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[Pubrick]

firsties?

this was amazing. Pandora is gorgeous and the last hour of the film is just about the best action film ever made.

it's classic Cameron, for better or worse. the dialogue and characterization is almost unimportant in a film like this. it isn't exactly about the intricacies of the human condition, it's about huge broad spectacle on the grandest scale you can imagine. personal discomfort with 3D might affect your interest in the first hour, which might also be tedious upon rewatching it (and i definitely WILL see this again), but like Cameron's other films i mostly just rewatch the climaxes.

without giving anything away, for all its broad characters (the "bad guy" is especially ludicrous in his one-note evilness), there's a lot of heavy-handed subtlety in the film. there's some great references to Cameron's other action classics, some quite major and i would say very clever, which i'll talk about once others hav seen it.

it's a bit flawed. some of the worst dialogue is self-aware enunciations about its own grandeur. for example when we first see the flying mountains, which you've already seen in the trailer, Michelle Rodriguez says "you should see your faces right now.." well my face was all like "seen it!". no, the most special parts of the film are where it forgets to be self-consciously impressive and just goes balls to the wall for good storytelling through action.

i'm ready to defend this film cos i don't love it blindly. its got a few holes, mainly in Sigourney Weaver's character whom you get an idea must hav had some scenes cut. the way the Na'vi treat her is just not consistent but i believe it doesn't ruin the film. in the end, it's not like king kong cos even tho the story is made out of old elements it still holds lots of surprises. and i don't think we've ever seen anything like it before.


worked
pandora and its people,
the last hour,
sam worthington

failed
very little,
could have used more info in general about pandora and earth

winner
district 9

Your reviews are always the best. You always deliver on the bulletpoints. I hope you're not pulling a GT (loving popcorn more than you should), but I trust you.

Worthington is actually good? The dude was probably the worst thing about TeG and I was ready to give up on him, but this gives me hope.

I'm sort of stoked. Jim Cameron is doing it big and that's always awesome, and a bit silly. I'm gonna try and catch a weekend showing.

Is it a gamechanger?

yes worthington is actually good. i havn't seen his american stuff but i know him from his (forgettable) career in australia. it's still inexplicable to me why he's been given such excellent opportunities but here he definitely begins to earn them. Cameron loves strong female characters but i think in this film he shifts to the dudes a lot more.

not a gamechanger. but i hope the best for it cos Cameron has his heart in the right place. he WANTS to make a gamechanger, but i just don't think this is it. it has set up a good foundation that i thinK Zemeckis was trying to accomplish, but it all comes down to the story. might be left to PJ and Spielberg to knock it out of the park with Tintin.

regarding the cartoonishness of computer animation. i think it comes with the territory of 3D. for something to look good in 3D there must be some precise control of the shading, and that's just always going to be unnatural. no one has that kind of precise vision. we do but we never think it's that special. so it's weird, 3D is trying to recreate from scratch the basic awesomeness of what it is to be able to SEE. it seems a simple and obvious statement but i think that's the second level of what Jim was trying to achieve here. a common phrase of the film is "i see you". a lot of drama takes place in the simple dilation of a pupil, the expansion of vision, the recognition of another mind. it's like real alien contact.

but you hav to run with it. district 9, Where the Wild Things Are, and Benjamin Button are the absolute pinnacle of special effects integration in my mind. they are the true game changers in TWO dimensional vision. so to be aware of the possibilities of 3D is the next level, in that sense Jim is pushing to new frontiers. he doesn't just want to make cartoons in 3D, like Zemeckis is doing, he wants to move into this new area with a new consciousness.

[brockly]

the first half of the movie is amazing.

the story holds nothing new. to me it most notably echoes Princess Mononoke and The New World, particularly in its focus on love and nature. unlike those movies, however, there is no poetic sensibility going on here, but you wouldn't expect that from Cameron.

there's a huge focus on nature in the first half, but its most interesting concept is only barely touched on and exists primarily to validate the sanctity of Pandora. which is fine. Pandora itself is indeed gorgeous. being introduced to its beauty was easily the most exciting part of the film for me. and it's absolutely stunning in 3D (coming from someone who hates 3D).

without giving anything away, i didn't like the direction the film was taking in the second act. it becomes too much of a spectacle and kind of abandons the poise and subtle intricacy of the first hour. the end is just absurd in its naivety. i wasn't expecting anything more than a good popcorn flick but i couldn't help but be disappointed after the first act built the foundation so beautifully.

minor spoils
the characters are all pretty two dimensional, as can be expected from a James Cameron film. but i'm a sucker when good performances give birth to otherwise dead characters and Avatar thankfully has one example. it's no small feat to make a human/alien romance work, but the film achieves that with Zoe Saldana's performance. and as trivial as it was, i liked the love story. there's definitely a huge TNW vibe going on there, with Worthington's character growing an emotional bond to a new world / way of life through the eyes of the woman he's falling for, minus the ethereal delicacy.

the action riffs LOTR and the SW prequels. it's nothing you haven't seen, but still pretty enjoyable and exciting.

maybe more thoughts later. or not. i'm going to bed.

[modage]

OK, now I'm excited again.... and CONFUSED! 

[Pozer]

me too. VERy confused. trailerwha? Sam Whoyton? consider me convinced otherwise, hope restored, and all that.

[Alexandro]

i agree with what has been said...
the only proper way to see this is on imax 3d. otherwise really, there's not much going on. the concept is fantastic, but cameron is only interested in two dimensional characters and situations. the villains are just laughable. giovani ribissi's character had potential to be richer but this is definitely not that movie. the romance was ok. everything regarding the story is just "ok", and that's the big weakness. i don't see myself rewatching this movie ever again, unless is re released in a few years in 3d again.

the visuals are stunning. just simply stunning. it's the first time 3d makes sense in a movie. the most exciting thing to me, however is the thought of what could be done by other filmmakers (or even cameron himself) in the future. I would have loved a film with this technology that doesn't have a silly plot, undeveloped characters, a naive "green" message and the corniness cameron has become synonymous with. let's hope someone does a kubrick and really changes the game.

[pete]

george lucas can go fuck himself.
and I don't wanna see another movie ever again.
it's an overwhelmingly good movie.

[MacGuffin]

First off, I had some trepidations from the first trailer that made the film look like Jar Jar's planet rehashed, and then there's my hatred for Michelle Rodriguez. But seeing it as a whole, I was completely won over. Not even Rodriguez's one face acting look ruined this. I do agree the first hour or so was a bit sluggish, but that time does well in showcasing the excellent 3D. But then there's a point where Worthington's character shuts his eyes and the screen goes to black. From that point on the film kicks into gear and it is Cameron at his best (though, overall, the film is not his best). The film's running time blows by, and that's both good for the pace, but bad for the Matrix meets Dances With Wolves story because, as P pointed out, scenes felt missing, and it does not round out the characters. The romance was credible, yet flat. However, I was not expecting, nor ready, for the emotional connection I felt that put me on the brink of tears. It's Sully's love of the land more than his love of Neytiri that is relatable. Understandable because Pandora is beautiful to look at.

[pete]

it reminded me much more of miyazaki's films in terms of story and green message.

[Derek]

I damned near busted out "Near, far, wherever you are" three times with this...Need to see it again.

Also, I dig blue chicks now.

[Ravi]

They never expected it to cost so much.  The estimated budgets (including marketing costs) that are being reported are typically around half a billion, and that is likely still hiding all the research and development costs for which Cameron had a blank check to go invent new shiny things with.  If you were to factor in all the actual costs of making Avatar, it's almost certainly upwards of 800 million or more.  

It seems the production reached a certain point where it was clear the budget would never allow the movie to make a profit, but they had put far too much into it to scrap the thing, so the best they can hope for now is to pack in a handful of weekends, minimize their losses and wash their hands of the whole experience.

Don't forget about product tie-ins.

On Pandora radio, of course:

[Redlum]

All the amazing technical acheivement and artistry in this film is wasted on its below par script that features one of the worst movie villains of recent memory. I wish the love story had been given centre-stage as I, too felt echoes of The New World. I found the idea of "I see you" quite powerful - the most inspiring scene of the whole film to me being where Natiri finally meets Jake as human. The rest of the story was stale and predictable and dragged everything down.

I thought Worthington was very good but the the narration and framing made it diffucult to relate to him as a character - he became more of an avatar for the audience. Everyone else just felt like tools of the ham-fisted, central story-line.

People can throw around "popcorn flick" as much as they want - I really wanted to enjoy Avatar (even if only at that level) but the amount of effort that went into this warrants more and I ultimately found it to be a frustrating let-down. To be honest the only game-changer for me this year was District 9 - raising the bar in terms of what I have come to expect from a "popcorn flick" in all departments.

3d is now officially a non-issue to me. At it's very best (here) it's still only icing on the cake.

Can someone counsel me on how to enjoy this film despite it's flaws?

[squints]

I did not like this.
minor spoils:
The 3d was intriguing at first and I was totally on board for at least the first half of the movie. Some of the images were gorgeous and I can definitely say I've never seen CGI look so good but it still didn't blow me away. The story was pretty whack and the dialogue was awful. I didn't find the action scenes that enthralling or nail-biting. I really wanted to be wowed by the end but it just never happened. I don't see how the technology they discover late in the movie about the planet Pandora is that amazing considering that they've already developed the Avatar technology which seems pretty incredible. It would've been great to have seem just a glimpse of what Earth looked like 150 years from now. The coolest reference to this though is when Jake says something like "Where we come from there is no green..."

So you can show a lot of blue titties and basically show two blue things fucking and you can drop curse words left and right but you can't show the blood from an arrow wound? I think this might have benefited (for me i guess, not the prospect of this thing ever making money) from being rated R. There is a lot of violence in the movie but even the humans seemed like mystical creatures when put in this world. At least in District 9 when people got fucked up it was gruesome and believable.

I know there are some things that I haven't seen this year but out of all the big ones (Stark Trek, D9, Wild things, Avatar) that are relying heavily on current top of the line special effects...I'm just really disappointed in this year.
I don't really want district 9 to be my favorite movie of the year but I'm starting to think that that is going to be the case.

[Pas]

220 millions worldwide first weekend... woah

[Reinhold]

220 millions worldwide first weekend... woah

jeeesus. think of what independent filmmakers could do with money like that.

[Alexandro]

Can someone counsel me on how to enjoy this film despite it's flaws?

pretend they're no big deal like everyone else.

it reminded me much more of miyazaki's films in terms of story and green message.

yes. but miyazaki never uses generic cliche villains like the ones in avatar to make his point.

I just think people are getting a little carried away with this. Everyone is suddenly acting as if a predictable script and therefore story development is not important because  the film is a visual marvel. It is, certainly, and for that alone it should be seen. Anyway I never liked star wars so this is definitely not my cup of tea.