[Tiste Simeon]

Macros, on 04 December 2022 - 11:09 AM, said:

You are dead to me Tiste

It's not as horrible as I thought it was going to be!

Evangeline Lilly was excellent.

LOTR is 10000000000% better.

[Aptorian]

I'm watching Troll on Netflix.

Man this is a really solid monster movie. I'm impressed. Tight manuscript, high production value for a Scandinavian film, great casting.

It's like a Norwegian Godzilla movie.

[QuickTidal]

Tiste Simeon, on 04 December 2022 - 11:44 AM, said:

Macros, on 04 December 2022 - 11:09 AM, said:

You are dead to me Tiste

It's not as horrible as I thought it was going to be!

Evangeline Lilly was excellent.

LOTR is 10000000000% better.

They are not bad movies at all really. Some hinky cgi, abs some strange story choices, but overall I still quite enjoy it

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 04 December 2022 - 09:45 PM

[worry]

The third one is a genuine mess though, from my recollection. I haven't rewatched that one -- but will note that the first two were much improved by the Extended Versions imo.

[champ]

Aptorian, on 04 December 2022 - 05:44 PM, said:

I'm watching Troll on Netflix.

Man this is a really solid monster movie. I'm impressed. Tight manuscript, high production value for a Scandinavian film, great casting.

It's like a Norwegian Godzilla movie.

This.
Watched it at the weekend, surprisingly a very good film, would recommend!

[QuickTidal]

champ, on 05 December 2022 - 10:27 AM, said:

Aptorian, on 04 December 2022 - 05:44 PM, said:

I'm watching Troll on Netflix.

Man this is a really solid monster movie. I'm impressed. Tight manuscript, high production value for a Scandinavian film, great casting.

It's like a Norwegian Godzilla movie.

This.
Watched it at the weekend, surprisingly a very good film, would recommend!

Want to see it, haven't gotten round to it yet. Glad to hear it's good!

[QuickTidal]

Took the kids to see STRANGE WORLD and we all enjoyed it. It was a tight little story that mixes Disney's penchant for "explorers" with solar punk/sustainability and environment plot lines. Diverse cast, and just a really enjoyable 1hr and 40min.

It was also the kids first experience with proper 3D and they grasped at the screen...LOL....and my daughter asked "Daddy, why are the glasses black? I thought they were red and blue....which just shows you that in the media that even little kids consume, 3D glasses still look like they did 40 years ago. LOL

[worry]

[QuickTidal]

worry, on 05 December 2022 - 01:17 PM, said:

EXACTLY.

Like if I had to guess where she saw it I'd say TEEN TITANS GO?

Cause the only other thing she watches regularly is some girl streaming Roblox...

[Gorefest]

Always fun holding two sets of 3D glasses in front of each other and rotate the lenses. Polarisation in full view. It's some neat physics.

[Slow Ben]

worry, on 05 December 2022 - 01:17 PM, said:

Who you callin “spook” peckerwood?

[QuickTidal]

So not only does this make the movie look utterly phenomenal, but that "mom to son speech" made me legit cry...fuck me these movies are special.

[Tsundoku]

So the initial reviews are out for Avatar: The Way of Water. 85% critics score on RT atm, so let's see how that goes.

Two common themes in the reviews seem to be:
A It's visually awesome AF. Story-wise however ...
B If you liked the first one, you'll like this one.

I'll be waiting for the audience reviews personally. Sounds like last time: hundreds of millions of dollars and they couldn't afford a decent scriptwriter.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 13 December 2022 - 08:44 PM

[Mezla PigDog]

I hate myself over how much I like the original Avatar movie.

[QuickTidal]

Mezla PigDog, on 13 December 2022 - 10:58 PM, said:

I hate myself over how much I like the original Avatar movie.

Why? It's legitimately a great movie.

On that note, I got my tickets to see AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER in IMAX 3D next week! Super excited!

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Tsundoku, on 13 December 2022 - 08:02 PM, said:

So the initial reviews are out for Avatar: The Way of Water. 85% critics score on RT atm, so let's see how that goes.

Two common themes in the reviews seem to be:
A It's visually awesome AF. Story-wise however ...
B If you liked the first one, you'll like this one.

I'll be waiting for the audience reviews personally. Sounds like last time: hundreds of millions of dollars and they couldn't afford a decent scriptwriter.

'[Avatar] is basically a demo tape, each plot point reverse-engineered to show off some new feat of technology. The awe it inspires was not just about itself but rather the hope of new possibilities. It was easy to imagine someone in 2009 leaving the theater and asking:

"What if we made more movies like this? What if we made good movies like this?" [...] "Avatar" pointed toward a widening horizon — better effects, new cinematic worlds, new innovations in 3-D technology. [...]

[...] "The Way of Water" will emerge into an almost total deferment of that dream. Today, 3-D is niche (at best); [...] home streaming is threatening the theater; and projects of ambitious world-building are overlooked in favor of stories with existing fanbases. We did not get here by pure chance: The Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulated broadcast media, allowing companies to form megaconglomerates. In this world of mergers and acquisitions, the franchise blossomed into a highly efficacious product, allowing companies to maximize intellectual property across their numerous platforms. As the economy grew more financialized, and even movie studios began behaving more like banks — promising profits quarter over quarter — the franchise product became even more appealing. Because franchises have a ready audience, they effectively functioned as a way to manage risk, allowing companies to bet bigger and win bigger.

[...] The story of "Avatar," however hacky it may be, still suggests that humanity can save itself in the face of rapacious profiteering. This is something we have a moral imperative to keep believing. In today's franchise movies, visions of the future are inherently constrained by the mandate to keep the franchise up and running — a project that forecloses any story line critiquing growth, consumerism or globalization. If the business of the franchise points toward an ever-widening horizon, the movies produced within its logic must do the opposite. Their vision of life is necessarily circular, always pointing back to itself.'

'Avatar' and the Mystery of the Vanishing Blockbuster - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

OTOH home streaming in VR could help usher in a new renaissance of 3D movies---and innovations not feasible on large screen....

Not sure that claim about franchise movies not critiquing growth / consumerism / globalization is accurate---it's certainly not strictly 'necessary'. Though I imagine much of it is relegated to the 'villains' (who so often really should be the heroes... but no, a muscle-bound reactionary protects the existing 'order' by punching out the 'mad scientist', the climate change activist, the egalitarian radical...).

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 14 December 2022 - 03:57 PM

[champ]

QuickTidal, on 14 December 2022 - 03:22 PM, said:

Mezla PigDog, on 13 December 2022 - 10:58 PM, said:

I hate myself over how much I like the original Avatar movie.

Why? It's legitimately a great movie.

On that note, I got my tickets to see AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER in IMAX 3D next week! Super excited!

The only way to see it!!!!!

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Tsundoku, on 13 December 2022 - 08:02 PM, said:

So the initial reviews are out for Avatar: The Way of Water. 85% critics score on RT atm, so let's see how that goes.

Two common themes in the reviews seem to be:
A It's visually awesome AF. Story-wise however ...
B If you liked the first one, you'll like this one.

I'll be waiting for the audience reviews personally. Sounds like last time: hundreds of millions of dollars and they couldn't afford a decent scriptwriter.

Hmm, the Guardian seems to be swinging from its 'it swoops and swooshes! who cares about anything else!' Rings of Power review to the opposite extreme for this one:

'[...] trillion-dollar screensaver

[...] insipid, overlong [...]

The story, which might fill a 30-minute cartoon, is stretched as if by some AI program into a three-hour movie of epic tweeness.

[...] what do we find aside from the high-tech visual superstructure? The floatingly bland plot is like a children's story without the humour; a YA story without the emotional wound; an action thriller without the hard edge of real excitement.'

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 14 December 2022 - 09:58 PM

[amphibian]

The plot of Avatar makes no sense and has several moments that didn't need to happen like the taming of the flying guy only to toss it aside for the biggest best flying guy. But that's less important than the overall gestalt of pretty enviro-preservationism and being a furry.

[Tsundoku]

The most common comparisons I heard back in the The Day were it was a rip off of Fern Gully, Dances with Wolves or Pocahontas.
Then again there's lots of movies in that particular genre so they could be considered ripoffs of other earlier ones. Shrug.

I always thought of the original as Dances with Smurfs, because it makes me chuckle.