was good when you got to see how big the Na'vi were compared to humans, the giant arrows were cool. Although at one point they couldn't pierce glass and they later on they could.
sorry for my rant, but I only liked the look of the flora and very little else about this film. Shame

Yo dude, he could not reveal everything now could he, how else is he gonna make a trilogy? lol

And the palnet is in the Alpha Centauri A system, aka one of the closest stars to our dearest Sol.

 

[Allegra]

Watched it yesterday and really enjoyed it largely because of the visual effect. It's a shame a film like this does not have remarkable music.

 

[Allegra]

The film's animation supervisor talks about the techniques:

YouTube - A LOOK AT THE ANIMATION TECHNIQUES OF AVATAR

 

[Moonbat]

And the palnet is in the Alpha Centauri A system,

Did they actually say that in the film? Because I had read/heard that it was, but not from dialogue in the film but from stuff I saw beforehand. Maybe I missed the line when they said Alpha Centurai A.

It has borken box office records for best opening takings, partly due to it being more expensive to see in 3D, but amazingly it hasn't even opened in Italy yet, so that is quite impressive that it has earned over $1'000'000'000 and isn't even fully released everywhere.
By the time it sto9ps playing at cinemas it will probably be the most succesful film ever.

 

[Rodders]

That's great news. It's always good to see SF Films take the box office by storm. Who says that SF is dead?

 

[The Procrastinator]

I just saw this in 3d and what fun! I have to say it reminded me of Star Wars too - something of the same feel. The story was hackneyed, but it was satisfying in that hackneyed kind of way (just like Star Wars), and the visuals were beautiful. What I loved about it (apart from all the wish fulfillment about cat people and dragons) was the fact that all the "alien" life was inspired by our own - much of it from under the water - but to me the feel was very much a celebration of our own biodiversity. "They killed their mother", the aliens said of the sky people - and the whole film was like a mishmash of what our mother has made, given back to us as a reminder of how wonderful and precious she is. /mysticism

I won't pretend I have no quibbles - of course there are many, including the music score - but in the end this film evoked a kind of wonder and involvement in me that precious few sci-fi movies (or movies for that matter) manage to do, so be damned to the quibbles. I liked it.

 

[ctg]

I have to admit that I saw a pirate copy, and even though the picture was a bit fussy and the sound was very distorted, I was feeling as if I was watching Star Wars back in those days when I at the height of a fire-extinguisher (tall one).

Although some of the plot-elements were predictable, they didn't jar me as much as Dr Who's Christmas/New Year Special. In some cases I was thinking parallels of Borough's Tarzan or Mars saga's. So, the plot critics can go in hell if they didn't find any of it enjoyable. The same applies to those who're saying acting was wooden.

Avatar is one of those movies that you can watch without your brain turned on, and enjoy it as much as any other good movies. And I hope Cameron gets funding to expand this to the trilogy... but here's the thing... if it's an Avatar trilogy, then are we going to see other worlds, or is all of it going to be based on the same moon?

 

[Ian Whates]

Saw Avatar yesterday, and have to say thet I thought it was fabulous.
Yes, there were Roger Dean's sky-floating islands, Anne McCaffreyian one-on-one bonding between dragons/banshees and people, elements of ERB's Barsoom books and Andre Norton's Janus books, not to mention Alan Dean Foster's Mid-World, and all sorts of other referents, but so what?

It was a good, absorbing and entertaining story -- romance, underdog vs superior technology, pathos, some fabulous action sequences, some beautifully depicted alien flora and fauna, and corporate humanity as the villain. Good science fiction laid out before a mass audience. Yes, those of us who are immersed in SF and fantasy may have seen a lot of similar plots before, but we've never seen them presented like this.

So glad to have caught this in the 3D version too, which I thought did add considerably to the experience. They showed trailers for a couple of forthcoming 3D movies beforehand, and these looked like pop-up books, with characters standing proud of a flat background. Then Avatar started, with a view down a long corridor, all depicted in convincing 3D, and you could immediately see that they'd invested the time and money to get the effect right.

Anyone who hasn't yet seen this should; don't be put off by the film's detractors. It's easy to find fault in things, and, inevitably, Avator is not perfect, but it is very, very special.

 

[Rothgar]

So glad to have caught this in the 3D version too, which I thought did add considerably to the experience.

It seems people have had different takes on the quality of the 3D. I saw it at an IMAX theater, which from what I've read uses a digital projector to give true HD quality. I haven't been able to find out what the non-IMAX theaters are using but maybe they aren't projecting the 3D in HD quality. If anyone finds some good info on this topic please let me know.

While I was looking for info I found this interesting article about the technology used for the film. Some quotes from James Cameron are also included answering some of the questions that have been posted. Specifically the floating mountains, and where Pandora was located. Inside the Scene-Stealing 3-D Technology Behind James Cameron's Avatar | Popular Science

Science Advisers are Annoying:
I have just enough of a science background to get me in trouble. When I’m writing, I’m thinking: What can cause a mountain to float? Well, if it was made out of an almost-pure room-temperature superconductor material, and it was in a powerful magnetic field, it would self-levitate. This has actually been demonstrated on a very small scale with very strong magnetic fields. Then my scientists said, “You’ll need magnetic fields that are so powerful that they would rip the hemoglobin out of your blood.” So I said, “Well, we’re not showing that, so we may just have to diverge a little bit from what’s possible in the physical universe to tell our story.”

 

[Anthony G Williams]

This is my take on it:

I finally managed to see this one, although it was a close-run thing. I was determined to get the maximum benefit from the much-praised 3D CGI by seeing it on the huge IMAX screen, and duly booked to go to the nearest one, a train journey away. On the morning I was due to go, a heavy overnight snowfall had added to the chaos of almost three weeks of freezing weather and snow, causing major transport disruption with doom-laden warnings for those foolish enough to poke their noses outside their homes. I nearly didn’t bother to make the attempt, but in the end I slogged the half-mile through the snow to the station, to find that not only did my train turn up (and arrive at its destination) on time, but the one home did as well. Just occasionally, everything goes right!

So, to the film. This review will contain some spoilers but I don’t think this matters because the story has been written up so widely; also because the plot is straightforward and predictable with no unexpected twists, so knowing what happens is unlikely to spoil anyone’s enjoyment of this highly visual entertainment.

The plot has been much criticised, with reason. It is very simplistic, divided into good and bad guys with no grey areas; the characters are little more than caricatures. The good guys are the humanoid natives (purely CGI) of the planet Pandora, who live in harmony with their environment at a stone-age level of technology, aided by a handful of the humans who have arrived on the planet. The bad guys are all the rest of the heavily-armed humans, who are systematically strip-mining the planet for a valuable ore without regard for the natives or their environment, and are motivated by a combination of ruthless corporate greed and gung-ho militarism.

The few good humans are mostly scientists who have developed avatars to deal with the natives. These avatars are vat-grown bodies which look like the natives but have a mixture of genes from them and from specific humans. These humans can mind-link with their avatars and effectively inhabit their bodies as if they were their own for hours at a time. One of the avatars belongs to Jake, a crippled former US marine, who accidentally becomes accepted by one of the native tribes and literally goes native himself. He eventually leads them in their fight against the human invaders, an opportunity for some dramatic – and rather overlong – battle scenes.

I’m not quite sure exactly what the director, James Cameron, had in mind (it’s never wise to assume that you can tell – I’ve had reviewers be quite wrong about the source of inspiration for my books). The film seems to me to be a condensed allegory of the 19th century clash between native North American Indians and the European-origin settlers. This is rubbed home by the fact that the culture of the natives is reminiscent of the Indians while the bad humans are American; a source of unhappiness to some in the USA, although they should take comfort in the fact that the good humans are American as well (in contrast, I am told by film buffs that Hollywood usually employs English actors only to play the bad guys…). Just to make audience support for the natives even more certain, they are preternaturally appealing - especially the females, who have huge wide eyes, sexy voices and supple bodies which move with fluid grace.

So there is nothing special or original about the plot, a standard tale of brave natives helped by a hero who has changed sides to battle against the evil members of his own kind, plus a dollop of cross-cultural (in this case interspecies) romance. It has been rightly observed that the plot closely resembles Dancing With Wolves, with a dash of Dragonflight thrown in. The only time I was taken by surprise was right at the end, when Jake’s voice-over commented on the “aliens returning home” – a nice touch which inverted normal assumptions.

However, it wasn’t the plot which made me (and I suspect most other viewers) want to watch Avatar but the spectacle, and on that score the film does indeed deliver spectacularly. The exotic landscape, flora and fauna of Pandora are richly portrayed; the quality of the CGI would have seemed miraculous only a few years ago. The 3D greatly adds to the effect without being obtrusive, and so does the big IMAX screen which allows viewers to become immersed in the film. Whatever you may think of the plot, this is a wonderful visual treat and is well worth seeing for that reason alone. It really does raise standards to a new level, and any future SFF films with fictional CGI environments will be judged technically against Avatar. Do try to see it at an IMAX if at all possible, or at the very least in 3D at a cinema. This is one film that I don’t expect I will ever bother to watch on TV since it would lose the great majority of its impact. To sum up: the story is easy to poke holes in, but the film must be seen.

(An extract from my SFF blog)

 

[Lamont Cranston]

I started reading The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin last night and before the first page was done I was reacting OH MY GOD THIS IS AVATAR.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

Cameron did say something to the effect that Avatar was based on all the science fiction he'd ever read...

 

[Lamont Cranston]

I remember that from ComicCon, the authors he was naming were the nuts & bolts '50s guys because he's a regular joe blue collar fella. Harlan Ellison was missing from the list too
But this story is exactly the same: the Earth is a dying concrete wasteland, a colony on a far away planet must harvest resources for it, doing so is endangering the native indigenous population, they live in an airy fairy harmony with their eco-system, the psychotic military commander, Vietnam motifs abound, and it just goes on like that.

 

[biodroid]

I remember that from ComicCon, the authors he was naming were the nuts & bolts '50s guys because he's a regular joe blue collar fella. Harlan Ellison was missing from the list too
But this story is exactly the same: the Earth is a dying concrete wasteland, a colony on a far away planet must harvest resources for it, doing so is endangering the native indigenous population, they live in an airy fairy harmony with their eco-system, the psychotic military commander, Vietnam motifs abound, and it just goes on like that.

All directors borrow extensively from some other source and claim it their own I'm sure.

 

[Moonbat]

This is one film that I don’t expect I will ever bother to watch on TV since it would lose the great majority of its impact.

My housemate has watched this in both 3D and 2D and stated that 2D looked better as it was brighter and sharper. He, along with me, felt the 3D effects added nothing to the visuals of the film and actually detracted from it at times. So I think it will look just as good in 2D.

 

[Winters_Sorrow]

Well I've avoided this thread for quite a while before I got round to watching it, which I did last night.

I must say that I disagree slightly with Moonbat (although I haven't seen the film in 2D yet) that the 3D added nothing to the film. It may have been a little distracting in certain shots but when it worked it really added an additional depth to the movie. Some of the scenes where the natives are running through the forest were excellent because the leaves seemed to bounce back out into the audience and really suck you into the scene.

One minus side though was the fight scenes, especially the ariel battles in which the camera whirled around so much that I felt a little nauseous (although you could argue this is the 3D doing it's job too!) and, as it is a long movie, the prolonged effect of 3D glasses and visuals did give me a mild headache.

The storyline I'm not really going to pass judgement on as it is fairly generic but well done. It is essentially "Dances with Wolves in Space" but it's done competently and the plot holes aren't game-breaking.

The CGI for the natives is probably among the best I have seen so far in a movie and at one point I wondered whether the human scenes were CGI as well as there seemed little contrast to them. The only times it did seem to dip a little was in the human/native interaction scenes (like the lab scene where Jake first inhabits his avatar) as they still haven't 100% sorted out the issue with humans having to interact with air until the aliens are 'airbrushed in' so there is a little bit of random flailing around. Hopefully this is something which can be tackled in any future movies.

On the subject of sequels I'm really not sure where they can go with this. A prequel (human's first arrival on the planet) could work but I don't see a story for a sequel without it being very similar.

 

[Thadlerian]

I started reading The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin last night and before the first page was done I was reacting OH MY GOD THIS IS AVATAR.

It's not. If I recall correctly, the plots of the two stories are vastly different, even if the setting seems similar.