Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Little lord Fauntleroy wrote:Meh. Saw it. Liked it. Knew it was obviously going to rip off other films, and just enjoyed it for the big glowing special effects. Overall, got a 7/10 from Fauntleroy.

Then, I googled Avatar just to see what came up. Oh. Dear-http://community.livejournal.com/tothehometree/492.html


Also, as you can probably tell, I thought Camerons Aliens was amazing (My second favourite film of all time), so not complaining about him.

Oh, oh no. Dear GOD no.

It can't be. Burn out my eyes!!!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For your viewing pleasure, apologies if reposted:

Avatar IS Pocahontas in space.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/04/avatar-pocahontas-in-spac_n_410538.html

I'm hoping that Avatar has a sequel, or at the very least, there are some books about it.

Yes, i love Avatar. I am not afriad to say that. It makes my eyes happy.

LunaHound wrote:Ppl are just embarrassed to admit they love it.

So yes im sure people loved it!

The only thing I am embarrassed about is the amount of Americans that can't see how racist the movie is...

This again? Awesome!

@Clthomps: I read your post. Then I looked at your avatar. (...pun not intended) Then I loled.

apwill4765 wrote:Yes, James Cameron is a successful hack. He didn't start out that way, he became one over time. As either writer director, or producer, he is responsible for:

The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Terminator 3
Piranha Part Two
Titanic
T-2 3D: Battle Across Time
Dark Angel
True Lies ("You're Fired")

So yea, a legacy of suck with a few gems in there.

We'll start from the top, then, shall we?

James Cameron didn't write or direct The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
James Cameron is given a writing credit for the characters of Terminator 3 as the film used characters from his two previous movies. But he did not contribute any original material to this film.
Piranha II was b-grade schlock, that Cameron took to build his rep. As far as schlock goes it was what you'd expect. Are we going to hold every low budget production against their directors?
Titanic is a good movie. It might not be a movie you want to watch, but it was a well constructed historical romance.
I haven't seen T2 -3d but as I understand it it was well regarded - it certainly sounds like an interesting experiment meshing live performance and film. Why is it on this list?
James Cameron was a creator on Dark Angel, he neither wrote nor directed. Most critics identified that as a major problem with the show.
True Lies was a fun, goofy take on spy thrillers.

Your list consists of three works Cameron neither wrote nor directed, two good movies, a b-grade film he took to gain experience, and live Universal production. It's not very damning.

Almost all directors have misses, my favourites certainly have bigger misses than that list. Cameron's record is amazingly solid. He could be criticised for being very safe artistically, focussing on technological advances over art, but it simply makes no sense to call him a hack.

And I have no problem with environmental movies. The trouble is most of them suck.

True, most of them suck. Perhaps the suckiest film that ever did suck, On Deadly Ground, was an environmental movie.

My problem with Avatar is that James Cameron blatantly copied movies like Pocahontas and Dances with wolves, almost scene for scene. I was yawning the whole time, and the visuals didn't really impress me. I don't care about someone's shiny new computer if they use it to show me awesome hi-def solitaire.

No, it wasn't copied scene for scene. That charge makes no sense - what scenes in Avatar featured a talking badger? It can be said that the two films used very similar story structures, that's true. But that story was highly derivative when Pocahontas told it, just like it was derivative when Dances with Wolves told it. It's an old, old story, a well documented story template and one that's been used in hundreds upon hundreds of movies.

But suddenly its a problem with Avatar.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

apwill4765 wrote:I mean seriously, HOW are the two highest grossing movies of all-time Avatar and Titanic, when there are movies like: Apollo 13, Meet Joe Black, The Bridge over the river Kwai, Ben-Hur, Patton, The Godfather, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Star WArs Trilogy, E.T., Silence of the Lambs, A few Good Men, Unforgiven, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, a Fistful of Dollars, and hundreds more, all better (IMO, and hopefully to the Academy) than Avatar?

Because very high box office takes are based on making a film that appeals to a wide demographic. This means films like most of the ones you've listed, that appeal to limited demographics, will not do as well at the box office.

But even then, your list consists of mainstream hits, including some mega-hits like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost, which are also among the biggest films of all time. But films like Unforgiven, The Silence of the Lambs, One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest, while they are great movies, are never going to gross a billion dollars worldwide, but they aren't supposed to.

I'd be a happier person if Fight Club and The Big Lebowski beat everything on your list above, but that isn't how the world works.

Also, Meet Joe Black? Seriously?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Y'know it reminds me more and more of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Another stunning film that made if not a Kajillion Dollars than certainly a Bajillion. It broke new ground, made wire-fu mainstream and opened the US market to other Chinese products like Curse of the Golden Flower.

But no one really loves it.

I've never even gone back to see it again.

I love that movie, and have watched it a bunch of times. The music and the scenery are something else. I'm beginning to suspect you're all just playing a game of post things that are wrong to annoy sebster.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kilkrazy wrote:I thought Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was boring. It didn't break any ground visually or in fight SFX terms for me because I had seen craptons of glorious looking films like Raise The Red Lantern and so on and Hong Kong action movies.

It brought a Western story telling sensibility and put it in a kung fu setting. In traditional kung fu, the winner of each fight is the guy with superior kung fu, because the film is basically about kung fu and who's ability is best, and everything else is secondary. Ang Lee put the story foremost, using each fight to advance the story, to show the moods of the characters.

It's why a lot of kung fu fans didn't like the movie, but also why the film was more accessible to Western audiences than earlier stuff, which never gained more than cult following.

Subsequent Asian films like Hero adapted the model, though there certainly wasn't the explosion of Asian cinema predicted in the wake of CTHD.

Again like others have said, I liked it for the viewing pleasure but the story was god awful. Please, it has been done a thousand times.

I actually hear people in my break room at work crying how it is the best movie of all time, great story, great characters ect. Of course these are the same people that read the twilight books together.

Its a sad day when a movie like Moon, a truly great original sci fi movie, gets overlooked for this rehashed puked up story.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Preachy racist bull-gak.

They might as well have spray painted "Whites are bad! Non-whites are perfect!" over all the trees and vehicles.

Until the pathetic Na'vi are joined by Mighty Whitey and he becomes the greatest Na'vi warchief ever after having been around them for a month, and wins the love of the chief's beautiful daughter, and not only unites all of the Na'vi tribes with his amazing clarity of thought but also is able to convince an actual planet of his moral righteousness.

mattyrm wrote:Especially the whole 'we will laugh when he inevitably falls off this horse but of course we will all love him in an hour' moment at the start. It made me cringe it was so bad, and if i wasnt in an Imax theatre i would have walked out.

I had expected that scene so completely that when it actually happened on screen it just filled me with a strange sense of deja vu.

sebster wrote:No, it wasn't copied scene for scene. That charge makes no sense - what scenes in Avatar featured a talking badger?

Um... are you sure there was a talking badger in Pocahontas?

thekerrick wrote: Of course these are the same people that read the twilight books together.

Ex-fething-actly.

Orkeosaurus wrote:
Mighty Whitey and he becomes the greatest Na'vi warchief ever after having been around them for a month, and wins the love of the chief's beautiful daughter, and not only unites all of the Na'vi tribes with his amazing clarity of thought but also is able to convince an actual planet of his moral righteousness.

It was 3 months, not 1 month (speech from Quaritch ... you've got three months ... that's when the dozers get there.").
Also a deleted scene featuring his "vision quest" drug trip - where his spirit guide is revealed as Toruk.
A vision granted' to him from eywha (as this is how 'vision quests" generally work.)

Besides, it's not like the RDA were morally righteous.

Of course they were! This peaceful, reasonable corporation was doing this for the good of humanity! But all you've seen is Na'vi propaganda!

(BTW, weren't the dozers sent in a tad early?

That it's his destined spirit guide makes it even worse!

Plus, it's not a matter of him having convinced the planet to have favored him over the bad guys, but that he convinced the planet to fight at all (especially when the Na'vi say that the planet doesn't pick sides in fights).

Freelance corporate mercenaries are rarely portrayed as morally righteous. If they were Cyberpunk would be an even deader genere than it already is. I kind of wish they had gone with Weyland-Yutani over RDA, as it would be nice to see more of The Company from Alien/Aliens

BTW, Am I the only one in this thread who prefers Ridley Scott's original Alien to Cameron's sequel?

Orkeosaurus wrote:
Plus, it's not a matter of him having convinced the planet to have favored him over the bad guys, but that he convinced the planet to fight at all (especially when the Na'vi say that the planet doesn't pick sides in fights).

Him: You gotta help us!
Planet: Sorry. No can do.
Him: What? But you're like, all powerful!
Planet: Yeah, but can't pick sides, dude.
Him: B-but, the Na'vi are your favoured people! They worship you and fight for you!
Planet: Woah, dude. Sorry, but I'm like, all powerful, and you know, with great power comes great responsibility...or great costumes...I don't know. Sorry, dude, for the sake of life and all balance I must not intervene. I am forbidden. It is against nature. Real bad muju, y'know?
Him: ...but...these guys are gonna kill us all and then mine you and feth with your entire body/planet thing!
Planet: Oh...well, guess I better do something then, eh?

Orkeosaurus wrote:Um... are you sure there was a talking badger in Pocahontas?

No, but if it wasn't a badger then it was probably a raccoon or a beaver or something like that. I'm really not that familiar with Disney cartoons, but the point is that Avatar wasn't a scene for scene copy. It was based on the same basic boilerplate, but it was hardly original when Pocahontas used it.

Ah, there was a raccoon. He didn't speak English, but I think Pocahontas understood his raccoony noises. He had a friend hummingbird.

I smell a dandelion.....

Orkeosaurus wrote:Ah, there was a raccoon. He didn't speak English, but I think Pocahontas understood his raccoony noises. He had a friend hummingbird.

Well, my knowledge of Pocahontas has been improved thanks to this thread. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

chaplaingrabthar wrote:

BTW, Am I the only one in this thread who prefers Ridley Scott's original Alien to Cameron's sequel?

No you are not. Alien was a far superior film, everything good in Aliens came from the original except the tech on the Sulaco, that was nicely done. Once Cameron's team got the marines right Aliens was hard to feth up, just follow what Scott and Giger gave them and they will do ok. Still somehow this was managed for Alien 3 and 4, Josh Whedon should know better.

I alwase wanted to have an Avatar poster and have it as my avatar, it will be fun.

The movie is probably the best movie I have seen, but I have not seen alot of good movies in my life.
I was amazed by the graphics.

And I admit the second thing that I said when I came out the movie was that I loved the movie and It would be awsome to go to pandora, the other thing was that I was explaining about this stupid and random thing called "CGI,brows" to this 6 year old kid who is related to my mate, back on topic.

zilegil wrote:I alwase wanted to have an Avatar poster and have it as my avatar, it will be fun.

The movie is probably the best movie I have seen, but I have not seen alot of good movies in my life.
I was amazed by the graphics.

And I admit the second thing that I said when I came out the movie was that I loved the movie and It would be awsome to go to pandora, the other thing was that I was explaining about this stupid and random thing called "CGI,brows" to this 6 year old kid who is related to my mate, back on topic.

You best be trollin'.

Orkeosaurus wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:Preachy racist bull-gak.

They might as well have spray painted "Whites are bad! Non-whites are perfect!" over all the trees and vehicles.

Until the pathetic Na'vi are joined by Mighty Whitey and he becomes the greatest Na'vi warchief ever after having been around them for a month, and wins the love of the chief's beautiful daughter, and not only unites all of the Na'vi tribes with his amazing clarity of thought but also is able to convince an actual planet of his moral righteousness.

mattyrm wrote:Especially the whole 'we will laugh when he inevitably falls off this horse but of course we will all love him in an hour' moment at the start. It made me cringe it was so bad, and if i wasnt in an Imax theatre i would have walked out.

I had expected that scene so completely that when it actually happened on screen it just filled me with a strange sense of deja vu.

sebster wrote:No, it wasn't copied scene for scene. That charge makes no sense - what scenes in Avatar featured a talking badger?

Um... are you sure there was a talking badger in Pocahontas?

It was Pocahontas's beaver which spoke to John Smith.

Kilkrazy wrote:It was Pocahontas's beaver which spoke to John Smith.

As for Eyuwawachacha picking sides, it is like praying before a sports game. Whoever wins, God obliviously chose them. God(s) rarely let bad things happen.

It was alright.

Too OTT with the blatant good vs evil and tree hugging messages.

But visually it deserves every cent earnt.

chaplaingrabthar wrote:

BTW, Am I the only one in this thread who prefers Ridley Scott's original Alien to Cameron's sequel?

No
But one can love both for being icons of very different genres.

Frazzled wrote:

chaplaingrabthar wrote:

BTW, Am I the only one in this thread who prefers Ridley Scott's original Alien to Cameron's sequel?

No
But one can love both for being icons of very different genres.

Indeed, both are good, but people tend to prefer Aliens because at the end of the day, it's more fun.

Aliens is also a classic example of how to do a sequel right. It retains a few key themes & characters (Ripley, the creatures, the Company etc) and continues the story, but is actually a very different film from the original (see also Two Towers, Empire Strikes Back, The Dark Knight).

Bad sequels are usually ones that try to shoehorn every single major character from the first film and then repeat the story with more spectacle (see Pirates 2, The Mummy Returns, Transformers 2 etc).

Yep.

Aliens had colonial marines, it was fething epic!

"A day in the marine corps is like a day on the farm!"

sebster:

Your response is too long to quote. If you re-read, you will see that I also included works that he produced. So yea, I know that he didn't write or direct several of those examples.

Titanic takes a lame romance plot of poor boy meets rich girl and puts them on a boat. It sucked.

And Meet Joe Black is an example of a great romance. If you don't like Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt, Marcia Gay Harden and Claire Forlani at their absolute best, then your good movie compass is pretty weird, considering Titanic is on your good movie list.

Also, obviously I didn't mean that every scene was dubbed over with new voices and voila avatar (although the Na'Vi did "talk" to several of the animals, and one of them kind of looked badger like). And the stories are close to being exact copies. Dances came out in 1990, pocahontas in 1995. What other movies use a plot so amazingly similar to these?

Actually, lol at navi and pocahontas talking to animals. I rescind my previous statement. It IS scene for scene!

I bet in five years it will be sold by Wal-Mart for 10 dollars in a two pack Blue Ray paired up with Tremors 3. Great effects, horrible story. I think Golden Books for kids put out more orginal story plots then this movie.