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You kept bringing up the scene so it seemed like it ruined hte movie for ya. Glad to know that weren't the case.

G

How close is the story to "Battle for Terra"?

Not close at all.

G

Good to know. I didn't feel like shelling money out to see a rehash of a movie I already took the kids to earlier this year.

The Battle for Terra featured floating landscapes, primitive aliens trying to fight evil Earthmen by using primitive tech and trained beasts. There was the heroic Earthman who overcame his initial concept of the aliens to end up helping them.

I was just concerned Avatar would be more of the same.

Well, given that production on Avatar well predates Battle for Terra...

(and what a terrible name - I was wondering how I'd managed to miss hearing about a movie all about a big fight for the Earth. I had to go to the wiki to figure out what was going on )

Saw it today.

LOVED EVERY MINUTE.

The bioluminessence, the awesome mech suits, the floating mountains, the cryo chambers. Need I go on?

And another thing to consider about the arrows is that in the first scene they were a) scratching the glass b) from long long range and c) were against the windows at an angle as opposed to the later scene where they were impacting against a flat surface (top of the canopy).

I definately am going to see it again.

A) The colonel is a fething badass. "Oh, I'm on fire. I'll let it burn for a bit as I get in my battlesuit."

B) ARMOR PIERCING ARROWS. Bullets can't go through bulletproof glass, but arrows can? Perhaps we are spending money researching the wrong things!

C) 3D was just... Stunning. To say the least.

D) Battlesuits in general were really really really... Jaw dropping. I want one for my birthday...

E) ARMOR PIERCING ARROWS.

F) A bit disappointing how there was the whole "Business is bad, we screwed the Indians, save our Earth, baaaaaaw" but what would movies be if not a medium for expressing one's views? It's crazy when you compare the Indians to the Omaticaya. The Omaticaya had indian-ish war calls, there were the "plains Omaticaya" and the "coastal Omaticaya", the Omaticaya were kicked off their land for monetary gain, the Omaticaya were "one with nature", etc etc.

G) Oh, and I heard the movie cost 500 million dollars. That's unfortunate, but it was so... good...

Overall, I can ignore the blatant leftist ties because it was, simply put, an amazing movie.

Rico...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sternguard_rock wrote:One bit of the story line did screw me a bit where all the animals come to help WTF!!??!!
ANd can anyone tell me what happened to the scientist not the dead one but the one that got his avatar killed.

Mr. Semi-Terminator dude says "Hey, Eywa, I need some doods". Eywa says "lolno, i only balance life". Later, Eywa is all like "jk, have all my doods" and Mr. Semi-Terminator dude says "Gtfo you wee little humans, all your base are belong to me."

Rico...

Ahtman wrote:I wasn't worked up about it, just discussing it. I disagree that it makes perfect sense. The Scorpions aren't light VTOL's either, unless an Apache is suddenly a Light VTOL. The big ship was a dedicated transport, more like an Osprey. The birds themselves did more damage then the arrows ever could anyway. The inclusion of the shot seems superfluous and ridiculous.

Yeah, didn't mean to imply you were worked up about it, just saying that it was a really minor element of the movie.

The Scorpions may or may not be light VTOLs, it doesn't really matter if Apaches are light aircraft because they're a completely different aircraft produced a completely different organisation, for a completely purpose, in a completely different place at a completely different time. As a result, expecting the two vehicles to have similar performance capabilities is likely an error.

For my mind, the idea that the company, failing to understand the situation on the ground, provided under-armoured vehicles isn't a flaw, in fact the idea fits well with the rest of the movie.

As far as science fiction goes, it isn't really a like or dislike scenario. It would be more akin to the pronunciation debate. My definition is perhaps more traditional, but that doesn't make it any more wrong than it makes someone elses loose definition right. Just having spaceships doesn't make something sci-fi any more than someone using a revolver makes them a cowboy.

Which is my point. You seemed to be criticising the movie for lacking hard sci-fi, or criticising people for calling it sci-fi, or something... but it that kind of space fantasy is commonly called sci-fi. Point is, like many things sci-fi can mean a lot of things. It's alright to talk about sci-fi and mean only hard sci-fi, and it's okay to mean anything set in space/the future/with time travel/whatever other themes are common.

I don't see why everyone thinks that be talking about this one scene it is a denigration of the whole plot. We aren't even actually talking about the scene, but just one moment in the whole scene. Again, being critical of something does is not the same as disliking the whole of something. Why so defensive because someone didn't fall in love with something you love? Do you really need others to feel the same way to justify your feelings for it?

Surely just as you're allowed to talk about how you didn't like a part of the film, we're allowed to discuss whether that criticism is valid?

Rico wrote:B) ARMOR PIERCING ARROWS. Bullets can't go through bulletproof glass, but arrows can? Perhaps we are spending money researching the wrong things!

Bullets were plinking right through the glass in the shoot out between the good chopper pilot and the Colonel's heavy ship.

F) A bit disappointing how there was the whole "Business is bad, we screwed the Indians, save our Earth, baaaaaaw" but what would movies be if not a medium for expressing one's views? It's crazy when you compare the Indians to the Omaticaya. The Omaticaya had indian-ish war calls, there were the "plains Omaticaya" and the "coastal Omaticaya", the Omaticaya were kicked off their land for monetary gain, the Omaticaya were "one with nature", etc etc.

While the native drew inspiration from American Indian cultures as well as others, the political message wasn't about the Indians, it was a pretty direct attack on the occupation of Iraq. The main character lost the use of legs fighting in Venezuala. He originally said he was fighting for freedom in that engagement, and later recognises that if someone is living on a valuable resource then 'they' will make those people your enemy. The Colonel even referred to 'shock and awe'.

I don't see the movie as a veiled reference to the current war in the Middle East since there is no connection with the indigneous Navi. Also it's a corporation with a mercenary fighting force than a standing army from Earth.

G

yea didn't get that at all. The movie just screamed Dances with Blueskins. I'm surprised there wasn't a Giant Furry Plant Eater Hunt lead by the Foreign Man.

I was a bit surprised frankly. I thought I'd get ticked at the plot but I didn't on apolitical baasis, just that it didn't hold together and i kept thinking "so why are they suddenly fighting the humans again? Wait why is the helicopter chick now fighting for the Navi?" I liked the speical effects but had no emotional attachment and it felt like a Disney Imax thing. To be honest I kind of got bored about 2/3rds through and the big battle was strictly meh to me.

Green Blow Fly wrote:I don't see the movie as a veiled reference to the current war in the Middle East since there is no connection with the indigneous Navi. Also it's a corporation with a mercenary fighting force than a standing army from Earth.

G

You can see it as whatever you want but it was pretty explicit. They actually referred to the Colonel's plot as shock and awe. Worthington actually says that 'if you live on something they want they'll make you their enemy' or something like that.

And yeah, there's also a heavy handed environmental message going. It's possible to be heavy handed in two ways.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:yea didn't get that at all. The movie just screamed Dances with Blueskins. I'm surprised there wasn't a Giant Furry Plant Eater Hunt lead by the Foreign Man.

I was a bit surprised frankly. I thought I'd get ticked at the plot but I didn't on apolitical baasis, just that it didn't hold together and i kept thinking "so why are they suddenly fighting the humans again? Wait why is the helicopter chick now fighting for the Navi?" I liked the speical effects but had no emotional attachment and it felt like a Disney Imax thing. To be honest I kind of got bored about 2/3rds through and the big battle was strictly meh to me.

You didn't understand why the lady pilot was fighting with the navi? After she worked with the avatar team up until the attack, then refused to be part of the attack on the tree, then bust the science team out of prison?

Fair enough that it bored you, but I'm surprised at a complaint that you couldn't follow a character's transformation. It wasn't a subtle movie.

Yea the story should've been incredibly easy to follow.

sebster wrote: As a result, expecting the two vehicles to have similar performance capabilities is likely an error.

I feel you are twisting the facts to fit how you feel about the movie to be in error. It is a perfectly valid comparison.

sebster wrote:For my mind

See? It isn't anything in the movie, it is just what you want to rationalize. If that works for you , fantastic, but for my mind it was a just there to look cool, not because it made sense. If they wanted to stay within the internal logic of the film and still look cool they should have had the birds carrying large stones in there feet and dive bombed the Scorpions, dropping them on the propellers. It would certainly have worked.

sebster wrote:Which is my point. You seemed to be criticising the movie for lacking hard sci-fi, or criticising people for calling it sci-fi, or something... but it that kind of space fantasy is commonly called sci-fi. Point is, like many things sci-fi can mean a lot of things.

It seems you skimmed over the conversation because that isn't close to what I wrote. I stated that Avatar is sci-fi. I said the Star Wars is not. As for the rest of your point, yes, words can mean whatever people want them to as they are arbitrary, so you can call whatever you want whatever you want. That doesn't make it right though. There is a difference between Fantasy and Sci-fi. Just because most people wouldn't know the difference between something doesn't mean that there suddenly isn't a difference. I'm somewhat surprised to see you make such an anti-intellectual argument.

sebster wrote:Surely just as you're allowed to talk about how you didn't like a part of the film, we're allowed to discuss whether that criticism is valid?

I didn't say they couldn't, but they weren't being attacked so there was little need to justify there position. I was told I was being to critical, I never said they weren't being critical enough or even questioning their right to have an opinion. That is the difference.


We could also ask/address:

How the movie portrays that being handicapped makes you less of a person.

The denigration of religion by literally removing faith from the equation.

The confusion of New Age and Indeginous Philosophy/Religion.

The one dimensional groups: Na'vi all good, humanity all bad. In the end to be good Jake literally has to become Na'vi to shed his demon body.

The movie is an argument against privileged white people coming from one of the most privileged white males on the planet.

The movie is a technical marvel that's underlying message is that evils of technology.

How, for all the things the movie is railing against, one of the is not war. Jake kills hundreds of his countrymen without batting an eye, never expressing any sort of internal conflict about what he does. It also posits that it is ok to go to war when you are absolutely right and the other side is absolutely wrong. When was the last time we had those kind of absolutes, or that each side didn't believe they were the ones in the absolute right?

The message that tolerance never works, that violence will always be the answer.

Now if Pandora is indeed a stand-in for Iraq and the Na'vi are the insurgents and the Marines / corporation are the US, than is Cameron saying it's ok when US troops get killed, because their superiors launched the invasion?

If it was an analogy for Native Americans there should also have been some groups more than happy to trade with the humans and befriend them.

When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"?

EDIT:

You didn't understand why the lady pilot was fighting with the navi? After she worked with the avatar team up until the attack, then refused to be part of the attack on the tree, then bust the science team out of prison?

In all fairness she had no character development, which is what I think Frazz is referring. However thin Jakes is, at least we are shown why he is a traitor. Trudy's development goes like this.

1. Hai guyz, I iz yer pilot! ^_^
2. Oh noez, we shot a tree with minimal casualties
3. Nowz I kill all the people I haz been working and living wif for the last [unknown period of time because I am not really developed].
4. Oh noez, nowz I iz dead. /sadface

I still don't see the movie as an analogy to Iraq invasion. When western Europe came to North America seems more fitting but I don't see that as the point either. Generally it just seemed like an Eco-spiritual combined message. If the Navi were depicted as nomadic tribes with a strong tie-in to the Muslim religion then I would have been more inclined to see the movie as an anti war message pointed at the Iraqi war. People should be aware that the situation in the Middle East dates back to at least the first world war when the area was purposedly split up into many countries so they would fight each other rather than work together.

G

The Iraq analogy comes more from the use of terms by the Col. like "shock and awe" and "pre-emptive strike" as well as the imagery of the destruction of Hometree as a stand in for the twin towers. It isn't the entire subtext, but an element of it.

The one dimensional groups: Na'vi all good, humanity all bad. In the end to be good Jake literally has to become Na'vi to shed his demon body.

Yeah, other than the humans who were on the Na'vi's side, and the Na'vi that wanted to kill Jake on sight just because he wasn't one of them.

Killing him on sight wouldn't have been wrong.

He was supposed to be trying to destroy their entire race.

And is it really killing if its just an Avatar instead of the actual person?

Aduro wrote:

The one dimensional groups: Na'vi all good, humanity all bad. In the end to be good Jake literally has to become Na'vi to shed his demon body.

Yeah, other than the humans who were on the Na'vi's side

Here is where you run into the white guilt. The dream that out of 100 people, 98 want you dead and are actively purshuing this agenda, but 2 don't and you want to use this as an example that they are actually not bad. Now if 98 of them wanted to help you and 2 wanted to kill you then you might have something.

Then of course, excluding Trudy, the extreme minority that sided with the Na'vi were also Na'vi themselves. To be good you not only had to side with them in idealogy, you would have to take on thier particular form.

Orkeosaurus wrote:

Aduro wrote:, and the Na'vi that wanted to kill Jake on sight just because he wasn't one of them.

Killing him on sight wouldn't have been wrong.

He was supposed to be trying to destroy their entire race.

Exactly. As evil as the humans were, their paranoia wasn't exactly unjustified.

Cane wrote:And is it really killing if its just an Avatar instead of the actual person?

Eww, excellent question. Kind of reminds me of an article about the Matrix that posits the question "If the Matrix isn't real, is Morpheus really black?".

The colonel attempted to kill the human body, not the Avatar.

The destruction of the tree I don't see as analogy to the towers... It's not like the army was destroying one of their own assets.

G

1. Hai guyz, I iz yer pilot! ^_^
2. Oh noez, we shot a tree with minimal casualties
3. Nowz I kill all the people I haz been working and living wif for the last [unknown period of time because I am not really developed].
4. Oh noez, nowz I iz dead. /sadface
****Exactly.

BUHWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Frazzled wrote: I thought I'd get ticked at the plot but I didn't on apolitical baasis, just that it didn't hold together and i kept thinking "so why are they suddenly fighting the humans again?

Suddenly? The movie basically was building up to that fight from the get-go. Were you asleep? It was plainly obvious that the evil corporation and Colonel was going to bulldoze their sacred grounds if the blue-skinned refused to move which they did. I'm not sure how you view it as sudden since half the movie involved Jake learning and falling in love with the way of the Native AmeriAliens (and them not going to let money crunchers dig up their sacred grounds) and there was plenty of contempt between the science people versus the money crunchers.

Wait why is the helicopter chick now fighting for the Navi?"

Well considering that she was the pilot for the Avatar team one can infer she knew more about the planet, its natives, and the big picture with all the events she was a part of. In case you forgot the Avatar team was around longer than Jake's three months or so stay (remember those pictures of Sigourney Weaver teaching the natives, the mountain base, etc) and IIRC she was pretty aware of why they were moving shop. Blowing up innocent and defenseless natives isn't what she signed up for; she even said something like that: "I didn't sign up for this gak." From the very beginning Jake narrated that the human soldiers were freedom fighters back on Earth and now were merely guns for hire which leads the audience to infer that they're not guys like Tom Hanks from Saving Private Ryan. And in making the escape she got shot at by the Colonel leading to the casualty of Mrs. Weaver, the head of the whole science project and detail she flew for; further reinforcing her character's actions.

The pilot's motives were not too different to what Tom Cruise felt like in "The Last Samurai" where he was part of killing a bunch of innocent natives and then later turned sides against the very country, leaders, and soldiers he fought for.

But yea the pilot was the escape ticket character and Han Solo played a similar role in Star Wars where he came out of nowhere to save Luke at just the very last second...kind of strange too if you nitpick about it like Avatar since you'd think the Death Star would've detected it or the most bad ass mofo in the galaxy (keep in mind this is before the prequels were made), Vader would've sensed a disturbance.

Cane wrote:

Frazzled wrote: I thought I'd get ticked at the plot but I didn't on apolitical baasis, just that it didn't hold together and i kept thinking "so why are they suddenly fighting the humans again?

Suddenly? The movie basically was building up to that fight from the get-go. Were you asleep? It was plainly obvious that the evil corporation and Colonel was going to bulldoze their sacred grounds if the blue-skinned refused to move which they did. and there was plenty of contempt between the science people versus the money crunchers.

So what? They were marines on a hostile world. The navi were just one more threat to them. Why would they care? You shoot at me and I'll nuke you if I can.

So what if the sciencers were have people problems with the money guys. Thats like..life.

Again, it wasn't a factor for me, but it limited my level of involvement. I really wasn't involved by any of the characters and that detracted from the enjoyment of the special effects. I had a similar reaction to ...shudder...Transformers II..shudder.

I think The Last Samuri is an excellent comparison.

G

not so hot. I didn't like that movie either. Mostly because Tom cruise sucks so bad he can mess up and otherwise good movie.

Green Blow Fly wrote:I think The Last Samuri is an excellent comparison.

G

Yep.

But Frazz the Last Samurai had hot Asian chicks FTW!



G

Green Blow Fly wrote:But Frazz the Last Samurai had hot Asian chicks FTW!



G

Yep. Plus
cool samurai (although convenienetly hiding they were real bastards in real life)
cool ninjas
cool actors
cool battle DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA!

Tom Cruise indeed sucks that bad.

* sound of universe imploding through a tiny keyhole *

that is some major lung power going on for sure.

G