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How good is "Avatar"? (there's no 'bad'-option so it's really just a scale poll :P)

Awesome!
5
25%
Good.
4
20%
I have seen better.
3
15%
Haven't seen it yet, but plan to
2
10%
Haven't seen it yet, and don't plan to
6
30%
 
Total votes: 20

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Ethric
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Unread postby Ethric » 01 Feb 2010, 18:16

Zamolxis wrote:
Ethric wrote:Fixed it even better ;)
So I guess it's also pretty clear what was your pick. :p :D
Yep. Just doesn't seem like my kind of movie. And I'm scared of hype :sceptic:
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Unread postby Sure Valla » 01 Feb 2010, 18:22

Kalah wrote:It's not gonna be a big DVD hit, though, is it?

I think it IS going to be a big DVD hit

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Unread postby Kalah » 01 Feb 2010, 19:45

I guess we'll see. To me, though, it strikes me as a typical cinema movie, since it's so dependent upon its effects and not too original in the story line dept.

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Unread postby Ethric » 01 Feb 2010, 20:34

Wouldn't any movie that hit big on the cinema and got a lot of good press sell well on DVD by default?
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Unread postby TheUndeadKing » 02 Feb 2010, 23:54

With plenty of DVD collectors out there, I just can't see how it can fail.

Speaking of DVD sales, I think I've read somewhere that Uwe Boll movies make more profit on DVDs than on actual ticket sales. :D
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Unread postby jeff » 03 Feb 2010, 16:12

Kalah wrote:It's not gonna be a big DVD hit, though, is it?
I just saw and thought it very good, but I judge movies differently than many. I go to a movie to just relax and not have to think about it except to follow the plot. Cliché of course, the extermination of the Native American retold, fine I can deal with that. I sat back and took in the amazing cgi. Cameron has set a new standard and having seen it in 3D, I really can’t see watching it any other way now. So until tech brings high quality 3D systems to the home which are affordable, I can’t see buying it or even watching it once it hits cable/satellite. Is this going to be a literary classic no but I don’t go to those anyway. Whether it is 26th or 1st in box office history is irrelevant, $2 billion is a lot of money no matter where it ends up; so if you’re hung up on that get over it.
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Unread postby HodgePodge » 03 Feb 2010, 17:25

For me, having a vision problem, B-) wherein those ridiculous 3D glasses don't work for me, I doubt that I'll be paying to see this movie in a theater.

Just because there are 'blue aliens' on a planet somewhere else in the Universe, doesn't make want to run out and see this movie, even if it did cost $230,000,000,000. That's a lot of zeroes to produce one stupid movie, no matter how many Academy Awards it wins. ;|
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Unread postby jeff » 04 Feb 2010, 00:02

HodgePodge wrote:For me, having a vision problem, B-) wherein those ridiculous 3D glasses don't work for me, I doubt that I'll be paying to see this movie in a theater.
The glasses can be annoying though this is the second 3D movie I have seen using the Real 3D system and it is a big improvement. I do understand your complaint. I would have preferred (other than not needing the glasses) a single continous lens similar to ski sunglasses. My daughter saw the IMAX 3D version and really enjoyed it.
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Unread postby Veldrynus » 15 Feb 2010, 15:02

The visual effects did it for me. I had a good time watching it, therefore I decide to turn a blind eye to the overly preachy and unoriginal story. 4 stars out of 5.
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Unread postby Angelspit » 15 Feb 2010, 15:17

Salamandre wrote:Very spectacular movie, very anonymous actors.
Sam Worthington? Sigourney Weaver? Stephen Lang? Giovanni Ribisi? Michelle Rodriguez? None of them ring a bell?
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Unread postby Sure Valla » 15 Feb 2010, 16:20

Angelspit wrote:Sam Worthington? Sigourney Weaver? Stephen Lang? Giovanni Ribisi? Michelle Rodriguez? None of them ring a bell?
Well, no..... I do watch alot of movies but i dont check the actors, sounds stupid i know.

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Unread postby Kalah » 15 Feb 2010, 17:43

My school is inviting all the teachers to the cinema later this week; we've made a commercial for the school which is to be shown before the movie.
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Unread postby Sure Valla » 15 Feb 2010, 17:54

Kalah wrote:My school is inviting all the teachers to the cinema later this week; we've made a commercial for the school which is to be shown before the movie.
You are going to Avatar?

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Unread postby Kalah » 15 Feb 2010, 20:32

The fact that I posted in this topic, and not the general movie thread, wasn't obvious enough? :tongue: Perhaps I should close this and move the posts to the other thread? Hmm?
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Unread postby Sure Valla » 16 Feb 2010, 16:20

Kalah wrote:The fact that I posted in this topic, and not the general movie thread, wasn't obvious enough? :tongue:
I get it! :D
Kalah wrote:Perhaps I should close this and move the posts to the other thread? Hmm?
NEVER! :-D

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Unread postby Banedon » 06 Sep 2010, 04:51

Vote "I have seen better".

I only just finished watching the movie yesterday, after having the CD for months ... and I watched over two days - it wasn't very exciting. There are good things about the movie, most of all the graphics, but also lots of things which are insane, e.g:

1. What's the first thing any sane technologically-driven society would do on encountering foes naturally resistant to its weapons? Obvious answer: develop new weapons. The humans on Pandora had well over 3 months to do it. If nothing else they could simply take the "technology" of the Na'vi and use it to kill the Na'vi.

2. Lots of the things in the movie are extremely improbable. This is a big one. The list is so long that I'm going to have to use more than one paragraph, e.g. how can guns fail to kill something but things like blunt weapons do? Like seriously ... it's plain physically impossible. It's impossible that a Na'vi body can survive a fall from several thousand feet up, either, and yet that's what happened. Mountains cannot float, species cannot evolve until every one of them can commune with everyone else (no evolutionary advantage ...), Eywa (if she exists) ought have acted on her own accord instead of wait for prayers, the ecosystem has no chance of supporting so many large predators, blah blah blah.

3. Bows and arrows cannot fight the guns of three hundred years ago, let alone the guns of the future. A helicopter is well over a thousand kilograms in mass; they cannot be swung around by any living being easily. Even accounting for a natural resistance to bullets and some unknown "flux field" that forces the humans to fly on visual, the Na'vi have no chance. What should've been a brutal massacre wound up way too close. Astonishingly the humans had no contingency plan either, despite knowing that "they're out there". After suffering a defeat they were roundly forced out of their base without defending it ... lol? What happened to the touted "home-field advantage"? What happened to electrical fences and barbed wire? Surely the soldiers did not all die on that expedition?

4. Jake ought never have gotten lost in the first place, and Grace never had to look for him, because ... Jake is physically still in the human base. What the heck. The only thing that could possibly be lost is the Avatar body, or perhaps getting the Avatar killed has some physiological costs to the human, but then again later in the movie Avatars die and the human survives without any noticeable drawbacks. I guess there's the "don't die the Avatar costs a lot of money" thing, but then the obvious thing to do is to get the Avatar somewhere temporarily safe, disconnect Jake, ask him where he is, make some arrangement, and so on. Searching blindly for someone is nonsensical.

5. The diplomacy part of the movie was incredible. I don't think the Na'vi found out what the Sky People really wanted until the bulldozers went in. There was no ultimatum or any sign of impending action. Jake and Grace didn't attempt to tell the Na'vi what they were up against and that they would be destroyed. There was essentially no diplomacy at all.

6. The Sky People will be back. Why wouldn't they? The Zulus defeated the British once, but didn't invade British territory, instead holding on to their own ... yet the British came back. The Mongols suffered many defeats, but they (almost) always returned to avenge them. The wanted mineral is still on Pandora. If shareholders don't approve of bad bank books, a failed mission would have even worse bank books, not to mention cause a badly bruised ego. And there's no lack of survivors from the mission who can tell planners back on Earth what to expect on Pandora.

There're more flaws, I just didn't list them. Their huge number far overwhelms all the positives in the movie. The stereotypical plot is only one of the problems. Frankly I find it hard to believe the film won so many awards and broke so many records because the films it displaced were simply so much better. I can only guess it's because of the 3D effect I didn't get to see ... but however good the visuals are I can't imagine them salvaging this movie for me.

Ugh.
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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 06 Sep 2010, 08:33

Wow, way to go overboard with the criticism so much that it ruins your argument...
Banedon wrote: 1. What's the first thing any sane technologically-driven society would do on encountering foes naturally resistant to its weapons? Obvious answer: develop new weapons. The humans on Pandora had well over 3 months to do it.
A whole 3 months... you're right, they should have had portable black hole launchers by then... :rolleyes:

Their armed forces are mercenaries with no production capability and the weapons work well enough for them not to bother putting millions of dollars into making new weapons...
The list is so long that I'm going to have to use more than one paragraph, e.g. how can guns fail to kill something but things like blunt weapons do? Like seriously ... it's plain physically impossible.
Ask a sloth, or why a mace was better against armour then a sword (depending on certain factors of course). And kevlar will save you from bullets, but not a knife etc.
The Sky People will be back. Why wouldn't they? The Zulus defeated the British once, but didn't invade British territory, instead holding on to their own ... yet the British came back. The Mongols suffered many defeats, but they (almost) always returned to avenge them. The wanted mineral is still on Pandora. If shareholders don't approve of bad bank books, a failed mission would have even worse bank books, not to mention cause a badly bruised ego. And there's no lack of survivors from the mission who can tell planners back on Earth what to expect on Pandora.
Except that we're not talking about am empire here, but a corporation, for all we know once they get back to Earth the government will have them arrested for criminal acts (it's harder to hush up a failed operation that a successful one).


Mountains cannot float, species cannot evolve until every one of them can commune with everyone else (no evolutionary advantage ...), Eywa (if she exists) ought have acted on her own accord instead of wait for prayers, the ecosystem has no chance of supporting so many large predators, blah blah blah.
I think it was pretty well implied that the ecology of the place was artificial... i mean the planet was basically one big computer, and everything had a USB slot...
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Unread postby Avonu » 07 Sep 2010, 05:33

Banedon wrote:2. Lots of the things in the movie are extremely improbable. This is a big one. The list is so long that I'm going to have to use more than one paragraph, e.g. how can guns fail to kill something but things like blunt weapons do?
Ask Imperial Strormtroopers about this. :D

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Unread postby Banedon » 10 Sep 2010, 01:46

ThunderTitan wrote: I think it was pretty well implied that the ecology of the place was artificial... i mean the planet was basically one big computer, and everything had a USB slot...
LOL! Nice way of putting it. That just shows in stark measure why I have seen better movies than Avatar :)
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