James Cameron's Avatar

[rocketpig]

Reasonable said:

Squilliam said:

Reasonable said:
Very good but not great taken purely as a film, its main weakness being characters that are a little too thin and rely overly on preconceived stereotypes - i.e. it's good for what it is, but it's no masterpiece like say 2001.

Technically though, it is a marvel. Pandora is amazing to behold and the 3D is the first I've found worthwhile - i.e. not a gimmick. I'm glad it's doing good numbers, as it is in no way a bad movie - Transforms 2 is my idea of a bad movie - but hope that Cameron will take more narrative risks in any sequels, and focus on a more original story.

8.5/10 overall for me. Very good, with the visuals and solid if unoriginal story covering over the cracks in the dialogue.

The brilliance in the movie was in making people care enough about CGI characters and bringing an alien world and its people to life in a way that a wide range of people can understand and accept at a logical and emotional level. Most stories have been told and most movie goers have seen pretty much every variety of character imaginable especially if you break them down into bullet points.

The quality of the movie to me is not the critical reviews, its the fact that I went yesterday and two screens showing the movie were both sold out and the fact that they sold more tickets in the second week than the first. They had to rely on stereotypes to give people a starting point, because the whole world couldn't be alien or people simply could not relate. A stereotype is a needed shortcut here to speed familiarity, and these were all well acted stereotypes as well.

P.S he upped his badass female count to 3, womens lib would love this movie!

Funnily enough I did argue in another thread that I was suspicious Cameron had deliberately simplied everything to make the only focus of originality Pandora itself.

However, I can't quite cut him slack on that in the end becuase I don't believe in over simplifying and do think he should have challenged the audience more than he did.  I loved the scene near the end where the lovers finally meet in their real flesh, for example, and for the first time it is clear that we reallly are looking at attraction between two aliens (from their respective viewpoints) and I would have liked more scenes like that.

Also, in the end I am a Kubrick loving cinema elitist!  I can't ignore stereotypes just because they helped the film be successful!

I did note the badass females, although none really matched Ripley from Aliens, who probably remains one of the most belivable tough females ever.

Thinking about it more perhaps that was part of my disappointment with the Characters.  Burke was a much better corporate Weasel in Aliens, the marines were more believeable in Aliens, Reese was a more compelling and sympathetic character than Jake, Vasquez a more interesting badass female ally in Aliens, etc.  I just felt Cameron had delivered far better versions of his main characters in the past - in fact, to be honest, he has delivered better versions of the main characters in Avatar in the past.

I will so though that the main marvel was Neytiri for me.  She worked, with subtle gestures, large expressive outbursts and a real sense of life and character about her.

I'm with Reasonable on this one. I think it's even worse if Cameron intentionally dumbed down the characters in an attempt to swing the focus to Pandora and all his pretty little CGI techno-wizardry than if he unitentionally created a set of weak characters to begin with. Good story is driven by the events and characters, not whiz-bang graphics.

Besides, the movies we remember down the road are the ones that had characters and situations that challenged an audience. I don't see Avatar holding that kind of power over people because once the flashy visuals have been repeating by dozens of other filmmakers, there will be nothing to capture the audience.

Look at what we remember from other sci-fi/fantasy classics:

Star Wars - In a nutshell, Vader. There were many other cues but Vader is just so damned perfect as a villian.
Aliens - "Get away from her, you BITCH!" Ripley sold that movie.
The Matrix - Agent Smith. Another fantastic villian that sold the movie. Fishburne was also great as Morpheus.
The Lord of the Rings - Among many fantastic moments, the thing that still reverberates with me is Gollum from The Two Towers. A brilliant tragic character.
Jurassic Park - Probably the closest thing on this list to Avatar. A story that is kind of lacking with loads of stellar CGI shots. Even with the somewhat predictable story, the characters are still more memorable (especially Goldblum) than anyone from Avatar.

I saw Avatar a little over a month ago. You know what's sad? I enjoyed the movie but I can barely remember the name of a single character in the movie.

That doesn't bode well for how it will be remembered by people as the shiny new-ness of the effects wear off.