[Jusentantaka]

balless ball monkeys "Why don't you make a better 459028billion dollar movie" IS NOT AN ARGUMENT.


too funny.

Oh right! the games with the same level of graphics. Crysis with natural, doubles and shader 3 and DX11 (its only fair), the Avatar game in stereoscopy and that other one which was actually just plain terrible but very pretty.

This post has been edited by Jusentantaka: 21 December 2009 - 05:17 AM

[Illuyankas]

Sixty, on 21 December 2009 - 03:13 AM, said:

Dances with Smurfs was from South Park. There was an entire episode devoted just to making that joke, actually.

Really? Never knew that. I am really behind on my SP watching.

QuickTidal, on 21 December 2009 - 03:30 AM, said:

Also, I am curious when the sci-fi special effects extravaganza movie YOU are directing is coming out? I'll be sure to rush out and see it and then go rant about it not being good enough cause I have nothing better to do. You wanna complain, well that's your god given right, but until you produce something better yourself, you're a just a fanboy whiner in my books. A dime a dozen from the AICN forums. an aspiration if I ever heard one. Sweet merciful jeebus...it's like you exist to hate on things...what's that about?

Hey. Hey. QuickTidal. Is a customer banned from complaining about a hair in his soup unless he owns a six-star restaurant? No, he is not. Roger Ebert doesn't make movies. Is he then not permitted to critise movies? If something isn't as good as the advertising makes it out to for some people, then you don't have to jump down their throats just because it makes you feel all tingly in your special places. And 'well I'd like to see you do better' is the pathetic argument of a dimwitted child. Stop using it.

PEOPLE CAN DISLIKE WHAT YOU LIKE, IT'S ALLOWED
DON'T BE A DICK

Besides, existing to hate on things is my job.

[Skywalker]

Watched this in 2D the other day... LOVED every visual and the execution. Felt let down about the story and plotting. Bit of a rant here:

http://maroonimation...complexity.html

Quote

Complexity. Nuance. More grays, less black and white. Please! The popular media, the public conscious, zeitgeist - whatever you call it is so obsessed with reducing things to anecdotes and representative summaries/ cliches that aren't that representative at all.

I know, I know... what's the point in blogging for the first time in six months and wailing on a point that is essentially a corollary of the previous post?

Well... I watched Avatar, that's why. Yes, patient reader, I shall explain. In a longish rant (I feel your chagrin).

To dismiss it as eye candy (or a play on "Dances with Wolves") would only prove the point I'm trying to make and add me to the count of the unwashed masses I decry. It is a phenomenon of computer imagery and sound design and whatnot. But at its core, it is yet another big-ass rip off of Joseph Campbell's mono-myth, with a dash of Gaia-ism, anti-Bush/ war/ Blackwater rhetoric and a big dose of "John Carter of Mars" and "Midnight Tides".

To the uninitiated, John Carter of Mars is a series of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs (he of Tarzan fame) about an American on deathbed who finds himself transported to Mars in the blink of an eye, discovers he has superpowers while there, joins a clan of Martian warriors (Martians come in green or red or yellow skin if memory serves, and call their planet Barsoom), marries a princess, defends against fanatics, tames a six-legged steed (no dragon here) and so on... until one day he is the "warlord of Mars"; sound familiar? Well, these books got written somewhere in the last century.

Midnight Tides is the fifth book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen saga by Steven Erikson. It tells the story of how a capitalist empire (Lether) which has already subsumed many indigenous civilizations by trade-craft and war finally meets it match at the hands of a very war-like if fallen (grey skinned) civilization known as the Tiste Edur. One of the primary characters of the book is a Letherii man responsible for studying/ helping destroy several civilizations in the past who this time around intends to betray Lether and make it eat crow...

Fanboy tangents apart, here's the thing: both Burroughs' Barsoom and Erikson's writing feature a beautiful world with imaginative flora and fauna, and the authors (more so for the latter) in broad strokes paint a narrative that is far more complex and real than Avatar. In other words, they do everything on a page that Avatar does on screen, and then they do a lot more.

Someone said to me, this movie is more of an experience than a story; and I agree completely... it is a superlative experience (as I tweeted the morning after I saw it). But did it also have to be so f**king dumb and derivative?

In the translation from page to screen these days (and hardly anyone would argue that the zeitgeist is now ruled by the screen more than the page) we lose all manner of nuance that would otherwise make things much more worthwhile. For that matter, if you read the scriptment that Cameron had written for Avatar years ago, in its 70 odd pages it had a lot more meat on the bone than what's in the final movie. Where did it go?

Cameron hardly had Hollywood suits breathing down his back asking him to make the movie merchandise or lowest common denominator friendly (one assumes)! He calls himself an auteur (and he is, technically) but seriously - this is an Eragon-esque story that a teenager could belt out in a year or so of effort. This took him a decade and a half?

Movies - science fiction movies - like the Matrix and Blade Runner and The Fountain (and many more) have come out over the last three decades that frankly don't allow people like Cameron the excuse of having to make their work "accessible". Can anyone honestly say Cameron shouldn't have spent another - oh, 5 million - and come up with a better story?

Now all this said, the truth is Avatar and movies like it will remain the gateways, nay the gatekeepers for a vast majority of people to the world of Science Fiction and Fantasy literature and imagination. That is not a bad thing. If I'd been twelve years old and had never seen a science fiction flick in my life, Avatar would be enough of an excuse to become a fanboy, buy every toy that comes out, devour all spin-off comics and books, and dive deep into SF&F. Hopefully I would still end up discovering the joys of Erikson and Dan Simmons (whose Hyperion Cantos featured the concept of uploading your consciousness to a cosmic network by the way) and others that are devastatingly good.

But guess what? I'm not twelve any more, and I prefer my Oz to be closer to Kansas!

Also there's this:

1) no one else thought of

Spoiler

airdropping on the red dragon thingies before?

?
2) with nothing substantial having changed about our hero's role in events after the spoilered above, suddenly he's all acceptable to the Na'vi?

Plot and story were a bit crap, but I will still pay willingly to see the gonzo visuals in IMAX 3D

[Jusentantaka]

Illuyankas, on 21 December 2009 - 07:23 AM, said:

Sixty, on 21 December 2009 - 03:13 AM, said:

Dances with Smurfs was from South Park. There was an entire episode devoted just to making that joke, actually.

Really? Never knew that. I am really behind on my SP watching.

Its not like south park came up with that joke anyway

This post has been edited by Jusentantaka: 21 December 2009 - 04:43 PM

[dktorode]

I was wondering why the humans didnt just nuke them from orbit once they had taken off at the end.

Maybe thats what the sequel will be about

[Obdigore]

story was predictable.

The best 3d Usage in the entire movie was the computer 'screens' and sliding the windows behind each other and whatnot.

Scar-Commander was ok. I thought him drinking a cup of coffee while destroying the tree was a good touch.

The Exec guy was terrifail.

Best part of the movie: The preview of the new Clash of the Titans. Yea, I said it.

Worst part of the movie? The hair-tails. ITS LIKE HAVING SEX WITH 6-LEGGED HORSIES. IT ISN'T RIGHT!

To: Scienstist-types.
If you mix the DNA of a human and anything else, won't it most likely be a mixture, not an EXACT FUCKING COPY OF THE OTHER THING? Just wondering.

Let me shit out a better story:
2 companies on the planet, both want what is below the world tree. Main guy works for the tech-guys with his dna body, the other company has already 'recruited' a different blue-man-group-clan to help them get at the world tree. Hero needs to use the 'recruited' people to defeat the sky people, and then turn around and win them to his cause, also defeating the others, but sacrifices his blue body for the victory. He then uses his human body to join with the gaia-thing and it allows him to possess one of the animals, and he is always then a guiding force for the gaia thing.

Also, less blue side-boob. I mean, if you are going to do the blue cock, go Watchmen style and do it. Don't show stuff where it should be, but it isn't. Unless of course these blue-people do not have blue-penises, because the watchmen used them all.

[Jusentantaka]

Please no. No more flapping blue cocks please. Especially not if its ugly.

Your science-fu is the fail. DNA mixing isn't like the sex-made children. Well, it could be I suppose, but I'd assume that the idea here was that they cut bluee DNA with human DNA, leaving the majority of it bluebitches. Kinda like heroin, you don't make a cut it to fifty percent strychnine or bad things happen.


& how's your story any better?

[Obdigore]

Jusentantaka, on 21 December 2009 - 07:02 PM, said:

Please no. No more flapping blue cocks please. Especially not if its ugly.

Your science-fu is the fail. DNA mixing isn't like the sex-made children. Well, it could be I suppose, but I'd assume that the idea here was that they cut bluee DNA with human DNA, leaving the majority of it bluebitches. Kinda like heroin, you don't make a cut it to fifty percent strychnine or bad things happen.


& how's your story any better?

Because he dosen't 'SAVE THE DAY AND LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER.' There might also be some tension with the betrayal by the other clan. Sadness about how some people that live the 'older ways' might be tempted by the 'technology' and whatnot. Sadness about how they have to fight their own race who have been 'corrupted' by the sky people to survive. It would make it a non GOOD V EVIL, BLACK V WHITE movie.

I know it isn't, but there wasn't a single part you could see that wasn't blue-man-group. They said the combined the DNA. What part is human? Any of it? Did they decode the genome of these aliens in what, about 20 years, and have enough time to grow and decant these models, as well as figuring out how to make people 'interface' with these 'living androids'? Didn't they say the time was like 2142 or something? 130 years from now we will be able to grow flesh-droids, along with ships that can go from earth to (wherever) in 6 years, when Alpha Centuri is 4.4 years away at the speed of light? This dosen't include speeding up or slowing down time, blah blah blah.

The simple fact is that if you look at this movie as anything BUT a mid-summer special effects movie, it fails.

(if there isn't going to be any floppy blue 3d cock, there shouldn't be any implant-like sideboob.

[Jusentantaka]

Doctor Juju prescribes a triple dose of science fiction asap.

130 years ago we were absurdly far from where we are now. We couldn't even get into space, along with all the rest of the advances we've made concurrently. Why can't we, in another 130 years (supposing for the sake of it we don't go into a massive nuclear war with hundreds of 10MT+ warheads going off, and that the global warming doomsayers aren't entirely correct) have all sorts of advanced and awesome technology? Though I was quite disappointed by the prevalence of fucking assault rifles/50cal miniguns and rockets. I get how its the Aliens thing, but damn dude, spent 15 years on this and you couldn't make some kinda bitchin plascannon for the grunts?

I think you're off on the time (too short), but 130 years is a very long time for tech advancement regardless. But genetics? sure why not. DNIs? likewise, why not? As for the FTL travel, all you need is one or two pi-field emitters per 10,000 tons with a ratio of about 100,000:1, a handful of terawatt-range cool fusion reactors, and a Xavier-Ryu engine to generate an intense gravitational field to turn a pocket of normal space into an essentially non-Eisensteinian bubble. They you just push go, and presto! one parsec a week.

silly girl, using her own name.

Oh and a kickback to the CGI thing: the blues expressions weren't full cgi, they used sensors/reflectors/whatever on real people, collected the data and used it to morph the face models that the art nerds made up.

This post has been edited by Jusentantaka: 21 December 2009 - 08:12 PM

[Obdigore]

I see.


Nubentantanka says 'lay off the sci-flop, or I wills sci-fi you'.

How... unimaginative. Why not just talk about hyperspace generators or dylithium crystals?

[Jusentantaka]

Obdigore, on 21 December 2009 - 08:59 PM, said:

I see.


Nubentantanka says 'lay off the sci-flop, or I wills sci-fi you'.

How... unimaginative. Why not just talk about hyperspace generators or dylithium crystals?

well, how exactly could that point be answered? And FFFFFFFUUUUUUUU, at least I grabbed something from nigh-unheard of sci fi.

[Obdigore]

Jusentantaka, on 21 December 2009 - 09:04 PM, said:

Obdigore, on 21 December 2009 - 08:59 PM, said:

I see.


Nubentantanka says 'lay off the sci-flop, or I wills sci-fi you'.

How... unimaginative. Why not just talk about hyperspace generators or dylithium crystals?

well, how exactly could that point be answered? And FFFFFFFUUUUUUUU, at least I grabbed something from nigh-unheard of sci fi.

Isn't that the point, it cannot be. An unanswerable point in the negative of this movie is just one of the many!

Or, you could have written a 12 page single spaced document about the combine harvester, the gasoline powered internal combustion engine, and the russian sputnik program, and how they all lead to the nuclear fallout we shall achieve in 2025.

Or, you could talk about neutrinos boiling the earth's core. (THANK YOU 2012. WHAT A DISGRACE).

[Jusentantaka]

Well, by that logic, you forgot to mention how there can't be aliens.

Obdigore, on 21 December 2009 - 09:14 PM, said:

Or, you could talk about neutrinos boiling the earth's core. (THANK YOU 2012. WHAT A DISGRACE).

I'd sooner kills myself than see that movie, much less mention something from it.

[Obdigore]

You point about my logical thread obviously discounts that aliens built the pyramids.

In other news, Have you read the Peter F Hamilton stuff? It should be banned. Disgusting.

SPOILERS for Hamilton's night's dawn trilogy!

Spoiler

Human Ghosts from hell take people over and rape and torture others to invite other ghosts into them. It is sick shit. The entire universe he builds is awesome, except for that part. and the scene in the first book where the hot chick gets taken, then takes one of the other guys by getting him on top of her, then she like 'ages' into jelly-flesh and her skull while she grows disgusting root-like things that invade his body? MAKE IT STOP.

[Jusentantaka]

not overly sure how its relevant, but yeah, I did when it was first published.

And if aliens built the pyramids, maybe they left a cache of technology buried on Mars which includes technology that allows faster than light travel, and Cameron's humans found it and plugged it in to their ships. HA!

win

This post has been edited by Jusentantaka: 21 December 2009 - 09:35 PM

[Obdigore]

Jusentantaka, on 21 December 2009 - 09:35 PM, said:

not overly sure how its relevant, but yeah, I did when it was first published.

And if aliens built the pyramids, maybe they left a cache of technology buried on Mars which includes technology that allows faster than light travel, and Cameron's humans found it and plugged it in to their ships. HA!

win

It isn't relevant, that is why it is so fun.

It is really too bad that the power source the aliens used was all destroyed while using the only alien technology still on mars, to terraform it into a human-compatable planet. Total Recall > Ghosts of Mars.

[Jusentantaka]

Obdigore, on 21 December 2009 - 09:39 PM, said:

Jusentantaka, on 21 December 2009 - 09:35 PM, said:

not overly sure how its relevant, but yeah, I did when it was first published.

And if aliens built the pyramids, maybe they left a cache of technology buried on Mars which includes technology that allows faster than light travel, and Cameron's humans found it and plugged it in to their ships. HA!

win

It isn't relevant, that is why it is so fun.

It is really too bad that the power source the aliens used was all destroyed while using the only alien technology still on mars, to terraform it into a human-compatable planet. Total Recall > Ghosts of Mars.

COPENHAAAGEN. GIEF THE PEOPLE AAAAAAAAEEEERRRR!

This post has been edited by Jusentantaka: 21 December 2009 - 09:44 PM

[Obdigore]

I don't understand why you would name the leader of the martian colony in screenplay after a brand of chewing tobacco and expect to be taken seriously.

Edit: I see your Starseige and raise you http://en.wikipedia....rs_the_Martians

This post has been edited by Obdigore: 21 December 2009 - 09:49 PM

[dktorode]

Obdigore, on 21 December 2009 - 06:41 PM, said:

story was predictable.

The best 3d Usage in the entire movie was the computer 'screens' and sliding the windows behind each other and whatnot.

Scar-Commander was ok. I thought him drinking a cup of coffee while destroying the tree was a good touch.

The Exec guy was terrifail.

Best part of the movie: The preview of the new Clash of the Titans. Yea, I said it.

Worst part of the movie? The hair-tails. ITS LIKE HAVING SEX WITH 6-LEGGED HORSIES. IT ISN'T RIGHT!

To: Scienstist-types.
If you mix the DNA of a human and anything else, won't it most likely be a mixture, not an EXACT FUCKING COPY OF THE OTHER THING? Just wondering.

Let me shit out a better story:
2 companies on the planet, both want what is below the world tree. Main guy works for the tech-guys with his dna body, the other company has already 'recruited' a different blue-man-group-clan to help them get at the world tree. Hero needs to use the 'recruited' people to defeat the sky people, and then turn around and win them to his cause, also defeating the others, but sacrifices his blue body for the victory. He then uses his human body to join with the gaia-thing and it allows him to possess one of the animals, and he is always then a guiding force for the gaia thing.

Also, less blue side-boob. I mean, if you are going to do the blue cock, go Watchmen style and do it. Don't show stuff where it should be, but it isn't. Unless of course these blue-people do not have blue-penises, because the watchmen used them all.

Thye are different
The Avatar has five fingers instead of four and the feet are normal as aposed to monkey type feet.
Or something like that...

There are differences that Cameron made between them...just not THAT noticable that it would scare the flat chested navi woman off....

[Jusentantaka]

I'm pretty sure no one was supposed to take that movie seriously.