Loved Avatar, seen it twice in RealD 3D. I understand how some say the story was lacking, but I argue that Cameron did well to not bog it down with an overly complex story. The storyline and plot were classic, which I’m sure some will hate, but I think it was the best mix of film making to satisfy 10yo to 60yo males and females.
I think that like Titanic it will be a box office success, despite its lackluster opening weekend. Titanic only did $8M it’s opening day compared to Avatar’s $27M yet went on to gross $.18B worldwide. December movies simply aren’t the best time of year to launch if you want to break records out of the gate.
The only issue I had with the movie is… [highlight for spoilers »»»»]
...how the final attack on the Na’vi was coordinated. You have ships that can fly into space and you can’t figure out how to drop explosives onto a tree from above. Sure, the floating rocks could have gotten in the way, but then why have an attack from a single point of entry on a horizontal plane? That simply doesn’t make sense. You don’t attack from a lower position than your enemy did and you come in waves from multiple directions. I just didn’t by that from a strategic PoV.
[spoilers and rant end]
Favorite quote from Cameron on Titanic…
Quote:
I just realized I made a $200 million chick flick where everyone dies. What the hell was I thinking?
Good article from Wired. It details some of the equipment that was required to make this film…
My reply: [highlight for spoilers »»»»] ...I didn't have a big problem with the final attack, they had to have some David vs Goliath ending anyway. The only weird thing for me was the advanced tech that they have in actually "creating" and "driving" the Avatars itself, seems way ahead of the military, colonisation and mining capability... I suppose being a "mining outpost" covers that angle, with the Avatars tech coming from Earth itself... Oh, and the final battle with the Colonel ~ how it conveniently took place just outside their remote pod with the Avatar hookup devices. ...Nonetheless overall the movie was quite satisfying and reasonable. You're right, it didn't have to have a superb story, for me emotionally it worked out anyways. Seeing it on film (not digital) in 2D not 3D maybe made things more "real" for me in terms of the story. If I was watching the 3D version, maybe I'd be like all too much ooh and ahh to get involved with the movie emotionally. Might go and see it in 3D with my dad though, sometime in the next few weeks. Believe it or not I haven't seen anything in 3D in at least 5 years, IMAX3D or whatever-else-3D.
I almost don't want to read how they made it, and keep the feeling fresh in my mind. Obviously there was tons of motion capture, but really seamless. The rendering must have taken a ton of high performance computers in the render farm. With the visual quality of video games now approaching movies from just several years back Avatar really set a new benchmark. It was like DirectX20 vs our DirectX10 in PC games. I heard of some other cool things like a device Cameron used to look through to have a real-time composited view of the shot, some sort of augmented reality thing. Anyways, I'd rather keep the magic intact by not reading up too much on the technology, if I can resist it.
If you have the George Clooney version of Solaris it's quite interesting to hear Cameron's commentary (along with Soderbergh's). He goes on a little bit about his take on relationships and so on.
It's all mocap based. The actors acted including the emotion and these were mocap'd and applied to the models. It's not the usual animation with the actors speaking in a mike and the animators bringing it to life. It's the actors moving through pretty much all the action on a soundstage.
I think that has to be the future... I saw a little bit of Hulk (the most recent one) again on TV. The days of animators manipulating a 3D model and then lip-syncing and all that could be numbered. My problem with the Hulk and especially Spiderman (which I thought was all entirely rubbish) is that the animation is too exaggerated sometimes... Too cartooney. Also, with Avatar, the depth of the facial expression is an order of magnitude greater than anything before it.
Of course as I understand you still need animators because the raw motion capture data is not 100% useable right out of the capture session.
...
One thing about the paradigm that we may not have discussed is attention span. With a regular movie without too much effects, by 60 minutes I start to fade out. Avatar seemed like 2 hours of solid "Wow".
Sometimes, even with effects, I fade out after an hour, like with Narnia: Prince Caspian. I was like, okay, let's get this over with so I can go back to my computer, phone or go grab a snack. Sad, huh? But I think I'm old school at 31 (I don't Facebook or Text much at all, and I only have 2 screens of apps on my iPhone 3GS including built-in apps), can't imagine those in their 20s and teens and their attention span nowadays. BTW school must be hell for them, maybe more so than in my day.
Has anyone read Orson Scott Card’s novel "Speaker for the Dead”? I see a lot of similarities between [the Na’vi and Piggies], with Cameron’s use of a [neural net connecting life] to be a more impressive and better idea. Remember that a [seed was buried with the dead Na’vi] and our protagonist was allowed to [make a bow from the Great Tree]. Both things very similar to Card’s “Speaker for the Dead”. Note that Cameron hired Card to write the novelization of the screenplay The Abyss, so I am certain that he was well aware of Card’s body of work long before the making of Avatar. I have been wanting someone to make a movie that covers that subject and I think that a sequel may very well delve deeper into that idea.
(Bracketed areas are spoilers and require highlighting to read)
Quote:
Originally Posted by nvidia2008
I almost don't want to read how they made it, and keep the feeling fresh in my mind.
I understand that, but I don’t think it will ruin it. It’s not a making of, but talking about what Cameron has gone through from being a trucker to getting to where he is today. The only part about Avatar that I can recall is how the film was put on hold until the technology was available to do what he wanted. A lesser film costing $400M would have been possible right after Titanic, how he saw Gollum in LotR and knew it was time to make Avatar, and how he flew to Japan to get Sony to redesign their cameras so they could be handheld, which really means a still heavy camera with a giant cable going to huge computer nearby for processing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nvidia2008
If you have the George Clooney version of Solaris it's quite interesting to hear Cameron's commentary (along with Soderbergh's). He goes on a little bit about his take on relationships and so on.
I didn’t care for Solaris. The story was lacking on many levels.
Avatar - the movie, sucked big time for me. It was OK the first time around. I had the misfortune of seeing it a second time and that pretty much killed any good will I had from watching it the first time.
Other than good computer graphics, the movie lacked a lot of things. YMMV.
Avatar - the movie, sucked big time for me. It was OK the first time around. I had the misfortune of seeing it a second time and that pretty much killed any good will I had from watching it the first time.
Other than good computer graphics, the movie lacked a lot of things. YMMV.
I liked it but I can see why some folks would dislike the rather liberal plot line. But big impersonal corporations with scumball execs is nothing new for Cameron.
I had issues with only one thing but that was tactical in nature. Too bad there isn't a spoiler tag in this forum or is there?
I had issues with only one thing but that was tactical in nature.
If by tacticle you mean the [attack on the Na/vi], then i agree. They used a space-capable transport ship as a bomber. They could have [attacked from multiple directions, much higher up and/or just bombed the crap out of the area from above without a single line, slow, low-altitude attack with ground forces]. I have a hard time finding a justification for such a bad [strategy from trained military personnel].
(Highlight for spoilers)
Quote:
Too bad there isn't a spoiler tag in this forum or is there?
That is how hide them but they do become visible if you quote my post without changing the colour code.
That is how hide them but they do become visible if you quote my post without changing the colour code.
Thanks.
Yes, that's what I mean except I'd have simply dropped a rock on the tree of souls or whatever it was called from orbit. Or just a few oversized crowbars. Google project thor. There's also a wikipedia entry for kinetic bombardment. I mean geez...a classic line from Aliens is "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Cameron could have transplanted half the lines from Aliens into Avatar and it would have worked. Especially from Hudson. Cameron should have gotten Paxton to reprise that role. Heck, he's died to an alien, a predator and a terminator. Why not the na'vi too?
At least the pilot was a much cuter version of Ferro. Michelle Rodriquez looked pretty damn good.
If by tacticle[sic] you mean the attack on the Na/vi, then i agree. They used a space-capable transport ship as a bomber. They could have attacked from multiple directions, much higher up and/or just bombed the crap out of the area from above without a single line, slow, low-altitude attack with ground forces. I have a hard time finding a justification for such a bad strategy from trained military personnel.
I thought it was pretty clear that it was because of the interference. Their targeting systems couldn't work for the same reason their scanners couldn't work.
Note: The color for hiding things in the quote box is #c6ccd0.
Avatar has finally won a world record. It’s the highest grossing non-adjusted domesitc film for the 2nd weekend. It looks likely to take Spiderman for the 3rd weekend if it can do better than $45M. From 4th to the 12th weekend the world records are owned by Titanic. He might take a few Titanic records but all of them seems pretty unlikely to me.
Yes, that's what I mean except I'd have simply [dropped a rock on the tree of souls or whatever it was called from orbit. Or just a few oversized crowbars. Google project thor. There's also a wikipedia entry for kinetic bombardment. I mean geez...a classic line from Aliens is "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Cameron could have transplanted half the lines from Aliens into Avatar and it would have worked. Especially from Hudson. Cameron should have gotten Paxton to reprise that role. Heck, he's died to an alien, a predator and a terminator. Why not the na'vi too?
At least the pilot was a much cuter version of Ferro. Michelle Rodriquez looked pretty damn good.]
Oh, heh...you can't hide links that way.
I’m not sure about Paxton but I think I recall reading that Cameron decided not to bring Michael Biehn into the film because he already had Weaver.
I don’t think they had [nukes and I don’t think they wanted radiation to deal with the mining operation but there are plenty of other ways to have attacked that would simply make more sense]. If they wanted to make up some reason for that poor strategy and make a statement of over-confidence against fighting the “savages” which made the poor strategy a go I would have been okay with that.
Note, our protagonist in is Avatar is also in Terminator 4 as a Terminator.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tonton
I thought it was pretty clear that it was because of the interference. Their targeting systems couldn't work for the same reason their scanners couldn't work.
That is fine. The [unobtainium in the rocks made them float and even at the center we see rock formations in an arch that indictate that there is a strong magnetic field there, but why only one line of attack and why use ground forces at all when the jungle is the one place you lose the advantage. Flying in manually from a higher altitude with your “space ship” to drop the bombs would have worked better. If there are floating mountains above the site I would suggest blowing the bottom of the mountain which looks to be unobtainium free and having that fall on them. Starting a fire in the forest to burn back the natives so they could even get close or coordinating waves with multiple points of entry.] I’ve seen it 3x so i obviously enjoy the film but I really wish that scene was thought out better.
This movie is doing amazing well in the box office and will likely break records in Blu-ray sales, too. With RealD 3D TVs starting to come out this year I wonder if they?ll actually make a 3D Blu-ray version. I don?t know if this needs a new player or just the TV, but I suspect the former. I figure the cable and network cost for this movie will also likely be one of the highest ever.
So, with just 2.4 weeks in the theaters it?s already grossed more than $1B worldwide. Many films were much faster out of the gate. The Dark Knight holds many records up to $500M, and likely beyond that, but Avatar looks to be the fastest since at last $700M onwards. It?s already beat out the The Dark Knight?s 33 week gross making it the 4th highest grossing movie of all time in just 2.4 weeks.
So, it can beat out Titanic for the 4th weekend gross of $28M next week with the only compelling film premiering next week is Daybreakers? Will it out gross Titanic?s more than $1.8B now that China started showing Avatar yesterday? How many more #1s will it have?
China opened a week ago with stunning sales, for China. They have at least 800 RealD 3D theaters, as I recall and will slow, but powerful, mover. I wondered if the content would not work for Chinese government, as some American movies have to get edited or banned outright, but the content of the film could be seen as the big American corporation trying to destroy the way of life of the indigenous people. Even the politics of the Na?Vi are more inline with Marxism than with democracy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Relic
The movie itself was a bunch oh hippie bull crap, damn hippies.
How so? Because they lived in a big ass tree? It?s more fighting to refer to them as Keebler Elves than hippies. They killed the local fauna. They killed humans. They were warriors who were defending their home and home land. If they didn?t do that stuff they would be ?hippies", IMO.
Comments
I assume you mean Terminator 2. Terminator 3 was horrible.
Edit: Would you recommend Avatar in general? I am not always looking for a cinematic masterpiece. Is it entertaining...does it suspend disbelief?
Wow! Something we agree on! I really liked Terminator 2. They should have stopped there. But the others after that weren't really a Cameron film.
As for Avatar I haven't seen it yet but I've yet to see something from James Cameron I didn't like.
Couldn't resist:
I think that like Titanic it will be a box office success, despite its lackluster opening weekend. Titanic only did $8M it’s opening day compared to Avatar’s $27M yet went on to gross $.18B worldwide. December movies simply aren’t the best time of year to launch if you want to break records out of the gate.
The only issue I had with the movie is… [highlight for spoilers »»»»]
...how the final attack on the Na’vi was coordinated. You have ships that can fly into space and you can’t figure out how to drop explosives onto a tree from above. Sure, the floating rocks could have gotten in the way, but then why have an attack from a single point of entry on a horizontal plane? That simply doesn’t make sense. You don’t attack from a lower position than your enemy did and you come in waves from multiple directions. I just didn’t by that from a strategic PoV.
[spoilers and rant end]
Favorite quote from Cameron on Titanic…
I just realized I made a $200 million chick flick where everyone dies. What the hell was I thinking?
Good article from Wired. It details some of the equipment that was required to make this film…
The only issue I had with the movie is…
My reply: [highlight for spoilers »»»»] ...I didn't have a big problem with the final attack, they had to have some David vs Goliath ending anyway. The only weird thing for me was the advanced tech that they have in actually "creating" and "driving" the Avatars itself, seems way ahead of the military, colonisation and mining capability... I suppose being a "mining outpost" covers that angle, with the Avatars tech coming from Earth itself... Oh, and the final battle with the Colonel ~ how it conveniently took place just outside their remote pod with the Avatar hookup devices.
Good article from Wired. It details some of the equipment that was required to make this film?
I almost don't want to read how they made it, and keep the feeling fresh in my mind. Obviously there was tons of motion capture, but really seamless. The rendering must have taken a ton of high performance computers in the render farm. With the visual quality of video games now approaching movies from just several years back Avatar really set a new benchmark. It was like DirectX20 vs our DirectX10 in PC games. I heard of some other cool things like a device Cameron used to look through to have a real-time composited view of the shot, some sort of augmented reality thing. Anyways, I'd rather keep the magic intact by not reading up too much on the technology, if I can resist it.
Favorite quote from Cameron on Titanic?
If you have the George Clooney version of Solaris it's quite interesting to hear Cameron's commentary (along with Soderbergh's). He goes on a little bit about his take on relationships and so on.
It's all mocap based. The actors acted including the emotion and these were mocap'd and applied to the models. It's not the usual animation with the actors speaking in a mike and the animators bringing it to life. It's the actors moving through pretty much all the action on a soundstage.
I think that has to be the future... I saw a little bit of Hulk (the most recent one) again on TV. The days of animators manipulating a 3D model and then lip-syncing and all that could be numbered. My problem with the Hulk and especially Spiderman (which I thought was all entirely rubbish) is that the animation is too exaggerated sometimes... Too cartooney. Also, with Avatar, the depth of the facial expression is an order of magnitude greater than anything before it.
Of course as I understand you still need animators because the raw motion capture data is not 100% useable right out of the capture session.
...
One thing about the paradigm that we may not have discussed is attention span. With a regular movie without too much effects, by 60 minutes I start to fade out. Avatar seemed like 2 hours of solid "Wow".
Sometimes, even with effects, I fade out after an hour, like with Narnia: Prince Caspian. I was like, okay, let's get this over with so I can go back to my computer, phone or go grab a snack.
(Bracketed areas are spoilers and require highlighting to read)
I almost don't want to read how they made it, and keep the feeling fresh in my mind.
I understand that, but I don’t think it will ruin it. It’s not a making of, but talking about what Cameron has gone through from being a trucker to getting to where he is today. The only part about Avatar that I can recall is how the film was put on hold until the technology was available to do what he wanted. A lesser film costing $400M would have been possible right after Titanic, how he saw Gollum in LotR and knew it was time to make Avatar, and how he flew to Japan to get Sony to redesign their cameras so they could be handheld, which really means a still heavy camera with a giant cable going to huge computer nearby for processing.
If you have the George Clooney version of Solaris it's quite interesting to hear Cameron's commentary (along with Soderbergh's). He goes on a little bit about his take on relationships and so on.
I didn’t care for Solaris. The story was lacking on many levels.
Other than good computer graphics, the movie lacked a lot of things. YMMV.
Avatar - the movie, sucked big time for me. It was OK the first time around. I had the misfortune of seeing it a second time and that pretty much killed any good will I had from watching it the first time.
Other than good computer graphics, the movie lacked a lot of things. YMMV.
I liked it but I can see why some folks would dislike the rather liberal plot line. But big impersonal corporations with scumball execs is nothing new for Cameron.
I had issues with only one thing but that was tactical in nature. Too bad there isn't a spoiler tag in this forum or is there?
I had issues with only one thing but that was tactical in nature.
If by tacticle you mean the [attack on the Na/vi], then i agree. They used a space-capable transport ship as a bomber. They could have [attacked from multiple directions, much higher up and/or just bombed the crap out of the area from above without a single line, slow, low-altitude attack with ground forces]. I have a hard time finding a justification for such a bad [strategy from trained military personnel].
(Highlight for spoilers)
Too bad there isn't a spoiler tag in this forum or is there?
That is how hide them but they do become visible if you quote my post without changing the colour code.
(Highlight for spoilers)
That is how hide them but they do become visible if you quote my post without changing the colour code.
Thanks.
Yes, that's what I mean except I'd have simply dropped a rock on the tree of souls or whatever it was called from orbit. Or just a few oversized crowbars. Google project thor. There's also a wikipedia entry for kinetic bombardment. I mean geez...a classic line from Aliens is "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Cameron could have transplanted half the lines from Aliens into Avatar and it would have worked. Especially from Hudson. Cameron should have gotten Paxton to reprise that role. Heck, he's died to an alien, a predator and a terminator. Why not the na'vi too?
At least the pilot was a much cuter version of Ferro. Michelle Rodriquez looked pretty damn good.
Oh, heh...you can't hide links that way.
If by tacticle[sic] you mean the attack on the Na/vi, then i agree. They used a space-capable transport ship as a bomber. They could have attacked from multiple directions, much higher up and/or just bombed the crap out of the area from above without a single line, slow, low-altitude attack with ground forces. I have a hard time finding a justification for such a bad strategy from trained military personnel.
I thought it was pretty clear that it was because of the interference. Their targeting systems couldn't work for the same reason their scanners couldn't work.
Note: The color for hiding things in the quote box is #c6ccd0.
Thanks.
Yes, that's what I mean except I'd have simply [dropped a rock on the tree of souls or whatever it was called from orbit. Or just a few oversized crowbars. Google project thor. There's also a wikipedia entry for kinetic bombardment. I mean geez...a classic line from Aliens is "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Cameron could have transplanted half the lines from Aliens into Avatar and it would have worked. Especially from Hudson. Cameron should have gotten Paxton to reprise that role. Heck, he's died to an alien, a predator and a terminator. Why not the na'vi too?
At least the pilot was a much cuter version of Ferro. Michelle Rodriquez looked pretty damn good.]
Oh, heh...you can't hide links that way.
I’m not sure about Paxton but I think I recall reading that Cameron decided not to bring Michael Biehn into the film because he already had Weaver.
I don’t think they had [nukes and I don’t think they wanted radiation to deal with the mining operation but there are plenty of other ways to have attacked that would simply make more sense]. If they wanted to make up some reason for that poor strategy and make a statement of over-confidence against fighting the “savages” which made the poor strategy a go I would have been okay with that.
Note, our protagonist in is Avatar is also in Terminator 4 as a Terminator.
I thought it was pretty clear that it was because of the interference. Their targeting systems couldn't work for the same reason their scanners couldn't work.
That is fine. The [unobtainium in the rocks made them float and even at the center we see rock formations in an arch that indictate that there is a strong magnetic field there, but why only one line of attack and why use ground forces at all when the jungle is the one place you lose the advantage. Flying in manually from a higher altitude with your “space ship” to drop the bombs would have worked better. If there are floating mountains above the site I would suggest blowing the bottom of the mountain which looks to be unobtainium free and having that fall on them. Starting a fire in the forest to burn back the natives so they could even get close or coordinating waves with multiple points of entry.] I’ve seen it 3x so i obviously enjoy the film but I really wish that scene was thought out better.
So, with just 2.4 weeks in the theaters it?s already grossed more than $1B worldwide. Many films were much faster out of the gate. The Dark Knight holds many records up to $500M, and likely beyond that, but Avatar looks to be the fastest since at last $700M onwards. It?s already beat out the The Dark Knight?s 33 week gross making it the 4th highest grossing movie of all time in just 2.4 weeks.So, it can beat out Titanic for the 4th weekend gross of $28M next week with the only compelling film premiering next week is Daybreakers? Will it out gross Titanic?s more than $1.8B now that China started showing Avatar yesterday? How many more #1s will it have?
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,5932910.story
Makes me want to see it.
The movie itself was a bunch oh hippie bull crap, damn hippies.
How so? Because they lived in a big ass tree? It?s more fighting to refer to them as Keebler Elves than hippies. They killed the local fauna. They killed humans. They were warriors who were defending their home and home land. If they didn?t do that stuff they would be ?hippies", IMO.
Found this piece about conservatives crying a fit about Avatar.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,5932910.story
Makes me want to see it.
Think about the carbon footprint of energy and expense to render and make it and then you won't.