Avatar is possibly the most beautiful CGI movie ever!

[tarheel91]

Reasonable said:

tarheel91 said:

Reasonable said:

tarheel91 said:

Reasonable said:
Avatar manages to be the most impressive, beautiful use of CGI to create another world, coupled nicely with the lowest level of narrative ambition.

It's not bad, but in a way that almost seems worse it's simply bland. All that effort, all that expense, for something so familiar and obvious. Couldn't Cameron have actually married the ability to deliver a new world with something new to say or show?

What struck me was how much Avatar resembled the latest version of a AAA videogame. The plot's the same, the weaknesses are the same, but the graphics have been improved.

7/10 and the likely candidate for testing your new 3D TV and BR player, but not a great film nonetheless.

What particularly struck me, was how little it did with so much expense, while a film like Moon did so much with so little expense.

*facepalm* If you think ANY story is original, you simply haven't read/watched enough.  Every story has been done before.  What makes individual stories remarkable is the way they're told.  I thought this one was told wonderfully.

*facepalm* if you don't have the cinematic depth to understand the difference between broad brush, easy strokes as Cameron uses in Avatar vs the excellence of narrative and depth in films like The Hurt Locker and Moon, to name a few this year.  Opinions are fine, we can all have them, but cinema has defined standards and levels as well, and these can be used to measure true excellence, and Avatar falls sure of the high end of excellence.

Also, there are clearly plenty of ways to be original, I see many movies do this every year, not to mention novels and theatre productions.

Avatar was well presented and solid, and in case you didn't notive I wasn't saying it was terrible, but every beat was telegraphed and obvious.  We need someone to get them out of lockup?  Fine, we'll have one sympathetic pilot, we won't explain why she alone has doubts while everyone else is a warmongering jarhead, we'll just have her do what we need with the barest reason to do so when in fact her actions have little basis in her character at that point.

The problem with Avatar is that it was hugely unoriginal in narrative and very basic in motivation - for the most part its characters are caricatures, and if it wasn't for the fact the cast delivers very good performances the weakness of their dialogue would be all the more apparent.

I do appreciate that basic motivations and characters were there at all, look at the awful horror of Transformers 2 to see the real bottom of the barrel, but Cameron has shown before he can juggle broad strokes with detailed characters better than he did with Avatar, and that's why it's dissapointing he didn't push things a little further.  He's got aliens, except they never really act alien, more like a mix of Native American Indians with a few other elements added from other tribal examples.  He's got an interesting character in Jake, but he doesn't really explore him much.

Now if you thought this was told wonderfully fine, but I can tell you that it wasn't as original as it could have been, nor as well written.  Cameron seems to genuinely have a talent for broad narrative and basic characterisation, but he falls short of true excellence in the details.  I just wish he'd give in and hire a great scriptwriter to take his final draft and give it a little character polish.  With Cameron's excellent direction I think we'd then get something trully worthy of this otherwise excellent creation of another world.

 

 

I didn't say this was genius (I'd appreciate it if you quoted my post further down where I expanded on the three sentence reply you quoted instead), I said it was better than you were giving it credit for.  By the way, I love how you're changing your description of it.  First it was "not bad, but in a way that almost seems worse it's simply bland" (almost seems worse than bad, now what's the word for that? Oh right, terrible). now it's "well presented and solid."

There's this word for telegraphing in story telling.  It's called foreshadowing.  This movie was full of it.  It was a lot like a Miyazaki movie in that all of the minor stuff presented earlier on becomes full of import later in the movie.  Nothing is shown without meaning.  All of the portions of the training shown plays a role in Jake's survival.  *SPOILERS*SPOILERS*

 

Even the seemingly meaningless jumping down from a high branch and rebounding off leaves to slow speed comes into play.   The story about the massive bird (I forgot it's Na'vi name), foreshadows his capturing of it.  The failed attempt at saving the lead scientist foreshadow's Jake's transformation at the end.

 

*END SPOILERS*END SPOILERS*

What you call telegraphing is really planned from the beginning by Cameron (again, we call that foreshadowing, a legitimate technique).  Why?  Because the plot's purpose was not to excite you with plot twists (in the grand scheme; in individual scenes, of course there were surprises), but to convey a message, a warning almost.

As I said before, this colonialism is practically its own genre at this point.  In terms of literature, you've got Things Fall Apart, Heart of Darkness, Speaker for the Dead, etc.  In film, you've got Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas, etc.  Each of these go about showing the same message in very different ways.  While nearly all of them try show you a culture entirely unlike yours, but still valuable and worth protecting.  However, that isn't enough because they simply can't create a convincing enough world (this is especially hard in literature).  They have to use something else as well.  In Heart of Darkness, it's heavy symbolism.  In Speaker for the Dead, it's the attachment of a family's tragedy with that of the native population.  However, what this movie is able to do (as I said in my previous post) is create a world so real and beautiful that it on its own is enough.  It's actually incredibly original in that respect.  I've never read or seen anything where the world has been enough.  But, he spends a lot time just developing that world, and it pays off.

The other unique thing he did was justify the whole spiritual belief of the Na'vi with something that made scientific sense.  Normally, it's just seeing value in the spiritual beliefs, but here, there's a tangible reason as to why they adhere to the whole "everything's interconnected, energy is only borrowed" belief.

About dialogue: You have to remember that a lot of the dialogue in this movie takes place in something other than the speaker's native tongue.  The only noticeably rough parts for me felt like they should have been like that (e.g. Jake stumbling through the native tongue, or Neytiri when she's speaking english and full of emotion).

About pilot: She's the one carrying the scientists around on the time.  You don't see how that connection could possibly make her feel more sympathic towards the Na'vi when she gets to see them interact (also bare in mind she was in the Mountain hideaway for the three months watching Jake interact) all the time?

Avatar doesn't feature true, classic foreshadowing, it features minimum effort placement of what the story needs and only calls them into play as necessary.

My attitude hasn't changed one bit.  Avatar has great direction, amazing visuals and a bland story told in modern minimum characterization methods.  Guy is in a wheelchair, guy will go gaga when albe to walk again.  Nothing about whether guy is really torn trying to serve two masters (the scientists and/or the military) nor nothing about how torn he might feel colluding with the military to get his legs back even though that same military abandoned him.  I never said it was terrible and bland certainly isn't terrible.  Transformers 2 is terrible.  It was simply by the numbers resuse of previous plots and themes with the twist of the location - which is bland.  The story is not bad - I'm not unhappy with anti-war or eco friendly themes or against them, but you've got to ask whether it's great to marry cutting edge technological accomplishment to a below the best retelling of familiar tales.

As for the narrative devices, seeing a pilot take a couple of trips with some scientists doesn't explain a complete change of character - that's lazy and just because Cameron needs it.  Maybe he trimmed more detail, but in doing so he took it below an acceptable level.

Whichever way you cut it, the story and dialogue in Avatar simply doesn't match the excellence of everything else on display.  Stumbling with another toungue is one thing, but characters bouncing all over the place is another.  Grace is terribly insensitive to Jake right away, so we get she doesn't like the military or him, but I seriously doubt she'd attack him over failing to be his brother nor show some remorse for her actions. 

Scientists being a little remiss regarding social nicities is one thing, if more than a little cliche, but that is simply poor characterization.  Then when he's messing up she's happy to see him simply because she's in her Avatar?  It doesn't work.  Cameron is particularly guilty in the film of having characters serve the needs of his story without staying true to other scenes, nor with more than the simplist motivation.

Take the pilot.  You saw how the Colonel reacted to anyone going against him, right, so how come she can just fly away and refuse to attack then is wandering around to rescue our heros?  It's pretty clear that he'd have grounded her and had her ass in the jail first for her actions.

I'm sorry, I'm not asking for 2001, and I have said often in my replies in this thread that Avatar is good just underwhelming compared to its technical aspects, but Avatar tells a familiar story in the most broad brush of strokes, failing to come close to the real classics exploring that theme and with a very lazy approach to narrative - for example I need Jake able to quickly regain trust and respect, so I'll plant a story about a big creature only rarely tamed, and then I'll have him tame it.  That's not classic foreshadowing for thematic effect, that's plotting backwards from a known result, which is something else entirely.

If you watch The Abyss, watch Bud and Lindsey and other characters, you'll see the exact same inability to remain true to character or characters behaving in false ways because Cameron wants it.  In The Abyss you're supposed to see Lindsey as some front office female bitch, yet she really appears as nothing other than strong and sensible the whole film.  You can't just decide that, you have to put enough on screen to make it plausible, and Cameron, while a director I admire in many ways, simply isn't capable of that level of characterization.  He's great at working out the characters he wants, but often falls short of realizing them - his films would instanlty be better if he did everything the same but hired screenwriters to flesh out his story ideas and overall narrative, but he doesn't and perhaps doesn't want to.

It's interesting you mention Heart of Darkness, beacuse really my point is, if you aren't going to get even close to that, why not tell another story you're better suited to rather than look like an immitation?

Because while I believe Cameron believes in the content he put into Avatar, which is admirable, he himself is clearly unable to extrapolate beyond what already exists in superior form in other works.

Take the world network you mention, it is a facinating idea, but in Avatar it only exists as a backwards device to allow for some unlikely reinforements to charge to the rescue and allow Jake to make a big change permernant - right there Cameron had a great, interesting idea he could have explored in a genuine SF film, such as Moon, yet in Avatar it is a plot point and comes dangerously close to a form of Deus Ex Machina.

Anyway, I'm not getting into any further back and forth on this.  We see it differently and that's that - although I will say if you felt my response was somewhat attacking, don't start your responses with *facepalm* - that rarely gets you anything other than a slamming arguement in return.

 

 

I'm going to facepalm all I want when I see someone ragging on a story for a lack of originality.  There's no such thing as an original story.  Those things became extinct quite a good while ago.  Just because someone hasn't seen enough to know something's not original doesn't change the fact that it isn't.

You really seem to be ignoring large portions of the movie and applying certain parts (often without context) to your argument just because they fit what you want the movei to be.

First of all, the worldwide network is far from just a way for "unlikely reinforements to charge to the rescue and allow Jake to make a big change permernant."  Primarily, it serves as a tangible form of the idea of interconnectedness so prevalent in all of these colonialism/nature movies.  You see it in Heart of Darkness, Cermony, Dances with Wolves, etc.  It's really common in a lot of native belief systems.  Here, that belief isn't just a way to see things, it's real.  I think it makes one of the hardest parts of this genre to understand much easier to see and believe for Westerners.  Also, it's used throughout the entire freaking movie.  Those "links" between the Na'vi and their horses/banshees?  You have the network to thank.  It's the connection they have with their ancestors.  It's a major theme throughout, but of course you're just going to see it is a convenient plot tool, because seeing it as anything else would poke holes in your argument.

Let me answer your questions about Jake feeling torn: he doesn't.  He's an ex-marine.  Are you really surprised he felt stronger allegiance to the mercenaries than the scientists?  At this point, his thinking is much more in line with the former than the latter.  Plus, the scientists are at best neutral towards his involvement with them.  That clearly changes as the movie goes along, and I thought the meeting with the leader guy after Jake returned from the mountains was particularly good at showing that change.

As for the head scientist's dislike of Jake early on, it was pretty clearly displaced anger, and nothing else.  She was upset over her prize newcomer's death.  I'm sure she had a lot of hope for him, and then he's gone.  It's natural (not right, but natural) for her to take out her anger on the guy taking his place.  He has no experience like his brother did, and could potentially become useless, if not a liability.  However, when she sees that his control of the body is pretty natural, a lot of that fear dissipates (she has no idea he's ignoring the scientists who told him to stay put) and she can act a bit more naturally with him (although she maintains he's a marine bonehead for some time).

I will admit that the pilot is one of the weaker points in the story (I recognized that the story telling wasn't genius, good, but now mind-blowing).  However,  I think because of her comments later on it's pretty clear about her feelings about the whole thing, and it's pretty easy to understand why (as I explained earlier).  As for her escape, she picked the perfect time to do so.  The captain and his crew are wrapped up in napalming the tree (I haven't even touched on how I love how the native side of things was kept universal*), unreliable instrumentation, and natives running/flying around.  It's not that surprising that they didn't notice one small helicopter breaking ranks (and it's pretty easy to come up with an excuse for why she did).  Granted, it's not a sure thing she could have escaped, but it's certainly plausible.  I think Cameron also didn't want to distract from the main story by focusing on minor characters too much.  Sure, he could spend 15 minutes throughout the movie focusing on the challenges of the pilot and that one science dude on surviving on the inside, possibly being grilled by their superiors, lying through their teeth, etc., but ultimately that has very little to do with the overall theme.  That's why the captain dude's a caricature, the valuable material is called unobtanium, etc.  All of these things aren't important to the main theme, and they keep the situation universal.

Finally, I think comparing Heart of Darkness and Avatar is very hard.  They go about trying to say similar things in very different ways (I'm not even going to bring up the racist or sexist undertones in Heart of Darkness).  Heart of Darkness focuses much more on how ludicrous it is to think of Western civilizations as inherently superior.  The plot is just a tool for the incredible symbolism within the book that allows us to recognize the ridiculous nature of Western greed and selfishness.  Avatar uses something entirely different to make a similar point: the world.  Whereas the natives and the world are often symbolic (see the one native woman that stands in the water staring after them as they go back down the river with what's his face, the dude who's been there for forever) in Heart of Darkness, the world in Avatar is attempting to be as real and beautiful as possible.  Avatar tries to fill the world with as much value as possible, instead of using it as a vessel through which something else is brought out. 

 

*You've got references to Native Americans, Vietnam, Iraq, and allusions to Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind; it's really about viewing things from the conquered's perspective in general, and does a good job of not focusing on any one case.

 

Edit: I just want to let you know, I use a very aggressive tone in discussions, but it's not because I don't like you, it's just a style I automatically adopt.  No hard feelings, k?  Seriously, you're a pretty knowledgeable guy, and you're forcing me to analyze the movie much more closer than I would have otherwise to justify my claims, and I appreciate it.