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**Waaagh_Gonads**

Went and watched it last night.

3D glasses kept slipping down.

But otherwise.

Absolutely the most visually stunning movie I've ever seen.
To see burning embers drifting down out of the screen onto the audience in front of you is rather surreal.
The 3D is so good it is like when you go from analogue TV to a 200Hz LCD. BAM! it slaps you in the face. Crystal clear and adds a huge amount to the pic.

Great fight scenes.

On the down side:
The hippy/earth mother etc storyline got a bit 'meh' but Cameron needed a Juxtaposition between modern mining techniques and 'natives'

The bonding ceremonies at the end verged on the ridiculous, but my wife cried, she got so into it.

3 hours is 10-15 minutes too long.

To wrap up:
I'd say definitely go see it.
See it in 3D

**warpcrafter**

So, is the 3-D more subtle than, say Beowulf? Because that movie gave me a migraine.

**Arctik_Firangi**

Yeah, saw it last night too. The movie is by no means subtle, but Beowulf was rubbish anyway. The 'earth mother' thing was fine in my opinion, because it came with a biological explanation and was more believable than the outright mysticism it could have been.

Gonads, it didn't go for three hours. It was more like... oh... 10-15 minutes short of three hours.

The last fight will appeal to all 40K fans, trust me. It really is worth seeing in the cinema, and I don't say that often.

**person person**

Already planning to see it anyways, Thanks for sharing.

**Huffy**

seeing it over x-mas break. . . can't wait for the last fight scene. . . saw the the mechs and thought SPESS MARIENSSS

**Cane**

I've got an opportunity to check it out on the midnight showing tonight, sounds like it'll be a good time as long as I can stay awake

**Ahtman**

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:Absolutely the most visually stunning movie I've ever seen.

So you are telling me when you spend 300 million and 13 years on special effects they turn out to be good? Huh, never would have guessed.

**avantgarde**

Yeah, what a fether investing personal time and money in order to create something.

**Ahtman**

avantgarde wrote:Yeah, what a fether investing personal time and money in order to create something.

Nice strawman. It is very pretty and has nothing to do with wqhat was actually posted. Very good.

**avantgarde**

Since when am I supposed to stay on topic? That's ridiculous, I mean you don't go up in polite conversation and tell people to stay on topic. What are you some kind of conversational sturmbahnfurer?

PS I saw Avatar and didn't think it was that great.

PPS I'm glad you like my strawman, I worked very hard on it.

**warpcrafter**

I just came from seeing it, and I have not been this blown away by a movie since Star Wars waaaaayyyyy back in 1977. Yes, the whole nature message was sort of heavy handed in parts, but it was for a reason. And the 3-D was the best I've ever seen. I actually thought a guy was walking through the audience at one point!!! I thought they should have turned the sound up a little more, but then again, I like action movies loud. Now I've got to wait until Clash of the Titans. Damn!!!

**Ahtman**

avantgarde wrote:Since when am I supposed to stay on topic? That's ridiculous, I mean you don't go up in polite conversation and tell people to stay on topic. What are you some kind of conversational sturmbahnfurer?

What? You're not even on topic for what you went off topic about. Are you posting drunk?

It was a strawman because it had nothing to do with what was being said. I said that I would hope after all the time, energy, and money that the effects were good. It would be a huge waste if they pored that much into it and they were 'meh'. What you were trying to twist it into was that I was saying that it was silly to waste time on creative acts, which had nothing at all to do with what was stated.

**Kilkrazy**

London's The Metro gave it 4/5. Their verdict was that the plot is very thin but you don't notice because the visuals are so good.

I am booked to see it at the BFI IMAX 3D screen in January.

**Emperors Faithful**

My two favourite characters:

Spoiler:

AND

Spoiler:

**Albatross**

Yep, I'm all booked up for the 3D Imax on sunday - thinking of getting high first. Thoughts?

**Kilkrazy**

A six-pack of the OPT should do it.

**Orkeosaurus**

Albatross wrote:Yep, I'm all booked up for the 3D Imax on sunday - thinking of getting high first. Thoughts?

Don't you want to be fully lucid for the gripping story and characterization!?

**Kilkrazy**

"I love you. You're my fething best friend, you are."

You see, that's the effect of a six pack of OPT so it will suit the in-depth character building quite nicely.

**Cane**

I saw it last night @ midnight, 3-D of course which is the only way to go and I'll definitely be watching it again instead on an IMAX screen next week with the family. George Lucas said years ago that 3-d movies were the wave of the future but I was always a skeptic especially since the last movie I saw in 3-d was Beowulf.

Its definitely a cliche story with character archetypes that won't be new to anyone but thats arguably a trait for all of Cameron's movies. His previous best film, Aliens, for example has the traditional Lt. that doesn't know how to stay calm and lead the situation, evil corporation guy, human-machine that can't feel emotion, gung-ho Marine, scaredy cat-Marines (GAME OVER MAN), etc. However despite this potential drawback he still is able to immerse you in his worlds and make you care for whats going on-screen while at the same time being an incredible entertainment experience.

However its also definitely the most visually impressive movie I've ever seen and a smorgasbord of greatness for scifi fans. Makes ya wish that Cameron was a fan of 40k since he seems like one of the few directors that could do the franchise justice.

9.5/10

BTW that Marine Colonel was a typical bad ass but bad ass nonetheless.

**Waaagh_Gonads**

The scenes where they are climbing up the floating rocks is rather sickening if you are scared of heights/have vertigo.

**Mad Monk's Mekshop**

Albatross wrote:Yep, I'm all booked up for the 3D Imax on sunday - thinking of getting high first. Thoughts?

dunno man apparently it's sooooo good and if you got high first you might miss parts of it, happens to me everytime, I forgot my friends name the last time

**Envy89**

there have only been a few movies i have ever really wanted to go back and watch agian while in the cinima...

went and saw it today, and avatar just made that list.

the only thing i dident like about it was the bunghole mexicans sitting behind us that kept talking in spanish throught the WHOLE movie... o well, that just gives me a valad excue to go see it again

**Fattimus_maximus**

I just went and saw it. Loved the movie, story line; all of it was great, but please all the military guys out there, tell me you connected to the marines more then the blue aliens. During the epic final fight, I actually got a little angry. It didn't help that people were laughing and cheering on the deaths, but I hated the black and white of the conflict. Maybe it's just a "been deployed" thing, but seeing those soldiers die rather upset me. Any other ground pounders feel the same way?

**Orkeosaurus**

The A.V. Club wrote:These days, advancements in movie technology are inevitably accompanied by retreat in other areas, as filmmakers become so tied up in digital brushstrokes that they forget the painting. George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels are the classic example of a director stranding actors in green-screen wonderlands, and Peter Jackson turned a delicate literary device in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones into a distractingly splashy celestial waystation. Over the years, James Cameron has fared better than most in wedding cutting-edge special effects with strong, meat-and-potatoes genre storytelling, but Avatar, his supremely goofy science-fiction/action spectacular, finds him lost in a $250 million aquamarine light show. As the film’s technical marvels grow commonplace, it will look like a clunky old theme-park attraction, a Captain EO for our time.

Avatar opens with images of zero-gravity life that really do seem like something new, with astonishing depth and color that further the recent advances in 3-D. Then the banality kicks in, as Cameron introduces the cartoon world of Pandora, a lush foreign planet where humans have come in search of a precious resource called “Unobtainium.” Pandora’s indigenous peoples, the blue-skinned, peace-loving Na’vi, are naturally suspicious of these alien invaders, so the humans try to infiltrate their population with “Avatars”—genetically engineered bodies that look like Na’vi but are controlled by plugged-in users. Sam Worthington stars as one of those users, a paraplegic veteran who comes to respect the Na’vi culture and question the mission.

Look past the New Age beauty of Cameron’s Pandora—and whenever the camera swoops through its verdant, psychedelic wonders, that isn’t easy to do—and Avatar is a weak patchwork of his other films: the leaden voiceover from Terminator 2 here, the military/civilian conflict from Aliens there, even a Jack-and-Rose-style forbidden love story cued to adult-contempo soundtrack. And if that weren’t enough, Cameron tacks on ham-handed environmental messages and a one-size-fits-all anti-war metaphor that references Native Americans, Vietnam, and the current oil-fueled quagmires. In the past, charismatic actors (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sigourney Weaver, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kate Winslet) have usually covered for Cameron’s weaknesses as a screenwriter, but Worthington can do nothing to animate his stock warrior. On a story level, Cameron has invested the bare minimum necessary to call Avatar into existence, and while there’s no doubting his meticulousness, the film is more demo than drama.

Grade: C

**ounumen**

Fattimus_maximus wrote:I just went and saw it. Loved the movie, story line; all of it was great, but please all the military guys out there, tell me you connected to the marines more then the blue aliens. During the epic final fight, I actually got a little angry. It didn't help that people were laughing and cheering on the deaths, but I hated the black and white of the conflict. Maybe it's just a "been deployed" thing, but seeing those soldiers die rather upset me. Any other ground pounders feel the same way?

Thanks for the insight. I think I may skip this until it comes on DVD. As a Jarhead I really dont like slaughter of men in uniform regardless of context. I guess the sheeple are all to quik to forget.

**Cane**

ounumen wrote:
Fattimus_maximus wrote:I just went and saw it. Loved the movie, story line; all of it was great, but please all the military guys out there, tell me you connected to the marines more then the blue aliens. During the epic final fight, I actually got a little angry. It didn't help that people were laughing and cheering on the deaths, but I hated the black and white of the conflict. Maybe it's just a "been deployed" thing, but seeing those soldiers die rather upset me. Any other ground pounders feel the same way?

Thanks for the insight. I think I may skip this until it comes on DVD. As a Jarhead I really dont like slaughter of men in uniform regardless of context. I guess the sheeple are all to quik to forget.

I'm an injured Marine and loved the flick. Part of the beauty of the story was that you did sympathize with the grunts since they were the ones who didn't have an omniscient perspective of the situation and instead were exploited by corrupt brass and greedy corporations. The few Marines that did realize what was going on sided with their conscience and made a stand; something the Tom Cruise character in "The Last Samurai" could relate to since he had haunting flashbacks of his unit shooting unsuspecting Native American women and children.

Don't watch movies like Starship Troopers or Aliens either since they also had some brutal deaths involving uniformed men and women.

**Emperors Faithful**

I thought the best character, by far, was the Colonel (or whatever his rank). He was a little crazy, but when he jumped out of the expploding dropship in a combat suit I was definitely ok with that.

A close second is the single marine who shoots the (New) Chieftan. No messing around with him.

**ounumen**

Cane wrote:
ounumen wrote:
Fattimus_maximus wrote:I just went and saw it. Loved the movie, story line; all of it was great, but please all the military guys out there, tell me you connected to the marines more then the blue aliens. During the epic final fight, I actually got a little angry. It didn't help that people were laughing and cheering on the deaths, but I hated the black and white of the conflict. Maybe it's just a "been deployed" thing, but seeing those soldiers die rather upset me. Any other ground pounders feel the same way?

Thanks for the insight. I think I may skip this until it comes on DVD. As a Jarhead I really dont like slaughter of men in uniform regardless of context. I guess the sheeple are all to quik to forget.

I'm an injured Marine and loved the flick. Part of the beauty of the story was that you did sympathize with the grunts since they were the ones who didn't have an omniscient perspective of the situation and instead were exploited by corrupt brass and greedy corporations. The few Marines that did realize what was going on sided with their conscience and made a stand; something the Tom Cruise character in "The Last Samurai" could relate to since he had haunting flashbacks of his unit shooting unsuspecting Native American women and children.

Don't watch movies like Starship Troopers or Aliens either since they also had some brutal deaths involving uniformed men and women.

Easy man. Like I said I dont need the crowd cheering there deaths. As a Marine you know the truth of our brotherhood and how it is constantly misrepresented. War is not pretty but we have a fraternity that only we can share. Those out side do throw there own vision of it on film from time to time. I have the upmost respect for you and any other service member who has earned the Purple Heart and honestly I have no desire for it. I would rather not see Marines killing Marines wearing the same uniform. Guess I am crazy like that. I bet one of the senior brass was represented as Gen. Mattis because we know what a war monger he was. Enjoy your flick though.

**Emperors Faithful**

Actually, apart from the main character (who is swayed over by the power of Luvvv) there is only one other soldier who swaps sides. And she's a pilot.

**warpcrafter**

Isn't it great how this thread became a propaganda tool?