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It's a rarity these days to have an original sci-fi property gain so much widespread attention, and I think this movie actually deserves it.
Saw it last night at a midnight IMAX 3-D showing, and my mind was thoroughly blown. When watching it, you will plainly see the flaws. The clichés. The ham-fisted environmental messages. But you won't care. You'll be completely entertained and occupied for the entire 180-minute running time.
For those of you who haven't heard of it (though, this being a board for a sci-fi game, who the hell here wouldn't have heard of it?), Avatar is set in the near future on the distant forest moon of Endor Pandora. Rich in the element Unobtainium (**** yes), a Military-Corporate mining expedition is attmepting to deal with the local aboriginal population - the Na'vi - so as to essentially strip-mine the entire moon. The eponymous 'Avatar' is a vat-grown Na'vi that can be "possessed" by a human to allow better movement and study of the inhospitable forests of Pandora, as well as allow for attempts at diplomatic relations with the natives. You can probably guess that conflict arises between the scientists and the military, being agitated by the greed of local corporate supervision. Relatively straight-forward plot that nevertheless keeps it relatively original and never falls hopelessly into Steven Segal-style cliche or preachyness.
Bloody good action scenes, surprisingly good characters and dialogue, topped off with extremely picturesque visuals that never fail to be a feast for the eyes. When you get right down to it, Avatar is generally a very good viewing experience, and easily one of the best sci-fi films I've had the privilege to see. Highly recommended.
Anyone else seen it, yet?
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If it's another one of those "Ewoks pawn Empire" deals count me out. Enough is enough.
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Seen it on wednesday, liked the first 2/3, didn't like the last third, because it was too predictable - and stupid.
Well, the story isn't too great, but the visuals, the visuals!
And dear marine, if you have to
destroy attack helis flying under mountains, remember 2 things: gavity and rocks
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If it's another one of those "Ewoks pawn Empire" deals count me out. Enough is enough.
Possibly, but keep in mind these Ewoks have giant pterodactyls, massive alien horses, and are 8 feet tall with carbon fibre bones and neurotoxins that can stop your heart in under a minute.
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If it's another one of those "Ewoks pawn Empire" deals count me out. Enough is enough.
It is, but done right, i.e.
the 'Ewoks' get slaughtered
Let me quote Mefustae:
Saw it last night at a midnight IMAX 3-D showing, and my mind was thoroughly blown. When watching it, you will plainly see the flaws. The clichés. The ham-fisted environmental messages. But you won't care. You'll be completely entertained and occupied for the entire 180-minute running time.
I'd pick District 9 above it, yes, but it was still brilliant and exceeded my own personal hype for it.
What an incredibly well-realized bit of worldbuilding, on both the human and Na'Vi sides.
And if anybody gets hung up on GRAR SPACE MARINES SHOULD KILL ALIEN FAUNA, yes, the movie is quite in agreement with you, and handles it all quite realistically. There is no silly Ewok-style destruction of war machines.
What you will get, however, is a planet with quite a few more tricks up its sleeve than you'd anticipate, including natives with carbon-reinforced bones who spend their day-to-day lives performing feats of incredible dexterity and strength in an environment of hellish selective pressure. And that's the least of it.
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apparently this is quite literally the movie digital 3d was invented for.
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Nuuuuuuke! *Shakes fist*
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And it's only one 'f' in Smurf ;)
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I saw the trailer. It looked like some 15 year old nerd made it in blender. It also looked plotless and unoriginal. Then I saw the reviews and went "WHAT? NO WAY." So I'm conflicted. Is it A) worth my ten bucks and B) at all likely to cause the average girl to ask why exactly we saw that when New Moon was playing at the same time.
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To the first, I don't know. To the second, there isn't a movie on the face of the Earth that has that effect at this point in time.
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Thank Allah, God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster; in this particular specimen you will find only a passing interest (or so she says) in seeing some prick in need of serious dental work take his shirt off. Assuming that she's lying, but also taking into account matters of personality I think another good movie would provide a fine distraction. :D
Will Avatar cut it? Because I'm not willing to take too much of a risk.
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after i meet with friends watching it ATM for drinks, i'll tell you.
maybe midnight->3AM EST
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Agreed with Tura.
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It's good. If you are right about what she wants to see (shirtless men), maybe the shirtless aliens will do well enough.
the 3d business really helped give things a sense of scale. Overall, I thought it was all great.
now it's time to see if i can make crysis play nice with these plastic 3d glasses!
also, smurfs are small and puny. these aliens would crush your skull like it was a grapefruit. I propose a thread title change to "thunder-smurfs are on the move, thunder-smurfs are loose!"
Much more appropriate.
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It's good. If you are right about what she wants to see (shirtless men), maybe the shirtless aliens will do well enough.
the 3d business really helped give things a sense of scale. Overall, I thought it was all great.
now it's time to see if i can make crysis play nice with these plastic 3d glasses!
also, smurfs are small and puny. these aliens would crush your skull like it was a grapefruit. I propose a thread title change to "thunder-smurfs are on the move, thunder-smurfs are loose!"
Much more appropriate.
thundersmurfs sounds better.
... I wonder what this movie will do to the social acceptacne of furries.... or how furry fans will react to it...
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technically it was a reference to a recent south park episode which made fun of the movie in question.
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I'm sick of your Green Aesops, mother****ers. I don't care how you package them.
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I'm sick of your Green Aesops, mother****ers. I don't care how you package them.
It's a parable about the colonization of the Americas/many other places, except it extirpates the guilt by letting the natives win. In a thankfully plausible way.
Get over your grognard disbelief that anyone packing all that hardware could lose a fight to a bunch of Captain Planet fans and go see it. It's fantastic, and not at all Luddite. Particularly fun to see the huge alien warriors using captured human throat mics.
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My only major qualm was:
Why did Michelle Rodriguez have to die? Why!?
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Get over your grognard disbelief that anyone packing all that hardware could lose a fight to a bunch of Captain Planet fans and go see it. It's fantastic, and not at all Luddite. Particularly fun to see the huge alien warriors using captured human throat mics.
You lost me at the grognards disbelief, since I said nothing about that. In truth, I draw great amusement from that particular portion of the movie as technology's revenge.
But I still don't care about the packaging. I don't care what it's a parable of. The story it wants to tell is about the evils of the technology users. It's Luddite whether it wants to be or not...and frankly if it didn't want to be somebody ****ed up bigtime, because that's what a rather significant percentage of people will draw from it regardless. There are times where you can go "yeah I see how you drew that conclusion but that's still bat****" and then there's...well there's Avatar.
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I loved this movie.
Like it was said by countless people before, it has its flaws, you will notice them but you just won't care because this movie is literally pornography for the eyes!
It's EYE PORN!!
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Went in with virtually no expectations.
Considering seeing it again now.
I never watch movies at the cinema twice, ever.
The 3d was not overdone and really brought you 'into' the film quite a lot, the plot would never stand up in a book no matter how fleshed out, but it /really/ ****ing works in the film because of awesome directing.
The film kicked ass.
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If it's another one of those "Ewoks pawn Empire" deals count me out. Enough is enough.
Possibly, but keep in mind these Ewoks have giant pterodactyls, massive alien horses, and are 8 feet tall with carbon fibre bones and neurotoxins that can stop your heart in under a minute.
and the marines have OBRITAL BOMBARDMENT and SPACECRAFT.
Exterminatus...exterminatus. Even a partial one. It's not like burning everythnig within 1000 miles of the excavation site will ruin the ore. No forest to hid in anymore. Clear ovewiew.
I stopped being impressed by must-see visual movies 10 years ago.
I couldn't care less for all of it's eye porn. A crap plot is still a crap plot.
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If it's another one of those "Ewoks pawn Empire" deals count me out. Enough is enough.
Possibly, but keep in mind these Ewoks have giant pterodactyls, massive alien horses, and are 8 feet tall with carbon fibre bones and neurotoxins that can stop your heart in under a minute.
and the marines have OBRITAL BOMBARDMENT and SPACECRAFT.
Exterminatus...exterminatus. Even a partial one. It's not like burning everythnig within 1000 miles of the excavation site will ruin the ore. No forest to hid in anymore. Clear ovewiew.
I stopped being impressed by must-see visual movies 10 years ago.
I couldn't care less for all of it's eye porn. A crap plot is still a crap plot
blah blah blah blah
It was made quite clear that massive casualties were not politically possible. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have any weapons capable of such a strike - how would they justify shipping them out to Alpha Centauri? When they did need to blow something up on a really large scale they had to improvise using palettes of high explosive.
It's not like James Cameron didn't think of it, he's 'take off and nuke the site from orbit' guy.
Get over your grognard disbelief that anyone packing all that hardware could lose a fight to a bunch of Captain Planet fans and go see it. It's fantastic, and not at all Luddite. Particularly fun to see the huge alien warriors using captured human throat mics.
You lost me at the grognards disbelief, since I said nothing about that. In truth, I draw great amusement from that particular portion of the movie as technology's revenge.
But I still don't care about the packaging. I don't care what it's a parable of. The story it wants to tell is about the evils of the technology users. It's Luddite whether it wants to be or not...and frankly if it didn't want to be somebody ****ed up bigtime, because that's what a rather significant percentage of people will draw from it regardless. There are times where you can go "yeah I see how you drew that conclusion but that's still bat****" and then there's...well there's Avatar.
You didn't watch the movie, so you don't know.
It's about the power of technology and science. The main characters use technology to understand and investigate a new culture. The movie extols and elevates science as a way of understanding the natural world in a way that no science fiction movie I've seen in a long time does. The natives embrace technology as a way of enhancing their insurgency. There's nothing Luddite about it.
Gibson was fond of saying that technology on its own is valence neutral; only human action introduces a human component. The movie may be against the use of technology to pillage other cultures, but it's certainly pro-technology with respect to its use in science and understanding.
Seriously, you don't know how cheering it was to see the scientists presented as the heroes for once. Sigourney Weaver's lead scientist character is probably the best in the movie.
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Wow! This movie was incredible! My wife wanted us to go see something heard about the Morgans, but she gave in and she loved it as much as me. I found nothing that bothered me it was very well done.
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Frankly, hte whole Avatar programs is in the Awesome but impractical (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AwesomeButImpractical) territory.
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You didn't watch the movie, so you don't know.
There is a saying about assumptions...
Yes, I agree the portrayal was refreshing, but you and I reach deeper than most who'll watch the movie. I recognize this. You, apparently, don't.
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I'm honestly genuinely surprised by the positive reactions, because I thought the whole thing looked pretty ****ing terrible from the trailers and commercials. I probably still won't see it, as I don't even see the movies I legitimately want to, but at least it's something to think about now.
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I'm just gonna say the movie was AWESOME and
leave it at that.
EDIT: Scratch that. Here's something may be a bit depressing. You know that the end of the movie isn't the end. Because if the humans really want something they'll just come back with bigger guns.
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Because if the humans really want something they'll just come back with bigger guns.
or with blankets and fire-water
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You didn't watch the movie, so you don't know.
There is a saying about assumptions...
Yes, I agree the portrayal was refreshing, but you and I reach deeper than most who'll watch the movie. I recognize this. You, apparently, don't.
Yeah, maybe. It's still worth seeing!
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blah blah blah blah
It was made quite clear that massive casualties were not politically possible. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have any weapons capable of such a strike - how would they justify shipping them out to Alpha Centauri? When they did need to blow something up on a really large scale they had to improvise using palettes of high explosive.
It's not like James Cameron didn't think of it, he's 'take off and nuke the site from orbit' guy.
So we have the tech to travel to other system, have huge starships, but we don't have heavy weaponry? I find ewoks beating the empire more likely than that.
And yea, I understand political fallout...but..It's Alpha Centauri..who's gonna know? And if the unobotanium is really as critical for the human race as the move makes it out to be, then alien rights groups won't be stopping them for long.
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We have 'heavy weaponry' that we couldn't use in Iraq due to political ramifications. The project is apparently under enough scrutiny that the corporate oversight is concerned about being humanitarian.
It's also possible that they don't have any easy means of delivering orbital weapons. They have a starship which may not have magical reactionless drives (meaning it could be confined to a very conservative orbit) and some ground-to-orbit shuttles.
Of course it's perfectly possible that the humans will come back with heavier weapons.
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I haven't seen the film yet, but on the subject of "heavy" weapons.
Magic reactionless drive or not, it wouldn't be too hard to configure an orbit to arrange for a kinetic harpoon drop. A 100 ton harpoon of some handwavium(they started it) doesn't seem like it would do a lot of damage, but if the shape of the harpoon and altitude of drop were right then you could have effects from earthquakes to tactical nuke detonations.
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Question, how effective are ordinary explosive under lower G's? I remember something at the start of the movie saying that Pandora had lower G's than Earth, and with it I assume it will have lower atmosphere pressure.
Anyone care to do some analysis on it?
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I haven't seen the film yet, but on the subject of "heavy" weapons.
Magic reactionless drive or not, it wouldn't be too hard to configure an orbit to arrange for a kinetic harpoon drop. A 100 ton harpoon of some handwavium(they started it) doesn't seem like it would do a lot of damage, but if the shape of the harpoon and altitude of drop were right then you could have effects from earthquakes to tactical nuke detonations.
yeah that would most likely do a whole lot more damage to the human forces than to the native forces.
go see the movie. the human plan isn't really such a bad plan, based on the intel that the humans had.
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Exactly. The humans thought they were just fighting blue cat people with bows and arrows, not every massive beast in the forest/air.
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I haven't seen the film yet, but on the subject of "heavy" weapons.
Magic reactionless drive or not, it wouldn't be too hard to configure an orbit to arrange for a kinetic harpoon drop. A 100 ton harpoon of some handwavium(they started it) doesn't seem like it would do a lot of damage, but if the shape of the harpoon and altitude of drop were right then you could have effects from earthquakes to tactical nuke detonations.
It's actually tricky to do if you a) don't have a harpoon and b) have a ship with very limited ability to generate delta-V. Their big interstellar ship may be so limited that it can't even effectively change orbital positions (it might be a low-acceleration, long-endurance drive principle), and their little shuttles might be similarly limited. I don't think we could manage a 100-ton harpoon drop without a few year's planning today, and they're working with limited resources compared to us.
They might have been able to set it up with time, but the situation didn't demand it and it probably wouldn't be politically permissible.
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I think we have to assume some kind of FTL here, since they don't appear to be operating under the time-and-distance constraints that non-FTL drive would impose. They want to stripmine the place and ship it elsewhere. That's just not practical without FTL.
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I think we have to assume some kind of FTL here, since they don't appear to be operating under the time-and-distance constraints that non-FTL drive would impose. They want to stripmine the place and ship it elsewhere. That's just not practical without FTL.
Just saw the movie earlier today... erm, what was the line? "5 years, 7 months and 23 days in cryogenic stasis" or something like that? 5 years implies less than c on a journey to Alpha Centauri.
Otherwise... unquestionably the best movie I've seen all year, and that's counting any old films I may have seen for the first time.
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Yeah, but this isn't necessarily Alpha C, and it doesn't seem like the first interstellar voyage, and it's still not practical.
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Hunting bunnyrabbits with a fusion cannon isn't practical, either... :P
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Well, apparently the benefits of Unobtainium make it practical.
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Yeah, but this isn't necessarily Alpha C, and it doesn't seem like the first interstellar voyage, and it's still not practical.
It's definitely Alpha Centauri (well, 95% confidence judging by the movie and its publicity materials.) And a 5 year transit time isn't bad; voyages in the colonial era on Earth, while not consistently that long, were at least in the neighborhood.
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the military presence seemed to be organised as a security detail, not an extermination army, they seemed to have one proper military ship and a hand full of heavily armed transports, they were not equipped to take on the whole planet, and thus they were not able to do that when things turned bad for them. I can see the humans coming back with some proper orbital bombardment weaponry. the Na'vi had better learn to build orbital defences in the next 12 years or **** is gonna get bad.
the only thing I didn't like was when all the animals in the forrest started fighting with them, other than that they did a surprisingly good job of telling this old tired plot.
the aliens were surprisingly biologicaly consistent, the Na'vi themselves being the biggest exception to this.
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And I suppose that the Avatar project failed insofar as no serious attempt was made to negotiate mineral rights for the Unobtanium? Or did the military hothead get trigger happy before such an attempt could be made?
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http://spoonyexperiment.com/
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The movie turned out to be exactly what I expected. My expectations weren't terribly high, but it was definitely an enjoyable experience.
However, movies like this rarely manage to get be onto their side. In fact in a lot of fiction I find myself sympathizing with the bad guys, Avatar was especially guilty of this... Didn't ruin my enjoyment of the movie though.
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I haven't seen the movie; but please, for the love of all the is good and Holy, tell me that they don't actually call it unobtainium in the film.
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They do. I choose consider it a shoutout to TVTropes. :D
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Watched this in 3D last Thursday. It's not bad, but I wouldn't say that it was good either. The only thing I felt it had going for it was the amount of visual effects.
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I think that would be an accurate description of, say, Transformers 2. Avatar had a lot of other stuff going for it, some of it being stuff that was, at least, not actively wrong with it.
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Is it A) worth my ten bucks and B) at all likely to cause the average girl to ask why exactly we saw that when New Moon was playing at the same time.
a) yes, definitely, especially in 3D
b) how old is the girl? because I know some who would definitely go for this over New Moon because they are enlightened and think New Moon is dumb and some who would never, sadly and inexplicably, give up New Moon for anything.
This movie was so effing cool. And honestly, the New York Times review hit the nail on the head. It's got something for everyone. Gun'n'gore? Yup. Action? Yup. Cool weapons, ships, and mechs? Yup. Environmentalist, feel-good message? Yup. Love story? Yup. Enough fun for the whole family!
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The problem arises when someone can't stand one or more aforementioned parts of the movie.
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It's definitely Alpha Centauri (well, 95% confidence judging by the movie and its publicity materials.) And a 5 year transit time isn't bad; voyages in the colonial era on Earth, while not consistently that long, were at least in the neighborhood.
6 months on the flota isn't really the same thing.
Plus, and I really hate to point this out...how are they going to get it back?
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... Automated freighters. Simple "go here, wait for loading, go back, wait for unloading and refuling, repeat".
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I just saw it a couple of days ago...
If you can suspend your mind for a minute and allow yourself to be taken in by the visuals and set pieces then you'll love it. Visually it's a treat and possibly one of the most outstanding things I've seen in years. 10 out of 10 to the graphics guys.
However. (Spoilers ahead..)
I'm glad I went with a rather cynical friend of mine so that we could laugh our way through the films plot. From the US army (sorry, space marines, or whatever) to the misunderstood tree people who happened to be sitting on the largest deposit of oil - sorry - unobtainable around, it was painfully simple to predict. The moment you see a big mech suit you know it's going to get into a fight sooner or later. The one saving grace of note throughout it all is that during the final battle sections when the indigenous blue folk lead a charge against the marines with their guns - the marines do mow them down. It makes a pleasant change from the movies that imply that the blue folk would have half a chance against that kind of fire power.
Anyway, predictable plot aside I did think the movie was fun. It's entertaining. If you want a slower paced, sci-fi film for the mind then go and see Moon because it is also awesome.
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... Automated freighters. Simple "go here, wait for loading, go back, wait for unloading and refuling, repeat".
Which is why they didn't bring them, right?
Right?
And that's still not practical. The cost of moving it interstellar distances means that any substance aside from Unobtanium isn't going to work.
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I just saw it a couple of days ago...
If you can suspend your mind for a minute and allow yourself to be taken in by the visuals and set pieces then you'll love it. Visually it's a treat and possibly one of the most outstanding things I've seen in years. 10 out of 10 to the graphics guys.
However. (Spoilers ahead..)
I'm glad I went with a rather cynical friend of mine so that we could laugh our way through the films plot. From the US army (sorry, space marines, or whatever) to the misunderstood tree people who happened to be sitting on the largest deposit of oil - sorry - unobtainable around, it was painfully simple to predict. The moment you see a big mech suit you know it's going to get into a fight sooner or later. The one saving grace of note throughout it all is that during the final battle sections when the indigenous blue folk lead a charge against the marines with their guns - the marines do mow them down. It makes a pleasant change from the movies that imply that the blue folk would have half a chance against that kind of fire power.
Anyway, predictable plot aside I did think the movie was fun. It's entertaining. If you want a slower paced, sci-fi film for the mind then go and see Moon because it is also awesome.
That might explain why one of my lecturers was laughing throughout the whole film.
The plot is predictable, yes, but the balance of power is also there.
When I saw Jake on that big red thing and using a machine gun stolen from the marines, I kept thinking of Prey.
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http://spoonyexperiment.com/
That's too funny. I thought the same thing, I could see a lot of Fern Gully in this film. :D
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From another forum:
Actually, I'd say it's EXACTLY like every James Cameron sci-fi film. 3 groups
of people (scientists, corporates, and military) are working together toward
something destructive (whether realizing it or not). And just like all his
other films, scientists are always noble and rational, the corporates are evil,
and the military really loves to kill things without any real motive behind it.
In Aliens, Ripley the scientist is always right, I'm not sure why she SHOULD be
right considering all she did was survive an attack against one. That has SOME
insight, but by no means makes you the one who should call all the shots.
Weyland-Yutani is the evil corporation willing to sacrifice humans for a
bio-weapons division. And the military in the movie are a bunch of
cliche-slingin' mofos who don't seem particularly bright.
In Terminator 2, the destructive goal ends up being Skynet, and unwillingly will
doom mankind. Again, the scientists design it for a corporation with military
contracts. And although the military and corporations aren't made prominant in
the movie, once again we have the only scientist become a noble hero who just
wanted to help people before the EVIL corporation and military twisted it into
something that will kill billions. And ofcourse, this scientist bravely
sacrifices his life to save the future.
And in The Abyss, the scientists just want to make peace with the poor widdle
water people, but the CRAZY military guys just want to nuke it. It's been a
long time since I've seen The Abyss, so I can't recall any particular company,
but it wouldn't surprise me there was one.
James Cameron and his boner for scientists, his disdain for corporations, and
his looking-down on the military have been used over and over throughout the
years. Sure he's changed the names and backgrounds of the films, but the
progression is still the same. He's basically been pulling a Legend of Zelda,
remixing all the details but keeping the same damn story progression for 20
years.
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Clearly reaching. Ripley wasn't a scientist, she was a blue-collar worker. James Cameron's incredible fetish for military hardware and protocol clearly does not indicate any serious hatred - quite the opposite.
Not to mention it just ignores Titanic. :p
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Not to mention it just ignores Titanic. :p
Curse you for mentioning that before me.
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PROTEGO
Not to mention I don't think we should complain about at least one science fiction filmmaker producing some pro-science messages.
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This is a very well-made film, but it didn't do anything for me. Pretty visuals, of course. I think 3D has potential.
The Colonel might be what did it. Powerful antagonists can carry films like this, but that man was a cartoon. Neither imposing, compelling, nor believable. Bleh.
I did appreciate the use of action scenes that weren't shaky-cam catastrophies, though. Those seem increasingly rare these days.
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Aye. They did have one nice Galactica-style handheld zoom shot.
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I am highly interested in watching this movie. Sadly the game was a flop. I was hoping against all hope that for once a game of a movie would be good.
/me sighs, and looks up at the Heavens
Was it too much to ask?!?!?!
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Was it too much to ask?!?!?!
You should know it was.
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The Heavens gave us Goldeneye. Apparently, one game was their limit. :p
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The Heavens gave us Goldeneye. Apparently, one game was their limit. :p
I still have my 64...
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Well, I don't.
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I only got one a few years ago. As far as I'm concerned, one's life remains incomplete without Ocarina of Time.
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It does indeed.
The same holds true with the Gamecube and Metroid Prime.
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The heavens also gave us Perfect Dark.
As for the movie, completely awesome. I loved every bit of it. Most particularly the Na'vi and the Pandoran wildlife, the whole concept of the Avatar, the visuals and the themes.
Frankly, hte whole Avatar programs is in the Awesome but impractical (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AwesomeButImpractical) territory.
Oh blow it out your ass. Do you think the Moon Landings were practical? The original goal was to beat the Russians to the moon for fear of lunar militarization. As time has proven, we don't really want guns and bombs in outer space. But we did it anyways, because politically the time was right and the technological benefits outweighed the impracticality. As for the Avatar program, while the concept might not be 100% practical, the R&D potential of such a program would greatly outweigh the impracticality. In addition, would you rather be in a human body when a Thanator tries to kill your ass or would you prefer to be in a Na'vi body? From what we've seen, the Na'vi body is stronger and can carry more firepower (reference Jake carrying the door gun of his chopper like an assault rifle, while the other marine gets a little smg). Regarding the possibility of wearing an exosuit, the exosuit deprives you of sensory perception and motor precision that the movie's level of science requires.
To all who believe Quaritch was cartoony, you haven't been paying much attention to history and current events. I found the most terrifying thing about him to be that he is a perfect representation of the nightmares within the human spirit. He is us at our worst--intelligent, cruel, and apathetic. Sure, say he was unbelievable, but he has existed in the past (conquistadors, European settlers, Americans, Hitler), exists in the present (Taliban, Al-Qaeda, previous US generals), and will exist in the future. I find him imposing because he commands a force which the Omaticaya Na'vi alone cannot rival, and he is vengeful, angry and threatened enough to consider using it. And when he's contemplating such a use of force, he is incapable of showing compassion for anyone or anything that is not part of what he represents and desires. He perfectly mirrors modern-day extremism, and not just that of terrorist organizations. He utilizes preemptive strikes and "Shock and Awe". Unbelievable? I ask you then to start thinking about the past eight years. What the **** has the United States been doing?
Beyond Quaritch, all of Avatar's human characters represent a part of the current human personality. The scientists are our compassionate and rational side, focusing on preservation, understanding and cooperation. The corporation and its lackey Selfridge are our self-centered and arrogant side, obsessed with the quarterly statement, unconcerned for others, and careless in regards to all else. Quaritch is our destructive and militaristic side, the result of our fears and angers left too long to fester and given the intelligence and power with which to do irreparable harm.
Even with such a seemingly predictable storyline, Cameron has created an excellent dialogue between the forces currently at work within human society today.
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"He utilizes preemptive strikes and "Shock and Awe""
and daisy cutters, ****ing Iraq!
I liked him, he was a badass.
am I the only one who thought the Na'Vi were the most biologically inconsistent animal on that planet, evolutionarily speaking.
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He should have used more napalm. :D
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Not to mention it just ignores Titanic. :p
Curse you for mentioning that before me.
Whould White Star Line be considered the evil corporation? :P
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because they put the profits of running their new ship ahead of the lives of the passengers, brittle steal, not enough life boats, all to cut costs, total evil corperation syndrome.
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To all who believe Quaritch was cartoony, you haven't been paying much attention to history and current events. I found the most terrifying thing about him to be that he is a perfect representation of the nightmares within the human spirit. He is us at our worst--intelligent, cruel, and apathetic. Sure, say he was unbelievable, but he has existed in the past (conquistadors, European settlers, Americans, Hitler), exists in the present (Taliban, Al-Qaeda, previous US generals), and will exist in the future. I find him imposing because he commands a force which the Omaticaya Na'vi alone cannot rival, and he is vengeful, angry and threatened enough to consider using it. And when he's contemplating such a use of force, he is incapable of showing compassion for anyone or anything that is not part of what he represents and desires. He perfectly mirrors modern-day extremism, and not just that of terrorist organizations. He utilizes preemptive strikes and "Shock and Awe". Unbelievable? I ask you then to start thinking about the past eight years. What the **** has the United States been doing?
Even Hitler was once a struggling artist.
The Colonel simply wasn't human. He was an evil robot. It's all well and good to say he mirrors real figures, but this is fiction, and that's no excuse for a flat character. I'm not asking for a sympathetic antagonist, or even a conflicted one, but I do need to care about him. Fear, hatred, pity, shame: a good antagonist is not just an obstacle. They inspire emotion. The Colonel was so over the top that I found him impossible to take seriously. If the intent was allegory then it's simplistic to the point of irrelevance, but frankly I'm not convinced he was anything other than a cookie-cutter villain.
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I just thought he had a vendetta against the
planet moon.
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Okay, so the Colonel is a large ham (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LargeHam). Does that make it a bad movie (/serious question)?
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Not at all. I think it's pretty good, actually, disappointments aside. The Colonel's just its weakest link.
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Blah come on the colonel was a fun character.
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Even Hitler was once a struggling artist.
Even Reinhard Heydrich, most famous to people as head of SD, known to the Czechs as the Butcher of Prague and who is about as Evil Robot as humanity gets, had more depth than that. An outstanding violinist, a passionate sportsman; loved fencing, skiing, horse riding. Poor handwriting, contorted prose, but logical exposition.
If we ever saw the Colonel's handwriting it'd simply be KILL KILL KILL in weird multicolored huge letters.
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Sadly the game was a flop.
The rest of us saw that coming, I think.
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Quaritch worked for me because I felt like there really were (and really are) people of that sort during the conquest of the Americas, in various militaries, or working in PMCs today. And his obvious loyalty to his troops did work as a sort of para-sympathetic feature.
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Although ultimately the main antagonist of Avatar, I find him pretty admirable for a bad guy. Had Jake stayed loyal to the humans, I'm sure Quaritch would've sent him off on a high note. After all, Quaritch did follow his end of the bargain and secure a pair of new legs for Jake.
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The title of this thread is funny because somebody told me this movie was like Dance with Wolves, which IMHO is one of the worst movies ever.
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Go see the movie and decide for yourself.
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I did. It's a three hour tech demo. Would rather watch a Star Wars prequel again - Lucas' writing was merely incompetent. Cameron just doesn't give a ****. The terms "perfunctory" and "by the numbers" were invented for a script like this. There isn't a single line that doesn't sound generic. Not one. The effects are nice, even though the plant and animal design is actually pretty cliched rather than the masterpiece of artistry that most reviewers make it out to be, but yeah, it's a worthless piece of storytelling, and nobody will care about it five years from now, much less ten.
And if you really want to see a marvel of visual imagination, go rent something like Dark City. Or hell, how about TESB!
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I thought most of the alien designs were very good, excluding the Na'vi and their flying things. they did a much better job than most of the 'what if' discovery channel shows have done in this respect.
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Well, that's because they got some of the best VFX companies on the Avatar job, right?
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I suspect they also spent a lot of time designing the flora and fauna to look like they had a common ancestry, as we do here on earth. The Na'vi were definitely wrong for the evolutionary backdrop though. Everything else had 4 eyes and six limbs, and clearly showed a coherent ancestry that they were trying to replicate. But that was a price they had to pay to put a love story at the centre - audiences just wouldn't have been able to get emotionally attached to a big, blue six limbed 4 eyed woman, and it'd strecth credibilty for the main character to fall in love with something so far removed from human sexual ideals. So it was, I think, an acceptable compromise between science and movie. At least they resisted the urge to give her big tits.
Otherwise, I thought it was a really well done movie, though I agree about the story - predictable and somewhat cliched, definitely, but very well told, and frankly the movie was such a visual treat that I forgave it its story. I'm not sure if 3d added all that much to it - TBH, I think it would have worked just as well in 2d, but it certainly made the viewing experience memorable, and in places it was used very well. I also really liked the human military - the ships and equipment all looked very realistic - a few generations ahead, but logical and coherent enough. I can see the thought that went into them, and there's nothing implausible for over 100 years of military advancement. So yeah, lots of good parts made a good movie. Not a truly great movie perhaps, it had its flaws, but more worth the money than fellow effectsfest Transformers 2 (which, hell, I liked as well :))
One thing I did get though, was that I now know exactly how I want the Warcraft movie that's supposed to be out in 2011 to look. The Na'vi gave off a massive Night Elf vibe (though I doubt they were really influenced by them at all, just coincidence), and the whole feel of the film just felt like it could have worked just as well with swords and sourcery as it did with future sci-fi tech.
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...audiences just wouldn't have been able to get emotionally attached to a big, blue six limbed 4 eyed woman...
Actually, I wasn't very emotionally attached to a big, blue four-limbed two-eyed woman either... :nervous:
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yeah, they could have made the second set of eyes unnoticeable (small and in a dark patch of coloration) unless you were looking for them (like we are), and a third set of limbs could have been done easily, four arms or a set of wings, hell they could have made them vestigial, or used to hold their bow or something.
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I never thought the creature designs were cliched. I found them familiar because there are a lot of physiological elements in Pandoran wildlife that we see in wildlife on Earth. To me, this shows a high level of thought on the art director's part because Pandora's environment is supposed to be similar to Earth's, just toxic to humans. They thought about it, and instead of making the animals some total freakfest, they went for "Earth's evolution took a different path," which increases the audience's emotional connection to Pandora.
And not every animal on Pandora has four or six eyes. It's common for it to happen, but what about the Viperwolves? IIRC they've got two eyes. And the smaller flying things (Ikran, not Turok) have two.
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I will admit the flying creatures were excellent.
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I bet the spinny lizards are about at the bottom of the food-chain though.
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Awesome.
My only problem with it was with the Colonel, but not because of his characterization so much as how obvious it was that he was going to drag out the fight really long, as soon as his chopper started going down and he was rushing to the power suit... I mean, it was obvious to me then that he would make it to the ground and cause trouble there, because otherwise there would have been no point showing him trying to get into the suit, et cetera. Anyway, I reckon they probably could have had the whole ground fight sequence without it being the 'obvious' ending.
Oh yeah, there is one more thing about it, I guess... at the end, right before the credits start, it says "Avatar" (in text)... that kinda broke the mood, for me. I guess it might help as far as word-of-mouth advertising for the movie or something...
Edit:
And all you people complaining that it's just for graphics whores... Bull****. I saw it in 2D, and it was awesome anyway. And if they had tried to do the same movie without the quality of graphics they used, but instead using puppets or costumes or something, it would have been crap, so I say they were justified in using that much CGI.
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|I never understood why people complain about Ewoks body slamming the Empire's best. Sure it was absurd but y'know, Good v Evil, and it's Holywood, so Evil is going down....
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What was also terrific was the fact that the white guy got the chieftains daughter, and became leader by doing something that all of the natives who had spent their entire lives learning how to survive in the jungle could not do. Mighty Whitey, anyone? (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MightyWhitey)
Avatar; when you can assuage your guilt over oppressing the other races while not having to give up any of your white privilege!
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I don't get the logic behind this opinion that Avatar is a way to "assuage your guilt." It doesn't do anything to make me feel better about the fact that us European descendants completely decimated native populations and practically enslaved the entire world with our cultures. It's a guilt no movie can or will ever undo, no matter how people may try to make us feel better.
And I don't see the "without having to give up any of your white privilege." The key point of the movie is that Jake specifically gave up his human (hence white) self. Remember at the end? His human body dies.
And I think you're making too much of a jump there, Mr. Vega. There is no evidence to suggest specifically that the Na'vi could not do what Jake did. For all we know, they could be perfectly capable of bonding with Toruk. But were they willing to risk it? It's incredibly dangerous and likely to result in their death. If a Na'vi tries, they put more at stake than Jake does. Jake is in a special position--he doesn't have anything left before that maneuver. He's dead if he goes back to the humans, he's dead if he attempts to contact the Na'vi, and Grace is dying. I don't think it's a question of ability more than a question of willingness. The opportunity cost for a Na'vi was much greater than for Jake. Should the attempt fail, a Na'vi would've lost everything. Jake would lose nothing. Hence, the benefits are far greater for Jake than for a Na'vi. And I got the feeling that Na'vi culture made becoming Toruk Mak'tau something to be done only in times of great need, and not done at the whims of ego. We also neglected the fact that the Na'vi have a different belief system than ours, and where we might see Toruk as a steed to serve our purposes, they might see it as a kind of deity to be respected. It's too much to say Jake did what the Na'vi could not do. It's more accurate to say he did what they we're not willing and/or ready to do.
And Jake becomes war leader, yes, but there is nothing to suggest he assumes the role of chieftain after the battle. Before the battle, he recognizes Tsu'tey as the chieftain.
This Mighty Whitey thing doesn't seem realistic. I don't see Avatar as portraying Jake as "superior." In most regards, his Na'vi skills are shown to be weaker than those of true Na'vi. In many ways, this movie is about the inferiority of the humans (white stand-ins). They're powerful, but in a very misguided and idiotic way. I'd say that's very true of current western societies. What you're saying makes Jake "superior" isn't his skills or his genetics. It's his desperation. And given the similarities between humans and Na'vi, I'd hazard that if Jake had not gone and got Toruk, a Na'vi would've done it sooner or later.
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For all we know, they could be perfectly capable of bonding with Turok.
They are. And apparently, it has already happened (5 times since "the time of the first songs"). Clearly, it's not something you just do though. I suppose you could say Jake is on shaky ground because normally Toruk chooses its rider, whereas he made the conscious choice to become Toruk Makto. Maybe not though. This is shaky too, but Toruk did try to kill him, on his first flight. Just something to think about...
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What was also terrific was the fact that the white guy got the chieftains daughter, and became leader by doing something that all of the natives who had spent their entire lives learning how to survive in the jungle could not do. Mighty Whitey, anyone? (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MightyWhitey)
Avatar; when you can assuage your guilt over oppressing the other races while not having to give up any of your white privilege!
Actually, I agree with this analysis. I just don't think it stopped it from being a great movie.
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Watched it in its full 3D glory today. Felt very entertained, despite a by-the-numbers plot.
Also, while I slightly cringed at all the very american psychoses apparent in the script (seriously, it's what I imagine watching a WW2 movie made by Germans is like for non-germans), I still got my money's worth.
EDIT: to quote TVTropes:
There is a third group. Those who went to see the archetypal-plot, passable-acting, formulaic message, entertaining backstory, glorious visuals, and battle scenes the likes of which God has never seen, and were utterly satisfied.
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That's a great way to sum up my feelings for it (just saw it in 3D yesterday). The plot was completely predictable and by-the-numbers for the most part (Ferngully meets Pocahontas with a smattering of GITS, right? :p), and the characters were all archetypal...but I honestly didn't give a damn, because the the world was so orgasmically gorgeous and immersive. I think I could have spent hours just sitting there, watching everyone run/fly/ride through those forests. I've been a fan of the Myst series for years, and so much of that movie felt for all the world like I was sitting down in front of one of the games, winding my way through some alien environment. The direction during the action sequences was utterly brilliant, as well. It was definitely well-worth seeing in theaters.
(I was also surprised at just how natural the 3D became after only a short time, as I'd never seen a movie using it before. It wasn't even something that I consciously noticed most of the time, but it definitely helped add to the immersion.)
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Yep, I saw it yesterday in 3D. Well, it was fun to watch, but not really a great movie. Anthropologically, it was an interesting movie with the first two thirds. It wasn't exactly realistic by any means, but I can understand why they made the aliens like they did; it's no fun trying to personify something that you cannot fathom the way it thinks. And for the action scenes, my previous assumptions were almost right. It was pretty stupid. However fun to watch, somehow I don't think "Throw all of your forces at the enemy as hard as you can and hope you win" is a good military tactic. Also, it was pretty ridiculous how they eliminated about 60% of the important characters all within 60 seconds of each other.
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Your assumptions about the action scenes were so not right.
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Your assumptions about the action scenes were so not right.
Well, they kind of were. It was a CHAAAAAAAAAARGE!!! attack/ambush. Like Verdun.
Anyway I watched the film again, this time in 3D. It wasn't in any way different an experience to 2D, but that's not saying much; I still found it great. I think I actually enjoyed bits of it more the second time, because I knew what was gonna happen.
I didn't find the final battle scenes so ludicrous second time round - The humans actually won with relatively minor casualties against the Na'vi forces until the entire world started trying to kill them. Which is actually kind of interesting, given how that we as a species probably wouldn't survive if all the animals in the world flipped out and started attacking us. It also reminded me for some reason of European invaders bringing diseases to which the natives had no resistance, just the other way round....
Maybe I should stop thinking out loud on a fully public forum.
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You do have a point there, though.
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Your assumptions about the action scenes were so not right.
:wtf: Did we watch the same movie? Because it sure looked to me like the marines deployed a couple platoons of infantry and a few walkers on the ground, and then left. You don't do that in a place like that. It'd be one thing if the flux hadn't magically wiped out BVR and most sensing equipment, but even then, had the natives bothered to even try to set up an ambush, I'd be willing to bet that they wouldn't have to be defendant on the animals. But what do they do? They charge straight at the front of their line with these massive ****ing horses. The only reason they got close enough to marines to inflict any casualties at all was because marine command was stupid enough to deploy them in the middle of a forest. But why on Earth would the marines want to fight where they had the advantage? And why would you need a ground force if you were going to bomb their holy grounds in the first place?
The air battle was marginally more reasonable. I'm willing to grant that the Na'vi have good enough sight, reflexes, balance, practice riding fly creatures, and aim with a bow to shoot out a helicopter's pilot and a plane's gunner, but why'd they split up so much? It looked like only a few bothered to even try to attack the bomber, which seems like it should've been their main objective. I was happy that they at least tried to attack with the sun at their back, but I'm willing to bet that if they concentrated their force on the bomber during the outbreak of the fighting, they could've taken it down during the initial confusion of the fight. And why did the marines have to resort to pushing the explosives out of the back of a "bomber" (cargo plane)? I'd think that any of those gunships is more than capable of flying at higher altitudes and dropping actual bombs, or heck, just flying at higher altitudes and shooting dumbfire rockets straight down at the holy place. But no, they fly right through the damn middle of all of those floaty rocks and magical flux. Who cares if the Na'vi have been living there, practicing flying and hunting without any sort of BVR to get messed up for thousands of years?
Or did I miss something that makes all of this okay?
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You missed the Rule of Cool, for one. :p
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*snip*
True, I would have expected more guerilla tactics on their part.
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I think a topside attack would've been complicated by those massive arches surrounding the Tree of Souls.
Plus, if your end objective is to totally and utterly destroy something in such a way that it completely crushes your opponent's morale, you'll want to do it with as much force as possible, to make it as impressive and terrifying as possible, so that the enemy will not question your superiority and not even consider resistance. I think that's why the colonel decided to use the mining explosives instead of conventional missiles--he wanted some intense shock factor.
But mostly, I agree with Mongoose: Rule of Cool.
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Your assumptions about the action scenes were so not right.
*snip*
All of this is predicated on the belief that people consistently make optimal tactical decisions, which they do not.
The battle scenes were well in line with what we saw in analogous historical situations, and the movie had the courage to show the high-tech forces actually slaughtering the natives. It was the total opposite of Endor.
The Na'vi had no tradition of tactical warfare, just of individualistic hunting.
They couldn't just bomb the tree from above because it was shielded by all the floating mountains.
Of course, the marines had no way fo knowing that the planetary biosphere was alive and aware, so they couldn't end up prepared for that.
The movie did everything you could have wanted from it on a tactical level.
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All of this is predicated on the belief that people consistently make optimal tactical decisions, which they do not.
That's true to an extent. But unless the future is totally screwed up, someone does not make Colonel and be put in charge of security by being stupid and unaware of their surroundings. And I don't think Cameron was trying to say that the future is totally screwed up in that way.
The battle scenes were well in line with what we saw in analogous historical situations, and the movie had the courage to show the high-tech forces actually slaughtering the natives. It was the total opposite of Endor.
This is pretty much true, even if the only reason the Marines managed to slaughter anyone was because they had guns and the natives strolled out right in front of their line.
The Na'vi had no tradition of tactical warfare, just of individualistic hunting.
Reasonable, but you'd think that they'd at least try and apply what they know of hunting to fighting. When they hunt, they don't unsurreptitiously charge their prey as soon as they spot it. I can understand how this applies to the areal fight, but I don't think that's a very reasonable explanation of the way they fought on the ground.
They couldn't just bomb the tree from above because it was shielded by all the floating mountains.
I could see how this would make it difficult, but there were plenty of scenes of the battlegroup from above and clearly not totally encased by rocks, and while it would difficult, it wouldn't be impossible. Still, difficult is bad. But that doesn't mean you couldn't have a gunship task force fly in above the magic mountains and dive in on the sight. It's much less of a target than those huge ships, and flying in above the mountains would put them in a more advantageous position, not having to fight the Na'vi while surrounded by a whole bunch of rocks.
Of course, the marines had no way fo knowing that the planetary biosphere was alive and aware, so they couldn't end up prepared for that.
Well, seeing as how they so conveniently ignored their science staff, that's true. But they still knew the risks of being out in the open on Pandora, what do you think the Colonel was talking about in the first part of the movie? I could see this justifying them not expecting the animals to attack, but it's no excuse to just chuck a bunch of infantry in the middle of a random jungle for no apparent reason, because they knew the dangers of being out there. Sure they coped with the ones they expected, but the only reason they did that was because, supposedly, their foe couldn't fathom a way to fight them other than charging straight at them.
The movie did everything you could have wanted from it on a tactical level.
There's a line where "the characters are stupid" becomes an unreasonable justification for this kind of stuff, and I honestly think that this crossed it.
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The characters were not stupid. They acted the way people do in real life.
The last two big wars we've been in have been big lessons in strategic humility. I see no reason why we would have become less fallible by the year Avatar is set.
Your argument that the characters were stupid is doubly odd because everything the Marines did worked beautifully, up until the point where the entire planet decided to screw them over.
And didn't you say you haven't seen Aliens? The most believable, realistic piece of military science fiction ever filmed? You need to see Aliens.
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The characters were not stupid. They acted the way people do in real life.
The last two big wars we've been in have been big lessons in strategic humility. I see no reason why we would have become less fallible by the year Avatar is set.
Your argument that the characters were stupid is doubly odd because everything the Marines did worked beautifully, up until the point where the entire planet decided to screw them over.
And didn't you say you haven't seen Aliens? The most believable, realistic piece of military science fiction ever filmed? You need to see Aliens.
I was using harsher language in my responses than I should have been, but I stand by what I meant to say: A ground force was totally unnecessary in this operation. I do give you that what the marine's were doing was working up until the planet decided to poop on them, but it could have been done better. And this is forgetting what the Na'vi were doing. Even without an understanding of warfare, thousands of years of hunting in the jungle should've done something more to help them fight on the ground (which is why ground fighting should've been avoided by the marines). Things worked out the way they did up until the planet took a side because of mutual incompetence. After that, there were simply too many mindless animals trying to kill the marines to fail.
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The tribes that were active on the ground were not from the jungle. They were from the plains. They had not been hunting in the jungle for thousands of years. Planets are large.
The way in which the Na'vi fought was not historically dissimilar to the way in which indigenous groups often engaged colonial armies: fractiously, traditionally, and catastrophically.
There were no mindless animals trying to kill the marines. There were very minded animals doing so.
Go see Aliens.
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http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/12/secrets_of_navi_sex_revealed.html
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|I never understood why people complain about Ewoks body slamming the Empire's best. Sure it was absurd but y'know, Good v Evil, and it's Holywood, so Evil is going down....
Return of the Jedi was originally going to feature Wookiees until Lucas decided that Ewoks were more marketable to the primary target audience (children, whose critical thinking powers are extremely limited). It would have made a lot more sense if the original plan of 7-foot-tall berserk ape-man-things with guns attacking the stormtroopers had been carried out. But Lucas surmised (rightly, unfortunately) that children's movies don't have to make any sense.
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The last two big wars we've been in have been big lessons in strategic humility. I see no reason why we would have become less fallible by the year Avatar is set.
Basically it doesn't work because this is a mining op. They need to clear an area and a field of fire and then sit on it, and the devil take the rest of the planet. They have more than enough firepower to accomplish this task in the face of all and sundry. This is a tactic that is very familar to people engaged in protecting a fixed asset and has been for a very long time. It's pretty much the one of choice.
It's not what happened. Instead the colonel came up with some gollywoggle plan to "crush their morale" straight out of a British general staff obession from one of the World Wars, ignoring his Clausewitz in the process, and exposing his most limited asset, his troops, to unnecessary risk when he could have simply sat in a bunkerline until the Na'vi realized the futility of assaulting strong fixed posistions, or were all dead.
He had a perfect solution right in front of him, and any squad leader would have known it. Why didn't he take it?
Because he's Evil Stupid.
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No, because - as he stated in the movie - he believed they would be completely overwhelmed by massive numbers of the enemy if they remained there.
His 'crush their morale' plan was right out of the modern US playbook.
Furthermore their mining ops were afield, not in their base. They could not sit in their base without wasting vast amounts of time and money. The corporation would not have stood for it.
His decision made tactical and strategic sense.
The argument that he was Evil Stupid is a silly one, because his plan worked perfectly. He was right on target to end the native threat crushingly, until the entire planetary noosphere launched an unprecedented and utterly unpredictable attack on his troops.
Any argument against Quaritch's strategy is sabotaged by the fact that it worked. Ironically, they would have been even more screwed if they had remained in their base, where the eventual planetary assault would have annihilated them.
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No, because - as he stated in the movie - he believed they would be completely overwhelmed by massive numbers of the enemy if they remained there.
A belief that is, at best, silly. He had a secure line of retreat to orbit and a secure supply line the same way which the Na'vi had no real method of interrupting. As long as the ammunition holds out, he can hold his line in the face of all and sundry, up to and including the entire ****ing planet.
The human wave attack, or the Na'vi-wave attack, or any sort of wave attack, is a dead tactic and has been since the First World War. This argument is bull****.
His 'crush their morale' plan was right out of the modern US playbook.
So's mine. It's also generally more successful. We can start listing the successes of the defensive approach with Roarke's Drift through to Khe Son and on to today's Afghan conflict. Fighting a modern force in strong fixed posistions without a strong presence of your own supporting arms is always, without exception, doomed to fail.
His plan, on the other hand, has frequent failures to its name. Why go with a strategy that can lose when you have one where victory is assured?
Furthermore their mining ops were afield, not in their base. They could not sit in their base without wasting vast amounts of time and money. The corporation would not have stood for it.
THEN WHY DID THEY PUT THE BASE THERE?
AND WHY DON'T THEY MAKE OTHERS!?
They're not just going to conform to your desires for them to act dumb, y'know.
Any argument against Quaritch's strategy is sabotaged by the fact that it worked. Ironically, they would have been even more screwed if they had remained in their base, where the eventual planetary assault would have annihilated them.
Doesn't work. He didn't have to "win" anything, he just had to stand a guard, so his whole strategy was a timewasting boondoggle. Even the whole planet thrown at them would have failed in the final analysis, or at least they would have managed a retreat to orbit in good order before the ammo ran out.
Put simply, he forgot his mission. I don't think that's something that makes sense in this situation especially, as he's employed by a group that's going to look very unkindly on such things.
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I don't like the personal tone this is taking. We're arguing about an SF movie. Could you please back down a bit? I haven't done anything to insult you personally so far as I know.
He had no secure line of retreat or supply: his two vulnerable spaceplanes could be grounded by sheer mass of Na'vi flyers. We don't even know if there was a ship in orbit to help him out, let alone any supplies at all.
He did not have enough ammunition to kill all the Na'vi out there. He could not have held his base.
The base was not built on the new deposits because the new deposits had only been opened within the past few days after years of work near the original base site. C'mon, why the yelling? This makes perfect sense.
Having the whole planet thrown at him - or even all the Na'vi - would have annihilated his entire base and every person under his command.
Not to mention corporate pressure to stay on timetable, since their operation was apparently close to going into the red.
There was no relief coming for maybe years, and possibly no line of retreat.
It all made sense.
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And, again, his plan worked. You're suffering from the Gurkha Experiment fallacy: contamination by hindsight.
Were it not for the totally unforeseeable planetary uprising his brilliant work would have been lauded as genius.
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I don't like the personal tone this is taking. We're arguing about an SF movie. Could you please back down a bit? I haven't done anything to insult you personally so far as I know.
I'm insulting the character, not you. :P I thought this was clear. However the comment about "conform to your desire for them to be stupid" is basically something you've fired at many and sundry in other threads in bluntest terms.
He had no secure line of retreat or supply: his two vulnerable spaceplanes could be grounded by sheer mass of Na'vi flyers. We don't even know if there was a ship in orbit to help him out, let alone any supplies at all.
I don't think the spaceplanes made the trip alone. I'm pretty sure you don't either. The total lack of a ship in orbit is unlikely at best, since they can just leave it there (orbit's a gentle resting place) without it costing anything and loading it up until the next arrives, then send the one they've got home. Lather rinse repeat. The Na'vi are not flying things that that can move and strike rapidly. Clearing local airspace for an escape or landing should be quite possible.
He did not have enough ammunition to kill all the Na'vi out there. He could not have held his base.
He doesn't need to kill them all. The less-organized a force is, the fewer casualities are required to render it combat ineffective. This is basic tactics. Even the best-disciplined units will rarely continue to press an attack after 30% casualities, though they may reform and try again. A group like the Na'vi you have to kill relatively few of them to drive them off. Total destruction of the enemy's fighting forces is nice, but rarely necessary or required.
The base was not built on the new deposits because the new deposits had only been opened within the past few days after years of work near the original base site. C'mon, why the yelling? This makes perfect sense.
There is one, and only one, way to effectively defend something. This is to guard it. Anything else is suspect. This will dealt with later at length.
Having the whole planet thrown at him - or even all the Na'vi - would have annihilated his entire base and every person under his command.
Tactical and strategic precendent of the British Empire argues this is patently untrue. Khe Son and similar actions from Vietnam reinforce the case. Given the disparity in sophistication is even greater here, and the disparity in numbers is probably less, I see no reason to abandon precedent.
Not to mention corporate pressure to stay on timetable, since their operation was apparently close to going into the red.
Which is more reason not to initate risky offensive actions but simply stand the watch as you were hired to.
There was no relief coming for maybe years, and possibly no line of retreat.
It all made sense.
See above precendents. Also this argues against the first point about no ship in orbit. We've come a long way from the Jamestown settlement. A Way Out is going to be more or less required when you're that totally isolated that you can't even communicate.
And, again, his plan worked. You're suffering from the Gurkha Experiment fallacy: contamination by hindsight.
Were it not for the totally unforeseeable planetary uprising his brilliant work would have been lauded as genius.
Put bluntly, this is not true. Crushing their morale as a strategy has never worked. The Brits talked endlessly about it in the World Wars, but it didn't work. Japan built their entire warfighting strategy around it after Tsushima in 1905 and lost World War II because of it. The US tried it in Vietnam and failed. It was tried again in Iraq and Afghanistan...and failed again, something the US explicitly recognized several years ago. It fails by default dealing with a force as disorganized and dispersed as the Na'vi. They simply don't have the organization to sue for peace in a meaningful fashion or to enforce a peace on their own, so breaking their morale is, at best, a temporary solution and very likely to be ineffective.
Always, always, dealing with a guerilla enemy, the path to victory has been to defend soundly. Whether it has been seeing ships to a safe and timely arrival on the opposite shore, letting the enemy shatter himself against your fixed defenses and thereby demonstrate the utter futility of his war, or ensuring basic services and needs of the local populace are met and they are kept safe, defense is, was, and always has been the only answer. One may be proactive in defense, but defense remains the only reliable, successful answer to such a strategic problem, as unsatisifying an answer as it may be.
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I had a reply, but then HLP ate it as I was trying to post. :doubt:
Anyway, I remember part of it. It deals with your precedents from the British Empire. I noticed you left Isadlwana off your list, which was probably intentional on your part, where an entire battalion of British infantry were massacred to the last man by the Zulus. Interesting precedent there.
The other part dealt with the ship and how the only evidence so far that it actually stayed is your insistance that it had to have. Nowhere else does it even hint at the ship still being in orbit, or available if actually there. We may have come a long way since Jamestown, but history has this funny habit of repeating itself.
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I had a reply, but then HLP ate it as I was trying to post. :doubt:
Anyway, I remember part of it. It deals with your precedents from the British Empire. I noticed you left Isadlwana off your list, which was probably intentional on your part, where an entire battalion of British infantry were massacred to the last man by the Zulus. Interesting precedent there.
I left that off the list because, having studied the battle a bit, and also the ones that occurred in the other Columns during the first invasion of Zululand and the battle of Ulundi in the second invasion, I know that it was a fluke. (Though simply listing all the other similar engagements the British won in other places, like the Ashanti expeditions or the Sudan, would prove that.) Poor deployments and overeager British subordinate commanders combined to nullify firepower advantages; the battle was lost well before a lack of ammunition became a factor.
So actually, including that particular engagement is an argument for my point of view, in that it demonstrates the danger of offensive action in a situation where the numbers are much against you, and argues that your main concern should be to preserve your firepower advantages by maintaining a position with a good field of fire and letting them come to you.
The other part dealt with the ship and how the only evidence so far that it actually stayed is your insistance that it had to have. Nowhere else does it even hint at the ship still being in orbit, or available if actually there. We may have come a long way since Jamestown, but history has this funny habit of repeating itself.
True, but without evidence either way, this argument is pointless.
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Ahh, but while there is no evidence, there are hard indications. Word of God says there are 12 interstellar liners making the round trip. So, in theory, a ship could be arriving every 6 Months. Assuming that the entirety of our protagonists official mission fits into 3 Months from his Arrival to the Colonel's offer to send him out, one could assume that each ship spends at least those three months on station doing refits and refueling and all that.
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at the end of the movie, the humans left, f there was not a ship in orbit where did they leave to?
also it makes sense that there would be a freighter of some sort, they would spend a few years filling an empty cargo bay with ore, then the full ship would leave when a new empty one arrived.
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On the question of the mine, anyone who's ever spent any time in the mining industry will tell you that you never build your infrastructure on or even too close to your ore body, simply because they're extremely difficult to map out accurately, and the last thing you want to have to do is rip up your camp or processing facility because there's millions of dollars worth of ore under it. In fact, companies spend a lot of money doing sterilization drilling of camp and mill sites often several kilometers away from their ore body to ensure that doesn't happen.
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I think we've satisfactorily demonstrated that both sides have good arguments and that people are just going to think whatever they want to think.
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This is Sci-Fi. We're talking about how realistic/believable it is.
Guys, what's wrong with this picture?
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Nothing.
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This is Sci-Fi. We're talking about how realistic/believable it is.
Guys, what's wrong with this picture?
I don't see any picture. Maybe it's my browser.
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As a matter of fact, I rather like this picture. Very Beksinski-esque.
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Well one thing I think the "defend defend defend" proponents are missing is that the humans' base has automated gun turrets every 10m along the outer perimeter. For Quaritch, his base was defended, and hence attack was seen as an option.
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Since the entire planet was fighting against the humans at that point, couldn't the sacred tree just have one of the floating mountains drop on the base? That would be a very quick finish.
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Abiotic things like rocks are not part of the biosphere.
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Also worth remembering that simple defense wasn't really an options for the humans. They were there to mine, they needed to demonstrate to the locals that they were inassailable if they were going to continue to mine, and they weren't going to get any mining done on a defensive posture.
Given the degree of firepower they had, they really stood no chance of losing, so it was a good call.
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Well one thing I think the "defend defend defend" proponents are missing is that the humans' base has automated gun turrets every 10m along the outer perimeter. For Quaritch, his base was defended, and hence attack was seen as an option.
That's not an argument on any merits I've posisted. Do you have a point?
Also worth remembering that simple defense wasn't really an options for the humans. They were there to mine, they needed to demonstrate to the locals that they were inassailable if they were going to continue to mine, and they weren't going to get any mining done on a defensive posture.
Given the degree of firepower they had, they really stood no chance of losing, so it was a good call.
How do you demonstrate you're unassailable?
Oh yeah. Not by offensive action. By being unassailable. French and Indian War. Vietnam.
EDIT: Actually it occurs to me his plan was wrong in only one aspect. He wanted to blow the thing up.
He should have tried to take it. In this way he can prepare the battlefield beforehand to enhance his firepower advantages, keep his troops in good order, and most importantly, he could break the back of Na'vi resistance by having a target they must attack. Ulundi all over again. You can still end the movie the same way, if you like, but it would have been a much more rational plan.
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That could've worked.
The former objection of yours again misses the point that they would lose simply by remaining on the defensive, though. Giving up their mining operation was akin to failure. Holding out for backup could have meant billions (trillions?) in lost revenue.
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That's not an argument on any merits I've posisted. Do you have a point?
You're right--it's not an argument, is a presentation of evidence intended to demonstrate that the colonel believed he already had a strong enough defense, and felt he had the resources to attack the Na'vi. With a strong defense and no reason to anticipate total defeat in battle, Quaritch views such a mission as within his means without sacrificing any strategic foothold. His technology is superior and his destructive capability outclasses the Na'vi. Had the mission failed, he would still be able to retreat and resort to defensive strategy. The Tree of Souls was a target of opportunity. He most likely didn't need to hit it, but if he did and still had some of his gunships at the end, he would have gained a more advantageous tactical situation.
His error occurs when he believes the wildlife on Pandora to be unintelligent and incapable of acting collectively. If he had believed this, he most likely would not have risked the attack.
I agree with you that "crush the morale" missions are generally ineffective, but only in regards to humans. We have only tried morale crushing on humans, and thus it stretches logic to assume the Na'vi would have the same resilience to Shock and Awe that humans do. We live in a society where our lives are so complex that losing something like the Vatican would not be as crushing as losing the Tree of Souls would be to the Na'vi. The Na'vi organize their life around the Tree of Souls and their connection to Eywa. Part of the Na'vi lives in Eywa, in the Tree, and killing it would kill part of them. Destroying the Tree would fundamentally undo Na'vi civilization.
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That could've worked.
The former objection of yours again misses the point that they would lose simply by remaining on the defensive, though. Giving up their mining operation was akin to failure. Holding out for backup could have meant billions (trillions?) in lost revenue.
I never argued that they should give up the mining operation, only that they were better served by strong defense of it then attacking the Na'vi in an effort to "defend" the operation.
You're right--it's not an argument, is a presentation of evidence intended to demonstrate that the colonel believed he already had a strong enough defense, and felt he had the resources to attack the Na'vi. With a strong defense and no reason to anticipate total defeat in battle, Quaritch views such a mission as within his means without sacrificing any strategic foothold. His technology is superior and his destructive capability outclasses the Na'vi. Had the mission failed, he would still be able to retreat and resort to defensive strategy. The Tree of Souls was a target of opportunity. He most likely didn't need to hit it, but if he did and still had some of his gunships at the end, he would have gained a more advantageous tactical situation.
Infantry tactics and terrain 101; jungles are very bad places to act on the offensive because they completely blunt firepower advantages, play hell with supporting arms due to their short sightlines, and ruin unit cohesion. It was true in the Ashanti expedition for the Brits, it was true in the South Pacific in WW2, it was true in Vietnam. You can't kill what you can't see, and in jungle terrain you can be close enough to your enemies to smell them or hear them breathe and be unable to locate them. Quaritch basically throws away most or all of his advantages of superior firepower and technology by commiting to this course of action.
I agree with you that "crush the morale" missions are generally ineffective, but only in regards to humans. We have only tried morale crushing on humans, and thus it stretches logic to assume the Na'vi would have the same resilience to Shock and Awe that humans do. We live in a society where our lives are so complex that losing something like the Vatican would not be as crushing as losing the Tree of Souls would be to the Na'vi. The Na'vi organize their life around the Tree of Souls and their connection to Eywa. Part of the Na'vi lives in Eywa, in the Tree, and killing it would kill part of them. Destroying the Tree would fundamentally undo Na'vi civilization.
The colonel was ultimately trained to fight other humans, however, and given how readily he ignored the science team, we have no reason to believe (hell, I don't think we can take for granted even the science team knew the details) he really understood this of the Na'vi. He adopted a strategy that would dissipate his advantages regardless of the final effectiveness of his plan, but we don't actually know it would have been effective. The Na'vi are not presented as so completely inhuman that applying our pyschology to them stretches anything.
Given the title of this thread, all you should actually need to know about such things is that they didn't work on less-developed societies either. Destroying a civilization in this fashion is never truly effective. What Quaritch needed to do, and what the plan I propose would have brought him, would be to bring a large force of Na'vi to battle and defeat them in detail, giving concrete results instead of maybe winning his morale-crushing victory or maybe making every Na'vi on the planet turn up to kick his ass.
That was why I drew the comparison to Ulundi. The mere raid is not going to inflict significant casualities on the Na'vi as they're not organized enough to stand up and take significant casualities when surprised. They're just going to disappear. But if you present something that insults their honor, that they must take back no matter the cost, you can bring a significant portion of them to battle and have a good chance of killing them all because even they will reform for multiple attempts.
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NGTM-1R, again:
A 'strong defense' of the mining operation was not possible because the stuff they were attempting to mine was in Na'vi territory.
Thus the entire operation to bring down Hometree and relocate the Na'vi.
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I liked it
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Also, um:
What Quaritch needed to do, and what the plan I propose would have brought him, would be to bring a large force of Na'vi to battle and defeat them in detail, giving concrete results instead of maybe winning his morale-crushing victory or maybe making every Na'vi on the planet turn up to kick his ass.
This happened in the movie. It was what the last hour of the movie was.
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:bump:
(http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/epic-fail-avatar-plot-fail.jpg)
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Meh, so what? Still doesn't stop this movie from being awesome.
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This happened in the movie. It was what the last hour of the movie was.
No, the last hour of the movie wasn't going to do that for reasons I explained.
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I think we had a statement straight from one of the characters that if the Sacred Tree (or whatchamacallit was lost), it was over. The Na'vi were done.
That was their uplink to the planetary noosphere thing.
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And they don't need the uplink to be a problem, because they weren't uplinked while being a problem in the rest of the movie. Witness the repeated brushfire wars with the Native Americans for where just taking out the tree and relocating them ends.
It's Clauswitz again. War is an act of force. You can both kill and demoralize. Killing works better, faster, and much more reliably.
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No. The movie said if they lost the Tree of Good Important Awesomeness that was it. The inside dude on Na'vi culture, the scientists, and the Na'vi themselves seemed to agree that if the tree went down it would be an unacceptable loss and their attempt to remove the humans would fail.
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And people assume they could never live as a paraplegic yet quickly recover their internal "happiness" point if it happens. If you fall and break you leg, you don't think you're a klutz; if you stub your toe in the same place every day for a month, it's hard to avoid that conclusion. A single large shock to the system doesn't have that kind of collapsing effect and, considering the fundemental biological reasons for that, this should apply to the Na'vi as well.
You can either kill them all in one fell swoop or you can repeatedly crush them in combat, thereby demonstrating over a period of time that they're helpless. You can't just go "aha poke this one spot and everyone weeps forever". Pyschology does not work that way.
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I don't think the effect was psychological. With the tree destroyed they'd be cut off from the planetary noosphere and their ancestors. Immortality would literally have been taken from them.
We have no historical precedent that could allow us to understand what effect that might have.
Never mind the fact that Quaritch's plan accomplishes everything you could want from it, and that defensive action is (as explained above) not something they can do.
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@ NGTM-1R: Once again, human psychology doesn't work that way. We have no way of knowing if Na'vi psychology doesn't.
Killing the tree isn't like breaking an arm, it's like ripping out your eyes. The arm heals, the eyes don't grow back. If that happened to the Na'vi, they'd be done.
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Just saw it at IMAX 3d. Pretty damn impressive.
I suppose as an addendum.
I liked it, as a technical piece it was outstanding. The only thing I really think could have been improved was, I can't believe I'm saying this considering how long it already is, more time spent fleshing out the secondary characters. While I thought Sully and his big blue girlfriend's characters where pretty well done, most of the secondary characters felt like recognizable roles rather then people. The colonel was the bad guy, the Eytukan was the chief, Tsu'tey was the competitive brave. It's not even that they where badly acted, heck I think Stephen Lang played a damn good bad ass. But there wasn't really enough time to connect with any of them say like there was in Dances with Wolves, which is to bad since but for that i really think it was firing on all cylinders.
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It could have been anything, really. They might have destroyed the tree and just cut off that area's Eywa internet access, or the destruction of that tree could have caused a massive shock, crippling the planet for some time.
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as i expected in this thread:
The conservatives are butthurt
the liberals are like "no... he really didn't say that.. no the people were being reasonable" [or they don't care]
the Independants (TM) don't care
and I think the movie totally rocked.
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Good to see you, Kazan. Not sure I'd generalize that far but, hey, gendisc. :rolleyes:
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hehe i know... there are many people who are able to enjoy it because it is awesome and don't over think it and bring race or politics in.. like me
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hehe i know... there are many people who are able to enjoy it because it is awesome and don't over think it and bring race or politics in.. like me
The humans were pirating content off Pandora's Internet, then decided to make a denial of service attack on their servers. Wasn't that the obvious symbolism?
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A few thousand tons of napalm and Agent Orange is what they needed.
And nukes too. A few of those wouldn't hurt. A bit of orbital bombardment would've been nice too, just for good measure. :)
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I'm pretty sure several thousand Ikran and Na'vi, plus tens of thousands of wild Ikran versus a few hundred US Marines with agent orange would equal defeat for the marines.
And good luck getting authorization to use a nuke all the way out there. I really doubt the president would find it prudent to drop a nuke just for resources. It makes getting at those resources a frakload more difficult, if not completely impossible.
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whatever happened to napalm?
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It was a corporate mining expedition, not a bloody war.
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It was a corporate mining expedition, not a bloody war.
Okay, so next movie, in order to get the unobtanium, we humans send in a bunch of Marines, and then we make it a war instead of a corporate mining expedition.
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yeah.. remember that all that "military" in that movie were Mercs.. Jake pointed that out in the first scenes of the movie. I doubt they were authorized to have full military grade hardware
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It was a corporate mining expedition, not a bloody war.
Okay, so next movie, in order to get the unobtanium, we humans send in a bunch of Marines, and then we make it a war instead of a corporate mining expedition.
Funny, that's exactly what we did in real life!
Hooray, genocide!
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Unfortunately, you're right. I can't think of a reason why we should conquer them, aside from "we need their resources", which isn't a very good reason. If they were trying to expand throughout the galaxy and be a competitor for planets, yeah I'd condone a full-scale war. However, chances are the inevitable sequel will contain a full-scale military assault to procure the vital supplies of unobtanium for Earth. I haven't seen the movie, but from what I'm hearing the Na'vi have something Earth needs badly.
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I dunno about 'inevitable sequel'. I'm not sure Cameron has ever actually done sequels aside from T2 (am I forgetting something?), and that wasn't back-to-back with T1.
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Well this movie has probably made him a ton of money. I think there's a good chance there will be a sequel. I mean, there were a few loose ends at the end at that need answering aren't there?
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I dunno about 'inevitable sequel'. I'm not sure Cameron has ever actually done sequels aside from T2 (am I forgetting something?), and that wasn't back-to-back with T1.
Cameron has expressed a possible interest in doing two sequels if Avatar was successful, and I think it's pretty safe to say it was.
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I've read as much, I'm just skeptical that he'll go right on to do them. Could be wrong, though.
Well this movie has probably made him a ton of money. I think there's a good chance there will be a sequel. I mean, there were a few loose ends at the end at that need answering aren't there?
His other movies also all made him a ton of money, though.
We'll see.
While I think it may be likely I wouldn't call it inevitable at all.
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it has been stated that he wants a franchise, he wants this to be 'his Star Wars'
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it has been stated that he wants a franchise, he wants this to be 'his Star Wars'
only with a guy who isn't an idiot who panders to children running it :D
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I wonder how you could make a sequal to that... Mabye another story set in the same universe, but not a continuation of the first.
Oh, and I saw it with friends. One of my friends has glasses, however, so she wouldn't be able to see it in 3D, so we watched it in 2D (Watching it in 3D would involve going to another bios in a different city anyway, which would be a bit of a chore for everyone). Some parts of the beginning didn't really work for me (Jakesully is the chosen one!) but later on I really didn't bother.
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For future reference, 3D works fine with glasses. You just wear the 3D pair over your normal ones.
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yeah, I ware glasses and it was no problem
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Yeah, it looks dorky as hell, and has the potential to make your temples hurt, but it does work. :p
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They look dorky and hurt your head anyway. Glasses or no.
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Pocahontas IN SPAAAAAAAAAAACE.
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Pocahontas IN SPAAAAAAAAAAACE.
Wooooo, uninspired catcalls from people who haven't seen the movie!
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SHHH!!!
If you don't aknowledge his trolling, it never happened!
:nervous:
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Pocahontas IN SPAAAAAAAAAAACE.
Wooooo, uninspired catcalls from people who haven't seen the movie!
Oh here I was assuming he saw it but failed history.
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Pocahontas IN SPAAAAAAAAAAACE.
Wooooo, uninspired catcalls from people who haven't seen the movie!
Actually I have seen the movie. I only realized how similar it was to Pocahontas in a recent conversation I had while waiting for a professor to show up.
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(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wikifriends.png)
Not exactly the same, but close enough to apply. :p
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Pocahontas IN SPAAAAAAAAAAACE.
Wooooo, uninspired catcalls from people who haven't seen the movie!
Actually I have seen the movie. I only realized how similar it was to Pocahontas in a recent conversation I had while waiting for a professor to show up.
Yeah, and Star Wars is The Hidden Fortress in space, but it doesn't matter!
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(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qLNG67Mcimg/S0oZ57FWNeI/AAAAAAAAAVo/785Up3YoHy8/s400/epic-fail-avatar-plot-fail.jpg)
dunno if that has benn posted yet.
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I still liked it!
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I still liked it!
i was sceptical, but was very impressed watching it earlier tonight.
pretty damn good, only one real BS bit, but it is debatable
why even bother landing troops? it only serves to compromise base security,
suppose they figured its all-or-nothing at that point...?
to keep the navi in blast radius...
and the first time he rides the birdo-thing, should have said "do a barrel roll!"
that would have been awesome.
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So unless I overlooked something, no one posted this (http://www.chud.com/articles/articles/21969/1/PROJECT-880-THE-AVATAR-THAT-ALMOST-WAS/Page1.html) yet. Short version: many/most of the complaints about the film were addressed in the original scriptment. Which was unfilmably long. On a related note, the initial cut was four hours and eighteen minutes long.
Me, I loved the thing. Yeah, it had problems. I didn't care. Like, at all. As a point of comparison, I'd argue it's no more dumb than The Dark Knight was. Or Star Wars. Or various other works of fiction beloved by geekdom.
Also, the antagonist was Duke Nukem. How can you not love Evil!Duke Nukem?
I wonder how you could make a sequal to that... Mabye another story set in the same universe, but not a continuation of the first.
A producer (think it was a producer, anyway) suggested that we'd seen everything there was to see on Pandora's surface, but that the underground hadn't been explored yet. Which could potentially offer a way out of the "nuke the site from orbit" trap. OTOH, Cameron's mentioned that the sequel wouldn't necessarily even take place on Pandora, so who the hell knows wtf is going on?
Oh hey, coolest--and cruelest, because it probably ain't gonna happen--rumor about Cameron's plans; xenomorphs in 3D, Scott+Cameron=love
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I just saw it pointed out on another board that 1. There were ruins on Pandora, and 2. The Na'vi didn't seem to fit in with the local fauna that much. Just some food for thought...
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I just saw it pointed out on another board that 1. There were ruins on Pandora, and 2. The Na'vi didn't seem to fit in with the local fauna that much. Just some food for thought...
...except for the bit where they can plug in their hair to stuff...
but that's intoxicated me talikng, so...
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I didn't notice any ruins. When did we see them?
Oh, and just because the more rabid parts of the fanbase amuse me:
(http://i48.tinypic.com/2rfzbit.jpg)
Also, when the NADL rep goes to the not-quite-totally-bat**** To the Hometree lj com, this exchange occurs:
(http://community.livejournal.com/tothehometree/4785.html?thread=105393#t105393)elvanos: Ok this seems to be a bit of an... overkill.
nadl_org: I'm sure that's what the German civilians thought to themselves of the warning signs before kristallnacht happened.
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"You still haven't explained your earlier comment. Do you honestly think that being told that you are delusional for thinking you are a seven foot tall blue cat person is on par with the Holocaust?"
:lol:
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I urge you to listen to this important message regarding Na'Vi physiology..
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/524391
Despite the NSF title. I believe it's just a funny cartoon. Although if you DO have headphones, use them :lol: :yes:
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This is funny.
EDIT - (Funny referring to the movement of retarded rabid emo kids thinking they're aliens. Dekker's link isn't funny. Dekker's link is disturbing)
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While we're posting fun links, here's another (http://autotelic.com/avatar_-_the_metacontextual_edition). I kind of feel like the author of this one missed the point entirely, as I didn't give a **** about the plot so long as the pretty orgasmic visuals were on-screen.
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"OTHER SCIENTIST: Guys, they're about to head on over and blow **** up. It's some serious shock and awe stuff.
JUGHEAD: Dude, did you just say "shock and awe"?
OTHER SCIENTIST: Uh... yeah. So?
JUGHEAD: I don't know... that just lacks subtlety. Obviously there are some Afghanistan and Iraq parallels being made here, but to just say it outright like that..."
:lol:
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I didn't notice any ruins. When did we see them?
Meh, I was kind of wondering that myself, and hoping I just overlooked them and someone else would point it out. There were those big rib-looking things at one point, I figured they were just part of a giant skeleton though.
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What the hell were those things...
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magnetic force lines
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Just saw the film, so a bit late to the conversation but.......
It doesn't do anything to make me feel better about the fact that us European descendants completely decimated native populations and practically enslaved the entire world with our cultures. It's a guilt no movie can or will ever undo, no matter how people may try to make us feel better.
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, if not by us then by someone else. Traditional societies, including our own, are generally imperialistic. Human history has been riddled with empires and one group of people conquering another. In some parts of Africa there is still slavery, just like the olden days. Just we developed an advantage and exploited it. Others would have done the same and we would have been under their boots.
Return of the Jedi was originally going to feature Wookiees until Lucas decided that Ewoks were more marketable to the primary target audience (children, whose critical thinking powers are extremely limited). It would have made a lot more sense if the original plan of 7-foot-tall berserk ape-man-things with guns attacking the stormtroopers had been carried out. But Lucas surmised (rightly, unfortunately) that children's movies don't have to make any sense.
Wookies would have been a lot more awesome.
I do generally agree with nightm1r's points, since a Na'Vi "revenge" attack was inevitible, might as well drastically increase the odds of success (the colonel had too much of a "Custer's Last Stand" feel to him). However, taking out that tree was the only way to ensure total victory, since it would have broken the back of the planet's defenses.
As for my own view:
I do have mixed feelings about it. The visuals were stunning, even better than Transformers and the action was well done (Na'Vi got pwned), but frankly it felt too much like a cliche-ic anti-corporate pro-environmental propaganda piece. It reminds me a lot of Ferngully the Last Rainforest (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104254/), something I was forced to watch in daycare way back in the day. As for the planet having intelligence (a literal form of the Gaia theory), while not totally impossible, it is unlikely and seemed far too much like an environmentalists wet dream.
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ferngully lol brings back memories.
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It's almost exactly the same story if you think about it.
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Smells like ripoff.
Although Crysta was hot. . .
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I said coming out of the theater that it felt like Ferngully meets Pocahontas. :p
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Believe me, the basic story has been used so many times that it's not a ripoff of any one particular movie (not that I disliked it for that, however).
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And Star Wars was The Hidden Fortress, but nobody cares.
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And Star Wars was The Hidden Fortress, but nobody cares.
Yeah but not everybody on this side of the Pacific is familiar with Kurosawa's work, though most folks do know Dances with Wolves. Heck it's hard to count how many flicks are based off of Yojimbo, Rashomon or Seven Samurai.
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While we're posting fun links, here's another (http://autotelic.com/avatar_-_the_metacontextual_edition). I kind of feel like the author of this one missed the point entirely, as I didn't give a **** about the plot so long as the pretty orgasmic visuals were on-screen.
Really. Would anyone even be remotely interested in the move if it didn't have as much advertising/hype or CGI?
If the main reason for watching a movie is visuals, then there's something very much wrong with it.
Dunno about anyone else, but it takes more than dangling shiny keys to entartain me.
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Meh. I found the story and characters interesting, even if they were clichéd and predictable. Though it probably helps that I went into the theater with no expectations whatsoever.
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Well, my only expectation was the 3D bit, and I'm glad to say that I got a lot more than what I was expecting. :)
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And Star Wars was The Hidden Fortress, but nobody cares.
star wars was the most generic story ever.
but the characters where awesome and that made it cool.
haven't seen avatar but it looks generic and a complete White GuiltTM movie.
yet has a Mighty Whitey in it.
looks meh. I will probably see it for the FX.
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Really. Would anyone even be remotely interested in the move if it didn't have as much advertising/hype or CGI?
If the main reason for watching a movie is visuals, then there's something very much wrong with it.
I think it had more to do with its long development and just being a James Cameron film. For me, at least.
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The main reason for watching the movie is that it's a great experience and an engaging piece of storytelling.
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Really. Would anyone even be remotely interested in the move if it didn't have as much advertising/hype or CGI?
If the main reason for watching a movie is visuals, then there's something very much wrong with it.
And why is that? What's wrong with wanting to see a movie just for the visual spectacle, particularly when one is seeing it in 3D in a theater setting? Film-making is primarily a visual medium, and if there's a movie out there that does something spectacular with its visuals and really shines on the big-screen, I want to see it. As I said before, I found Avatar's visual environments to be so spectacularly immersive and stunning that I flat-out didn't care about the plot, one way or the other; I'd gladly see it a second time just to spend two more hours exploring those landscapes. Besides, I'm not all that personally enamored with the storytelling potential of the film medium as a whole; if I wanted properly-developed stories, I'd read a good novel or watch a long-form serial television series.
(For the record, I didn't have any significant complaints about the story as a whole, though it was most definitely cliche, seen-this-before sort of material.)
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Saw it 3D.... made me dizzy after wearing those glasses for almost 3 hours.
I definitely enjoyed 2D more.
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And Star Wars was The Hidden Fortress, but nobody cares.
You said that already.
Also, The Lion King is just Kimba the White Lion.
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aside from them both having main characters who's names are derived from the Swahili word for 'lion', a dead father, a destiny to become king, and a parent who talks to him through the stars it has nothing in common.
now if you want to talk about Lion King ripping something off, lets talk about Hamlet.
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Animals are so cruel...
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Welp, the guy who made that massive Phantom Menace review just posted his less lengthy commentary on Avatar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJarz7BYnHA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLzKwTcGO_0
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I stopped watching because I can't stand his voice.
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Your loss. His points are great, and his comedic timing is excellent.
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The best paaaaaart about waaakiing up is acccciiiiid in your cofffeeeeee
:lol: :lol: I love this guy
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I hope he still has pizzarolls left for Attack of the Clones
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Another awesome review. He hit the nail on the head. Especially the 7:15 statement and the end of the second vid.
"The ultimate irony is that for all the money and effort spent to make the movie 3D, the story and characters are still stuck in one dimension." :yes: