Avatar official thread

battlecatmeowstab212 · Wed Dec 23, 2009 10:43 pm

Also, if the protagonist of Avatar was black would this still be an issue?

Reason · Post by **Reason** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 11:35 pm

battlecatmeowstab212 wrote:Also, if the protagonist of Avatar was black would this still be an issue?

if it were will smith yes it's still an annoying and dumb cliche of a message/script/work/fuckjob

visually stunning though

Apathwhy · Post by **Apathwhy** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 4:18 am

As an anti-war parable it was irritating and nauseating as fuck. Every scene with the Colonel and head administrator of the headquarter was insultingly bad. Still, probably the single best theater experience I've ever had. People not catching this on the big screen in 3D are missing out big time. An overgrown Indian smurf riding a red dragon pterodactyl while shooting a machine gun! Holy shit!

intuition · Post by **intuition** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 7:02 pm

^^agreed. seeing it in imax (my first time seeing anything on imax) was visually stunning. if i just rented this i would've never known what i missed.

i thought the 3d would be gimmicky because i haven't seen a 3d movie since captain EO...but it was really just a legitimate part of the visuals and just about every shot in the movie with any level of depth was astounding.

Loki · Post by **Loki** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:08 pm

finally got to see this.

this shit was bonkers man. i wanted to throw myself off a floating mountain anytime something like "shock and awe" or "fighting terror with terror" was mentioned, or whenever the na'avi were doing their tribal dance horseshit, but still...minor complaints when taking the rest into account...

oh...except the soundtrack. which was fucking horrendous. the music really bothered me too.

PopeyeJones · Post by **PopeyeJones** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 2:45 am

Judging It By Its Own Standards:

This was a great movie as far as "blockbuster" movies go, and critiquing it for being a blockbuster with all the standard blockbuster-isms (hokey dialog, ham-fisted "message" moments about current events, plot inconsistencies) is kind of pointless. The special effects were awesome, the story was serviceable enough, and it truly is an "event" movie. In the realm of big ticket movies - regardless of if the movie is ultimately a great movie or not - this is a total game changer. It fully utilizes all the little things that make the theater experience unique and worth the 10 bucks.

Judging it Beyond the Scope of its Own Standards

Agreed with MT about this being a traditional noble savage romp, and with a lot of folks about the Pocahontas comparison (the difference being that here the white guy actually goes native as opposed to either saving them, civilizing them, or taking one home). The problem with this critique is that within the confines of the blockbuster action genre, you're basically insisting that every movie has to be set in majority white locales of the US. Given that in its most distilled form the plot of basically every single blockbuster adventure/action/comic book flick can be boiled down to "White Guy (or Will Smith, or White Guy and Friends) Saves Everyone," as soon as you move beyond a US or Western European setting you're basically going to be able to freely (and somewhat accurately) level this critique about big event flicks. In these movies, for US viewers we don't need an explanation as to why the U.S. population is worth saving (it's us), but when you go somewhere else or somewhere we don't know or really identify with, the noble savage thing is just an easy why to make a white-guy-saves-things movie:

Q: Why can't they save themselves? A: Silly, they're savages!
Q: Why do they deserve saving? A: Well, because they're noble.

Not saying that it's fucking awesome that basically every blockbuster follows this format, but throwing temper-tantrums over the fact that media conglomerates are more risk averse with their most expensive releases is kind of silly.

The problem here, and it really is a fucked up and obnoxious problem, isn't that the movie is racist, it's that it's so NEEDLESSLY racist. You've got 10 years and 250 million dollars to imagine a whole different world. You've got 10 foot tall fucking blue cats with brite-lite skin and little dicks in their hair that they use to emo-fuck fucking everything. You can do any crazy fucked up thing you want, or any weird shit you can come up with to make these fucking aliens and you decide to do this shit:

* Unlike the two (white) avatar blue cat people, all the aliens have black and american indian phenotypic traits. what the fuck? why? why do the aliens have black people facial features and the avatar aliens don't? You could have done anything you wanted and you chose this?
* Unlike the two (white) avatar blue cat people who have white person hair, all the aliens have kinky braided hair. what the fuck? why? What does this add to movie?
* Unlike the two (white) avatar blue cat people who speak newscaster California English (the lead slips into Australian English sometimes, I don't why), all the aliens speak with Jamaican, Indian (meaning India), or vaguely South African accents. What the fuck? why? we know all these Aliens learned English from Sigourney Weaver's character, so where the fuck did they pick up Jamaican accents from?
* When the humans are flying around and doing weird shit there's classical music playing, and when the Aliens are flying around and doing weird shit there's tribal-lite world music playing? Really? In their "native" language too? These Aliens get down to earthly world music? The most boring starbucks bullshit music on earth is actually intergalactic? fuck that.

Agreed with those people who previously mentioned that Giovanni Ribisi was doing Ari Gold. I know you'll say I'm stretching here, but to be totally honest that shit kinda light-weight bothered me too. Ari Gold is a satiric take on a hyper, neurotic, distinctly Jewish Hollywood agent. Pulling that guy out of a satiric role and having that character instead played straight while trying to take over a planet is some Learned Elders of Zion shit. For real, Cameron could do anything he fucking wanted. It adds nothing to the movie. why this shit? I don't think it's intentional (that would be stretching), as Colonel Quatrich is basically the straight version of old satiric characters also (somewhere between Buck Turgidson and Sergeant Hartman), but it still nerved me.

ObeseJesus · Post by **ObeseJesus** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 3:46 am

aight....so I initially thought that when they lock ponytails or whatever, that was like a metaphor for sex or something. So then, when the aliens had to make their horses and pterodactyls submit and then lock ponytails, I thought they were full on Didsing the horses. That shit took me out of the movie for a bit but I still enjoyed it :nofancy:

naturalborn103 · Post by **naturalborn103** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 11:59 am

I saw this in regular theater with 3d.. How much better is imax? I want to see it again but imax is sold out days in advance.. Is it worth buying tickets for that in advance, or regular theater 3d is really the same thing?

PopeyeJones · Post by **PopeyeJones** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 1:35 pm

naturalborn103 wrote:I saw this in regular theater with 3d.. How much better is imax? I want to see it again but imax is sold out days in advance.. Is it worth buying tickets for that in advance, or regular theater 3d is really the same thing?

I saw it in IMAX (an old regular one, not a liemax one) but I know a couple people who have seen it in both, and one person who has seen it in 2D and 3D. Everyone says that the 3D thing is much more important than the IMAX thing. I poked my head into the regular 3d one after seeing the IMAX yesterday and from just watching it for a minute I'd say the same thing. I wouldn't bother.

intuition · Post by **intuition** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 3:05 pm

yeah i would imagine that as long as you see it in 3d you aren't missing anything.

it's funny seeing the 2d commercials and still thinking the movie looks horrible even though i saw it and loved it.

naturalborn103 · Post by **naturalborn103** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 3:56 pm

Thanks.. Guess I will be skip out seeing this again in the IMAX.. Wish they could play this in the Omni theater. Then it would definitely be worth it.

Cash Rulz · Post by **Cash Rulz** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 5:51 pm

I wouldn't say it was Jamaican accents. Its more like bad african/west indian accents.

And I think the hair thing is explained in that the avatars contained dna of the person controlling them as well as Na'vi dna.

Not saying that makes it cool, but it does offer a quick explanation.

PopeyeJones · Post by **PopeyeJones** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 6:25 pm

^^^ word.

Despite the temper tantrum above, I don't think any of that stuff makes it a bad movie or anything like that, it's just fucked up how completely unnecessary it is.

Apathwhy · Post by **Apathwhy** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 7:00 pm

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/con ... ba882ee9b6

[img]http://weblogs.variety.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/07/30/guider_elizabeth_150.jpg[/img] wrote: -snip-

Think Wordsworth or Rousseau, but without any overt reference or any pretentiousness, the pic taps into the longing for innocence in all of us and riffs on that enduring noble savage ideal.

-snip-

And yes, there is a love story: To my mind, just a twitch of a Na'vi ear was as evocative as a sex act in countless other pics.

-snip-

On the other hand, foreign viewers will likely relish seeing the manaical colonel get his come-uppance from a bow and arrow.

-snip-

procure uno · Post by **procure uno** » Thu Dec 31, 2009 4:27 am

Apathwhy wrote:As an anti-war parable it was irritating and nauseating as fuck. Every scene with the Colonel and head administrator of the headquarter was insultingly bad. Still, probably the single best theater experience I've ever had. People not catching this on the big screen in 3D are missing out big time. An overgrown Indian smurf riding a red dragon pterodactyl while shooting a machine gun! Holy shit!

=

?

Trademark · Post by **Trademark** » Thu Dec 31, 2009 10:09 am

Apathwhy wrote:http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/con ... ba882ee9b6

[img]http://weblogs.variety.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/07/30/guider_elizabeth_150.jpg[/img] wrote: -snip-

Think Wordsworth or Rousseau, but without any overt reference or any pretentiousness, the pic taps into the longing for innocence in all of us and riffs on that enduring noble savage ideal.

-snip-

And yes, there is a love story: To my mind, just a twitch of a Na'vi ear was as evocative as a sex act in countless other pics.

-snip-

On the other hand, foreign viewers will likely relish seeing the manaical colonel get his come-uppance from a bow and arrow.

-snip-

Icesickle in drag?

Comedy Quaddafi · Post by **Comedy Quaddafi** » Thu Dec 31, 2009 10:36 am

Cool breakdown of the odd racism. Not as bad as the perhaps unintended (?) racism in D9, if you transfer the 'negro-problem' discourse (of course it's more of a reach in that case due to numerous factors). The accent is spot-on South African here though, not as thick as Jamaican or even North African or Indian slants of English. My friend told me they had a white woman do Neyrittity or whatever she was called? Hes Zimbabwan and says they all sound like his mom or dad. About the hair, we did need some way of easily distinguishing them.

I find it nearly impossible to say anything conclusive about this movie. As you mentioned, a certain degree of ORLY is to expected. Within those terms it's about as good as it gets. Naturally I would have prefered if he took some bigger risks with the story and made the blue people more aestethically pleasing. I don't think I like it much but I certainly don't regret seeing it either. Eventhough every scene was kind of neccesary I still thought it was too much and during the build-up to the last battle I fell asleep. The 3D and the computer-jungle is cool at first but it simply loses it's appeal after a while, to me, less would have been more. Woke up to the robot hamming it up and got my cigarette ready.

Reason · Post by **Reason** » Thu Dec 31, 2009 2:34 pm

* Unlike the two (white) avatar blue cat people, all the aliens have black and american indian phenotypic traits. what the fuck? why? why do the aliens have black people facial features and the avatar aliens don't? You could have done anything you wanted and you chose this?
* Unlike the two (white) avatar blue cat people who have white person hair, all the aliens have kinky braided hair. what the fuck? why? What does this add to movie?
* Unlike the two (white) avatar blue cat people who speak newscaster California English (the lead slips into Australian English sometimes, I don't why), all the aliens speak with Jamaican, Indian (meaning India), or vaguely South African accents. What the fuck? why? we know all these Aliens learned English from Sigourney Weaver's character, so where the fuck did they pick up Jamaican accents from?
* When the humans are flying around and doing weird shit there's classical music playing, and when the Aliens are flying around and doing weird shit there's tribal-lite world music playing? Really? In their "native" language too? These Aliens get down to earthly world music? The most boring starbucks bullshit music on earth is actually intergalactic? fuck that.

Masked Terror #1 · Post by **Masked Terror #1** » Thu Dec 31, 2009 2:35 pm

Word.

Andvil · Post by **Andvil** » Fri Jan 01, 2010 12:17 am

Reason wrote:(the lead slips into Australian English sometimes, I don't why)

Sam Worthington is Australian

Truth. · Post by **Truth.** » Fri Jan 01, 2010 6:37 pm

ya he can't hold english accent very well

Kilgore786 · Post by **Kilgore786** » Sun Jan 03, 2010 3:00 am

saw it in non-IMAX 3D and thought it was dope as fuck...

2 Kids, 2 Adults... candy and shits... $70ish.

I am planning on peeping it at the IMAX next weekend.

Worth every penny.

battlecatmeowstab212 · Sun Jan 03, 2010 3:14 am

Reason wrote:* Unlike the two (white) avatar blue cat people, all the aliens have black and american indian phenotypic traits. what the fuck? why? why do the aliens have black people facial features and the avatar aliens don't? You could have done anything you wanted and you chose this?
* Unlike the two (white) avatar blue cat people who have white person hair, all the aliens have kinky braided hair. what the fuck? why? What does this add to movie?
* Unlike the two (white) avatar blue cat people who speak newscaster California English (the lead slips into Australian English sometimes, I don't why), all the aliens speak with Jamaican, Indian (meaning India), or vaguely South African accents. What the fuck? why? we know all these Aliens learned English from Sigourney Weaver's character, so where the fuck did they pick up Jamaican accents from?

Because the two (white) avatars are made with half-white person DNA. Seriously. It's so there can be a DNA link to the human pilots as they're controlled by a matching nervous system. This was explained when the avatars are first shown.

b0mbs_of_death · Post by **b0mbs_of_death** » Sun Jan 03, 2010 12:14 pm

Reason is still lookin for the toilet on the Millennium Falcon

Truth. · Post by **Truth.** » Sun Jan 03, 2010 5:03 pm

well after this weekend this shit is sittin at #4 all time worldwide gross

4 Avatar Fox $1,018.8 (billion)

The Frankest · Post by **The Frankest** » Sun Jan 03, 2010 6:01 pm

There should be an extra adult version of this movie.

Balzac · Post by **Balzac** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 12:03 am

Truth. wrote:well after this weekend this shit is sittin at #4 all time worldwide gross

4 Avatar Fox $1,018.8 (billion)

thats wild

i just got back from this.

movie was spectacular

Kalistoga · Post by **Kalistoga** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 5:02 am

saw it in 3D. Great movie, but i could've easily watched it without the 3D. after a while, i wasn't even paying attention to the 3D stuff. a bit too long...

Brougham33 · Post by **Brougham33** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 11:20 am

Great theatre experience. Loved the first half cause of the visuals. Dialogue and plot were a bit insulting. All in all, worth the money, but I have no urge to ever see this thing again.

Truth. · Post by **Truth.** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 4:18 pm