James Cameron sure came out of his shell after 10 years! Avatar

I watched it in 3D and it was very enjoyable. Good story, old one, but good one :) Done well.

Watched it in 3D and it's probably the best way to see it, too. It was an okay movie, certainly better than Michael Bay's Transformer-related travesties and the Prequels... but not the milestone of science fiction some fanboys and the marketing department wants you to believe.

It's essentially "Dances with wolves... IN SPACE!"

http://swagonline.net/node/4346

Two words: alien boobies.

Boshuda

Awesome graphics and presentation. Wasn't the best written movie of the year, but it was one of the most awesomely visually presented movies.

I hope when they show the company's Executive Director in the sequels they get Richard Dean Anderson to play him.

Guys, 'There is nothing new under the sun.' There is no such thing as an original story, everything borrows from other things.

What could have been done to that story arc just to make it 'different' that would have made for a better movie?

Not much I'd wager. Yeah it was like 'Dances with Wolves' and 'Pocahontas', but they were good stories. Doesn't setting them ...IN SPACE! give it enough of a difference already?

If you make a list of details that are DIFFERENT from Dances with Wolves....that list would be much longer than the similarities.

My wife and I both thought it was pretty dumb and very long.

Great visuals, good action sequences, etc. But the villains were comically stupid and pointlessly evil. And the movie is VERY predictable, holding exactly zero surprises.

I'm tired of the "white man fantasy" storyline... Why is it always the guy from the powerful side who becomes accepted and leads the other side to victory. It's sort of insulting to that other side, since they obviously couldn't have overcome the advances of man without man's own assistance. Can't we have a cool movie about aliens where our hero is an alien? What's so bad about that?

Boshuda

hi, first post I think...

I thought it was flawless. I did think throughout the middle of the movie it was kind of a Pocahontas or, even more similar to "The New World" with Colin Farrel (even though they're based on the same thing, the treatment of the story is far different)... but I thought the whole nature fighting for herself was an interesting twist.

I did not perceive the story the way Asok did, the human from the powerful side that wins the day n all. After all, the Na'vi were defeated. Sully was just a tool, a medium, to get things running. It's the Na'vi culture, tradition and beliefs that wins the battle, imposing themselves onto the human "technological terrors". What I think Cameron did with this movie is make a compound of all the things that were destroyed with the advent of an industrial age and post-modernism taking the Na'vi as symbols of the old world, with their old cultural identity, their beliefs, their relation with nature and traditions and confronting it with the humans with their coldness, frivolity, greed, their technology. Cameron is denouncing their problems of our society, how technology, greed and in part, globalization is eating everything up, diluting who we and our cultures are.

But besides that, the story is not that important really, it's the way it's told I guess. Just look at Star Wars... not the most creative storyline ever.

Graphics were superb, Neytiri's acting and interaction with live action rapes Jar Jar Binks and George's pride hardly. Really liked how the Na'vi seem to be based on African tribes, made it somewhat more familiar and believable.

The interesting thing was, that I felt conflicted at the very end, particularly during the last battle. Somehow, the fact that the Na'vi sent the Humans packing back to a less-than-great Earth didn't leave me happy and cheering.

I analyzed my reaction and this is my conclusion: I found myself rooting for the "evil" Humans.

Why? Because the Na'vi - no matter how anthromorphic - seemed to have their own little private club in their "sentient" homeworld, and only those who became like them - i.e the "Avatar jockeys" - were accepted into that private, little club. They had this lush, great world and like spoiled children, they refused to share. And despite all their anthromorphication, they seemed somehow too ethereal and too ideal.

Enter the fallible, sweaty Humans, who seem more "real" than any of the Na'vi. Their actions were wrong, but their underlying need was still there.

What I'm trying to say, is even though I found the Na'vis plight sympathetic, the Humans - with all their flaws - somehow felt more "Human", and thus more worthy of my support. Call me a specieist, if you want, but that's how I felt.

Humanity, in all its fallible glory - regardless of creed, skin color, belief or nation - is my "family". No blue bottom or boob, no matter how attractive, will seduce me away from that. :P

P.S
Perhaps this example makes it easier: I prefer the "Millenium Falcon" over any of the sleek, chrome-ships of the Prequel trilogy. Why? It's beat-up and grimy. It has character.
In AVATAR, the Humans are the beat-up and grimy "Falcon", the Na'vi are the sleek chrome-ship. Clear enough? :P

http://swagonline.net/node/4346

Hey guys, check out this article:

Project 880: The Avatar that almost was: -=linky=-

Bit of a long read, but some excellent points and comparisons made.

Also, speaking of Disney's Pocahontas, check this out. You might or might not be surprised (if not shocked): -=linky=-

For those who don't want to read the above, here's a summary:

Like you, I went in to see'ing the movie, knowing nothing about it except its made by James Cameron, and that some notable favorite actors & actresses would be staring in it.

Once the movie was over, there was issues and aspects of the movie that left me feeling unsatisfied. Jake didn't seem very convincing, plot & story points that didn't have meaning or explanation for, scenes that didn't move the story forward. Thus, after the movie I begun looking for explanation and answers.

Without further adieu, here's the a quick summary of the article, I hope you'll have enough time and interest to at least check this out. I will have a few questions to ask after those points.

Quick clarification:
- Josh Sully is from Project 880
- Jake Sully is from Avatar
- Avatar's Neytiri = Zuleika in Project 880'

Now for a few quick comparing highlights of differences between the original project and the movie: (copy and pasted from the at length page article). I'll toss in a couple headers that get right to the point, highlighted in bold.

• Earth and its environmental problems are explored
• We see Josh Sully's Avatar being born
• It's revealed the Avatar program exists to train Na'vi to be an indigenous workforce for the Corporation, since it's so expensive to send human workers
• There are more humans, including a bioethics officer on the take, a video journalist, a head of the Avatar program and a second military dickwad
• There is an Avatar controller who is burnt out because his Avatar died with him in it. He committed Avatar suicide because he had fallen in love with a Na'vi girl who had been killed by the military
• The Avatars have a Na'vi guide named N'Deh, who is sleeping with Grace
• Grace survives the soul transfer
• Josh Sully gains the Na'vi trust by being a member of the community. He also excels in a major hunt
• Josh Sully shows his leadership not by taming a dragon but by leading a raid on Hell's Gate to rescue prisoners
• Josh Sully isn't the only Na'vi to ride a big dragon
• Pandora is a living entity and it sees the humans as a virus; it has been mobilizing the plants and animals to attack all along because it wanted to force the humans out
• There is no unobtainium beneath Hometree. The military just wants to wipe out the local Na'vi to send a message to all the tribes that they must be obeyed.
• Some of the humans and the Avatar controllers rise up in the final big battle
• Josh Sully tells the Earth that Pandora will give any humans that return a disease that will wipe out humanity

Why Josh/Jake falls in love with Pandora:
The differences between the scriptment (which I'll call Project 880 from here on in) and the finished film are immediate from the first page. In Avatar Cameron feels like he is rushing to get to the Na'vi, and we begin the movie off Earth. Project 880 spends time establishing Earth and the life of wheel-chair riding ex-Marine Josh Sully (there are a number of character name changes between 880 and Avatar); the opening page of 880 presents a very Blade Runner dystopia - rainy and gray and filthy and high tech. The people are miserable and stink because of water shortages. The entire surface of the Earth is essentially industrialized, and there are even cities spread out across the Moon. There are no longer national parks, and Yosemite is pointed out as a posh condo community. Josh lives in a megalopolis that takes up the entire Eastern seaboard of the United States, and his cramped, prison-like apartment is located where North Carolina is today.

This is the Earth of 100 years from now, and Project 880 takes its time setting this world up. Earth isn't just polluted (with filth as well as waste from nuclear terrorism) and ugly, it's literally doomed; extinctions have destroyed the planet's biodiversity and its entire ecosystem has collapsed. Humans scrape by because they can turn sea algea into food, and most waterfront property has been turned into manufacturing for the protein farms. This is an Earth where the people aren't just urban, they've completely and utterly lost touch with anything green. Keep this in mind, because this is one of the guiding elements of what makes Josh fall in love with Pandora.

Importance of Sully being in the Avatar program:
As in Avatar they want Josh because his brother has a Na'vi composite clone growing in a tank, to be used in the Avatar program. In Project 880 it's explained that this is a particularly big deal because only one in a hundred human/Na'vi composites actually take, making the Tommy Sully Avatar growing in a tank a very rare and very valuable thing indeed.

Josh Sully's first moments in his Avatar Body:
The next big change is the first Avatar link. In the film Jake wakes up in his Avatar body, has no trouble adjusting and then disobeys every single order given to him and runs around in the wild. In Project 880 it's nothing like that. Josh can barely stand, and his motor skills are weak. But when he gets on his feet and begins walking he has a very different reaction than Jake Sully - he cries.

It's a great moment, a truly beautiful little character moment. Jake Sully acted like a kid who had finally been let out of a car after a long ride; Josh acts like someone who never thought they would walk again.

A character that was cut from Avatar which makes Sully's romance to Neytiri more significant:
The controllers are presented as sort of MMORPG players - kind of smelly, pale, only interested in being plugged in to the computers. They all eat together in the mess hall, and they're served by a guy who seems like a drug addict. But it turns out his story is crazier, and the fact that he was left out of Avatar mystifies me.

The guy is Hegner, and he used to be a controller - until his Avatar body was killed by a Slinth (a creature I don't believe is in the final movie). And not just killed - eaten alive. The shock of experiencing his own death and then the withdrawl from his Avatar has left Hegner a shell. And it gets better; later in the film it's revealed that Hegner committed Avatar suicide because he had fallen in love with a Na'vi girl and married her - and she was killed in an incident where five Na'vi were shot by human soldiers. This incident caused the rift between Na'vi and humans, and is the reason why the Avatars are no longer working with the Na'vi.

Hegner's story is the dark counterpoint to Josh/Jake's, and it's integral, if only because it shows us what happens when an Avatar dies. In Avatar it's vague, and then at the end is shown to be sort of no big deal; with Hegner we see that it's a major issue and is about more than inconvenience. Hegner's failed romance also reflects Sully's coming romance, and it establishes the idea that 'going native' is actually an issue, not something that begins with this crippled guy.

The Bottom line:
Obviously this scriptment would have made a five hour movie. Things needed to be cut. I just wish Cameron had been able to keep the decent story and rounded characters along with his deeply designed world. But when you're spending that much money, it's the story and characters that get canned before the FX.

.........................................

Now this is what I'm talking about. There didn't have to be a major overhaul of the movie, nor a 3+ hour length movie. As you said yourself, 2hrs 40min is a long movie for sitting down in one evening.

These little changes here and there, things that could've... should've been left in the movie would have made it for me as a worthwhile movie.

This being said and posted, now having read about some of those aspects left out of Avatar, what's your opinions about it?
- Does knowing now change your view and opinion of Avatar?
- Do you think you would have enjoyed Avatar more with these elements?
- Would you have cared about more for Jake?

Anyone else, feel free to chime in...

________________________
Core to the Quad baby!!!

If your going to complement me, don't tell me my work is neat, cool or awesome. If you really like it, tell me why you like it and what you like about it. Only then I'll take it as a complement.

I LOL-ed at the Pocahontas/Avatar comparison. To reiterate: lol.

Boshuda

I thought a few would get a kick from the Pocahontas, err, Avatar comparison pic ;)

Rozali - Lol on the dialogue :)

________________________
Core to the Quad baby!!!

If your going to complement me, don't tell me my work is neat, cool or awesome. If you really like it, tell me why you like it and what you like about it. Only then I'll take it as a complement.