[Yellow]

QuickTidal, on 10 January 2010 - 10:09 PM, said:

So yeah, they could have done it your way Yellow, but then the movie would have been ten minutes long and completely pointless...

Would that be so bad? It was two and a half hours long and completely pointless... let's save tome time, damn it.

[Epiph]

Tarcanus, on 29 December 2009 - 08:49 PM, said:

Did NO ONE ELSE notice that the dominant indigenous species (Na'vi) had only 4 limbs, while every other animal on the planet looked to have 6? Does this not strike anyone else as odd? Shouldn't the Na'vi have had 6 limbs, too?

I noticed, and it annoyed the hell out of me. I also didn't like Sully's Avatar face or uh...Dr. Grace's face. Hers was way too human and his was way too cartoony. Every time I had to look at either of them, I was pulled out of the movie. Neytiri's was great though; I didn't really think it looked like Zoe Salwhatsherface.

I have liked every other alternate plot that has been proposed so far more than the actual plot, particularly stonemonkey's and including QuickTidal's supposedly negative one, which sounds like a story suited for a Malazan fan. I don't like simplistic plots...the world isn't simple and shouldn't be portrayed as such.

It was beautiful and I was fully engaged, but there were a lot of problems, which have already been addressed at length.

[amphibian]

alt146, on 11 January 2010 - 07:26 AM, said:

@ Amph - I agree, the military side was a little silly Jake should have explained what he was there for and started equipping the Navi way earlier. Keep in mind though, the explosives Jake used were marine issue (or at least that's what they looked like to me) and the marines couldn't attack at night due to the fact that their tech didnt work in the area.

This is a good point. However, the navigational equipment seems to be what's affected.

I think a nice work around would have been to have the Marines take the ground mechs and plant a path of beacons to the Tree of Souls, that would guide the bomber during its night run. That way, we get a guerrilla war on the ground as the Marines attempt to plant and hold the beacons, which allows the Navi use their knowledge of the forest to somewhat counteract the superior human tech and the tension gets heightened more.

[Kanubis]

alt146, on 11 January 2010 - 07:26 AM, said:

I have a slight problem with the bond thing in that I can't see it remaining a trait in every animal on the planet if only one species uses it and selectively at that. A few shots of animals of the same species bonded together or of various animals bonding trees to search for food/water/predators or even of symbiotic bonds would have made the whole thing much more realistic.

Maybe, in a sinister subplot, the Na'vi cull any they see with poorly formed 'bonding things'?

It actually made me think of final Fantasy Spirits Within more than anything.

I enjoyed it.

[Epiph]

WTF: "Audiences experience 'Avatar' blues"

[Illuyankas]

God damn pussies need to man the fuck up.

[Epiph]

In a big way. The value of cynical realism really comes to the fore in light of that article.

[stone monkey]

I'm guessing that the people involved have never troubled the History section in their local library... Although I'd doubt that a lot of them could tell you where their local library is...

[QuickTidal]

Yellow, on 11 January 2010 - 07:33 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 10 January 2010 - 10:09 PM, said:

So yeah, they could have done it your way Yellow, but then the movie would have been ten minutes long and completely pointless...

Would that be so bad? It was two and a half hours long and completely pointless... let's save tome time, damn it.

Haha! Indeed. It's pretty long after all.

[Mezla PigDog]

Just saw this in 3D. It's bloody brilliant! If someone had told me when I was a kid that I would one day be watching movies that looked like that, I would have been bowled over. Some of the 3D was more like a few layers of 2D but it was still great. Of all the amazing CGI, the one thing that kept catching my attention was Sully's little shrivelled legs. I barely noticed the aliens after a while but I kept obsessing over that part.

The less said about the plot the better. The colonialism was horrifying but added to the entertainment in an inappropriate way. I felt sorry for Sully's little dragon, they bond for life then he traded up for the mega dragon! It's the Na'vi equivalent of a Ferrari since it got the girl back for him. And was it just me or were they unaccountably sexy aliens? I made a comment along those lines on the way home that I am never going to live down!

[HoosierDaddy]

Blue minxes, definitely.

[Aptorian]

Watched Avatar earlier today, loved it besides the stupid plot.

I had a weird reaction to it though, I couldn't help but cheering for the marines, mainly because of that badass commander. God damn was he awesome in every scene he was in, it was like they took all the most ridiculous military movie character traits and made a prototype badass out of them. He sort of embodies what I think the nameless marine from Doom is like.

The first scene where he's holding his "I'm hired to protect you and I am going to fail" speech was sweet. Dude's all scared up and intimidating in a very tone downed manor.

Then they show him pumping iron and he gives that "I thought I'd seen it all before Pandora" speech, shows off his BADASS scares. Then he gets in his awesome battle mech and goes cruisin' like a pimp.

The scene where they're blowing the tree up, he's all "this shit is nothing" and sipping his cup of coffee while a thousand tons of burning wood comes tumbling down. I loved the part where after about one minute of waiting to see the effect they immediately switch from teargas to full out firebombing the shit out of the natives.

When he just kicks open the door to the poisonous atmosphere, steps out and begins unloading round after round at the scorpion I nearly creamed my pants. That scene could not have been more awesome if he had been standing knee deep in titties. Dude only remembers even marines need to breath air when an aid hands him a breather. I'm surprised the word BADASS wasn't just spelled out in big 3D letters all over that scene.

And of course, finally, the awesome battle mech showdown. Man I really wanted him to crush Sully. How cool is it that some military scientist, when he was making this mech, decided that no, a giant gun is not enough, my 15 foot robot needs a matching BADASS combat knife. Because what battle mechs need are knives. Lots of them.

Guys a BADASS!

Sort of reminds me of when I watched Passion of the Christ. I came out the cinema completely detached from the story of Christ but deeply in love with Pontius Pilatus.

EDIT: And echoing Amphs criticism of weak military strategy when they were attacking the Lightshow Rastafari tree, I do not understand why they didn't just bomb the site from orbit. Okay maybe not orbit, just from 30,000 feet then. Simply fire bomb everything at all within 10 square miles of the tree.

I also wanted to see the Navi attack the human settlement.

If the extra material doesn't contain a completely unnecessary clip of Sigourney Weaver strutting her stuff inside one of those mechs I will be very disappointed.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 17 January 2010 - 05:42 PM

[QuickTidal]

Mezla PigDog, on 17 January 2010 - 12:27 AM, said:

I felt sorry for Sully's little dragon, they bond for life then he traded up for the mega dragon! It's the Na'vi equivalent of a Ferrari since it got the girl back for him. And was it just me or were they unaccountably sexy aliens? I made a comment along those lines on the way home that I am never going to live down!

I thought so to, but after watching the movie a second time through I noticed that at the end after the battle Jakesully says "The time of great sadness was over and Toruk Ma (big badass orange Ikran) was no longer needed" and he releases the big badass one to the wild again....meaning in my head he is still bonded to his smaller Ikran for the rest of his life.

We won't have to wait long to find out though, Cameron is working out the sequel now and said the other day that he put little bits in the first one to lead to plot points in the rest of the series.

...and yes....Neytiri herself has an unstoppably tight stomach and overall form, and Cameron thought it fitting to let a little nipple show here and there when she leaned down and her necklaces hung off her. It's natural to find them sexy I think.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 17 January 2010 - 11:18 PM

[amphibian]

QuickTidal, on 17 January 2010 - 11:16 PM, said:

It's natural to find them sexy I think.

I wonder if the sequel would have humanity essentially converting en masse to Bluepeople. There didn't seem to be any advantages to being an organic human being over a converted Blue. Just make the ships bigger, convert the atmospheres, domesticate a few beasts, play up the two different kinds of sex (physical and link) and the entire human race levels up.

[Mezla PigDog]

One thing that has been bugging me since being bludgeoned over the head with Cameron's environmental message: Did he offset the carbon footprint for all the Chinese orphan-made 3D specs? Or the gazillions of computer hours required to do all the CGI?

[dktorode]

ofcourse everything was made from recycled plastic and solar farms...

[cerveza_fiesta]

Mezla PigDog, on 17 January 2010 - 12:27 AM, said:

And was it just me or were they unaccountably sexy aliens? I made a comment along those lines on the way home that I am never going to live down!

Yup. Wanted to bang all the avatar chicks. Yes, even sigourney.

Mezla PigDog, on 18 January 2010 - 12:16 PM, said:

One thing that has been bugging me since being bludgeoned over the head with Cameron's environmental message: Did he offset the carbon footprint for all the Chinese orphan-made 3D specs? Or the gazillions of computer hours required to do all the CGI?

Good call. I definitely thought that when I was putting my glasses in the "be green....recycle your glasses" box outside the theatre....so they can go be washed with gallons of caustic detergents and subsequently repackaged...individually in throwaway bags.

Aptorian, on 17 January 2010 - 05:35 PM, said:

Watched Avatar earlier today, loved it besides the stupid plot.

I had a weird reaction to it though, I couldn't help but cheering for the marines, mainly because of that badass commander. God damn was he awesome in every scene he was in, it was like they took all the most ridiculous military movie character traits and made a prototype badass out of them. He sort of embodies what I think the nameless marine from Doom is like.

The scene where they're blowing the tree up, he's all "this shit is nothing" and sipping his cup of coffee while a thousand tons of burning wood comes tumbling down. I loved the part where after about one minute of waiting to see the effect they immediately switch from teargas to full out firebombing the shit out of the natives.

When he just kicks open the door to the poisonous atmosphere, steps out and begins unloading round after round at the scorpion I nearly creamed my pants. That scene could not have been more awesome if he had been standing knee deep in titties. Dude only remembers even marines need to breath air when an aid hands him a breather. I'm surprised the word BADASS wasn't just spelled out in big 3D letters all over that scene.

And of course, finally, the awesome battle mech showdown. Man I really wanted him to crush Sully. How cool is it that some military scientist, when he was making this mech, decided that no, a giant gun is not enough, my 15 foot robot needs a matching BADASS combat knife. Because what battle mechs need are knives. Lots of them.

EDIT: And echoing Amphs criticism of weak military strategy when they were attacking the Lightshow Rastafari tree, I do not understand why they didn't just bomb the site from orbit. Okay maybe not orbit, just from 30,000 feet then. Simply fire bomb everything at all within 10 square miles of the tree.

YES to all of the non-bold above. Especially the part where he kicks down the door and unloads a few clips into the helicopter. The grin on my face the first time I saw that scene was positively face-splitting. You also hit the nail on the head with your assesment of the MECH COMBAT KNIFE. Best addition they could have made to the mech. On a rewatch, I noticed the cannon even has a fucking bayonet on it...as though when engaged in mech combat you're going to need to run something through rather than just stomp on it.

The mechs were also incredibly agile which, while unrealistic in every way, made for a great battle scene at the end.

RE military strategy criticism (bold comment in apts post)

I thought that too on first watch thorugh, but the second time I picked up a line in there somewhere that the charges were a huge chunk of mining explosives and that the shuttle had been converted into a bomber.

The military presence on pandora was really a mercenary presence, and they were an infantry, not a fully equipped army with orbital support and huge amounts of military-grade explosives. They weren't equipped to make full-scale attacks, rather they were a defense force...mostly infantry and mechs with light air support (scorpion choppers).

Cameron could have made it more obvious in the script, but I think we were supposed to get that they were pulling out absolutely all the stops with the attack, and making use of whatever was available in the absence of millitary equipment, like bombers.

That and the easymode attack on hometree lulled the commander into overconfidence...so that he decided that an all-eggs-in-one-basket type attack would make more of a "fuck off we own this place" statement to the navii than a calculated tactical assault. Plus, the glowing rasta tree had all the sensors messed up, so it would have been impossible to deliver what few explosives they had without line-of-sight.

[Darkwatch]

Well the sequel may just be the sheer threat of orbital bombardment for 3 hours.

I imagine the atmosphere would be rather different.

"What another beautiful day on Pandora!"

*Space capable Shuttle descends*

"We're here for the McGuffin."

"You can't have it! This is our land! We beat you once we can do it again and we have Gaia Pandora's GOD on our side."

"I have an interstellar fleet in high orbit armed with Kinectic Bombardment weapons and bio and chemical weapons. As well as a full planetary invasion force and modern military equipment."

"Uh..."

"Yeah so, the McGuffin or you know, death from above."

*Insert Deus Ex Machina here*

"We are saved!"

*Insert 3rd movie here.*

[Mezla PigDog]

I reckon the sequel is going to be set a good few years later (the humans have to cryo-sleep all the way back to Earth and then get back to Pandora again). In which time, Jake's avatar body will have reproduced thus mixing his hybrid human DNA into the gene pool resulting in something leading to a tortured hero/ine. Or maybe the Navi will invade earth, preaching peace, love and recycling and teach humanity to say a prayer for every factory farm death. Or there will be evil Avatar's leading to Navi on Navi fight action. Or a Navi will get ideas above his/her station and harness the planets bioluminescent energy for the forces of evil and have to be taken down.

Another plot fault. Considering the Navi are all peace and love, how come they have a warrior class......?

[Jusentantaka]

Darkwatch, on 18 January 2010 - 03:13 PM, said:

*Insert Deus Ex Machina here*

So, he leads a blueporn-raindance to clear plants off of a disused mass driver/railgun thing that the company started assembling towards the end to use to send cargo into space, and then the planet shits a blue ball of love which the gun shoots and it blows up the giant space ship?