[Scotty]

Okay, so the Colonel is a large ham.  Does that make it a bad movie (/serious question)?

[Ransom]

Not at all. I think it's pretty good, actually, disappointments aside. The Colonel's just its weakest link.

[Snail]

Blah come on the colonel was a fun character.

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Sadly the game was a flop.

The rest of us saw that coming, I think.

[General Battuta]

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.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

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.

[BS403]

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.

[General Battuta]

Go see the movie and decide for yourself.

[Mr. Vega]

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!

[Bobboau]

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.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Well, that's because they got some of the best VFX companies on the Avatar job, right?

[Black Wolf]

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.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

...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...

[Bobboau]

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.

[esarai]

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.

[Mr. Vega]

I will admit the flying creatures were excellent.

[Retsof]

I bet the spinny lizards are about at the bottom of the food-chain though.

[Aardwolf]

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.

[Roanoke]

|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....