Also, the original ‘scriptment’ Cameron originally wrote for AVATAR (which I read around 2001 before it was taken down) was infinitely more interesting and complex. But it would have also been six hours long.
And as a fellow Australian I feel bad for saying that between this movie and TERMINATOR 4, Sam Worthington REALLY needs to hire a better dialect coach for his accents.
I think people just need to stop making Worthington do accents. I mean, why did he need to have an American accent in the movie, anyway? To drive home Cameron’s ludicrously blunt metaphor for the American military-industrial complex? Barf.
I’ll cut actors slack for lousy accents. Dialect work is actually very hard, unless you’ve got a weird natural ability like Peter Sellers or Hank Azaria.
My brother saw this movie this weekend. He said it was good but he didn’t like the 3D since things didn’t pop out at you from the screen. At first I thought he was stupid for saying that, but maybe it would have made it better.
James Cameron needs to learn how to make shorter movies. Pretty soon his movies will be so long you will have to go to the theater the next day to see the end.
I’m sure I’ll rent the Blu-Ray just to “Ooooh” and “Ahhhh” at the visuals and watch the special features.
But I don’t imagine I’ll ever be compelled to watch it again after that. Even though I STILL often feel the need to re-watch ALIENS and THE ABYSS for their outstanding storytelling and characterisations.
And 3-D is pure flim-flam. Nothing more than an anti-piracy gimmick that so many movies have grasped onto because dumb people flocked to see these 3-D movies.
But in the end it’s complete rubbish. I saw AVATAR IN 2-D (living in a rural area like I do, with no access to a 3-D screen) and it looked very nice to me. I couldn’t imagine paying ten extra bucks for someone to poke a spear out of the screen at me.
The original TERMINATOR and ALIENS are my Cameron faves (at one point in my youth, I could recite the entirety of ALIENS from start to finish). I like ABYSS fine, despite some story issues, but I think its saved by a good cast with likable and/or sympathetic characters. (I even have sympathy for the jerky Michael Beihn who’s slowly going crazy from nitrogen narcosis).
AVATAR had no character subtlety at all. Humans = bad, Smurfs = good.
And, yes, 3-D is total bullshit. I don’t think the future of cinema is getting eyestrain and pinkeye from crappy plastic glasses lazily disinfected by disinterested teenagers. I actually think I may have enjoyed AVATAR more if I had seen it in 2-D.
I didn’t mind the 3-D. I can’t think of one instance it was used to make things pop out of the screen, it was mostly used to give every thing depth. But after about 15 min I totally forgot I was watching a 3D movie. It was cool but I don’t want to see every movie in 3D for now on.
I can see where the pure spectacle can be fun, so on a certain level I understand the movie’s popularity. I’ve just seen and read so much sci-fi that unless I’m presented with a new idea or fresh take on something, it will likely bore me no matter how many damn hammerhead sharks they jam onto the fronts of elephants.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I DO NOT understand why this movie has gotten such great reviews. I kept thinking that there HAD to be some twist that would shake up my expectations, but instead it was even more like I thought it was going to be than I THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BE. And the whole Dances With Wolves/Fern Gully/Pocahontas/Last Samurai/Atlantis: The Lost Empire ripoff crap took FOREVER. The story is: white man goes to live with noble savage and persuade them to move so white people can take their land, but white man learns their ways and sides with them against his masters. That first part took up, like and hour and a half, and at NO POINT does anyone actually ask the Injuns to move! They just peek at his diary and go attack!
Also, why did Sigourney Weaver’s avatar have big tits? The Navi were flatter than Kansas. She obviously demanded some special alterations to hers.
I would rather watch Last Samurai twice in a row than see Avatar again. Despite how ludicrously out of place Tom Cruise is in any period picture, it had a good supporting cast and fun battles/sword fights.
Why did Sigourney Weaver’s avatar have big tits? WHY NOT?
If Steven Seagal had been a Na’vi and performed aikido moves against the human soldiers in the power armor, Avatar would have been the best movie ever made.
Sorry to see Mr. Slingdog lose his eye in that broken 3-D glasses mishap. He should take comfort in the fact that there was a one-eyed film director who made one of the better 3-D movies in the 50’s, House of Wax.
I can’t wait for the Vivid Video version of Avatar.
3-D only works for cartoons and cheezey B-Movies. That’s why I enjoyed Coraline so much, and why I’m really looking forward to the 3-D remake of Piranha.
Speaking of which, how come there’s no love for Cameron’s undiscovered, then discovered, only to be thrown back into the garbage can labeled ‘undiscovered’, masterpiece that is Piranha 2? Hopefully the Piranha movie coming out this year will have a cameo from Mr. Cameron being attacked by flying fish with sharp teeth who just got out of a screening of Avatar.
Didn’t hate Avatar, by the way. It is what it is. Don’t hate the turd, hate the people dressing up the turd and calling it a diamond.
In terms of a story about ‘whitey infiltrating a foreign culture and becoming their hero’, DISTRICT 9 shits all over Jim Cameron’s SMURFAHONTAS.
THE ABYSS is still the very best picture Cameron has ever made. Of course, it’s also probably his lowest-grossing film.
Also, the original ‘scriptment’ Cameron originally wrote for AVATAR (which I read around 2001 before it was taken down) was infinitely more interesting and complex. But it would have also been six hours long.
And as a fellow Australian I feel bad for saying that between this movie and TERMINATOR 4, Sam Worthington REALLY needs to hire a better dialect coach for his accents.
Oh, I’m American, and I didn’t realize he wasn’t American. I just thought he was a crap actor.
I think people just need to stop making Worthington do accents. I mean, why did he need to have an American accent in the movie, anyway? To drive home Cameron’s ludicrously blunt metaphor for the American military-industrial complex? Barf.
I’ll cut actors slack for lousy accents. Dialect work is actually very hard, unless you’ve got a weird natural ability like Peter Sellers or Hank Azaria.
My brother saw this movie this weekend. He said it was good but he didn’t like the 3D since things didn’t pop out at you from the screen. At first I thought he was stupid for saying that, but maybe it would have made it better.
James Cameron needs to learn how to make shorter movies. Pretty soon his movies will be so long you will have to go to the theater the next day to see the end.
I don’t think I need to see another James Cameron movie for the rest of my life.
I dunno, I agree with you on that the story was nothing new but I still thought it was a lot of fun. I probably wont watch it again but I enjoyed it.
I’m sure I’ll rent the Blu-Ray just to “Ooooh” and “Ahhhh” at the visuals and watch the special features.
But I don’t imagine I’ll ever be compelled to watch it again after that. Even though I STILL often feel the need to re-watch ALIENS and THE ABYSS for their outstanding storytelling and characterisations.
And 3-D is pure flim-flam. Nothing more than an anti-piracy gimmick that so many movies have grasped onto because dumb people flocked to see these 3-D movies.
But in the end it’s complete rubbish. I saw AVATAR IN 2-D (living in a rural area like I do, with no access to a 3-D screen) and it looked very nice to me. I couldn’t imagine paying ten extra bucks for someone to poke a spear out of the screen at me.
The original TERMINATOR and ALIENS are my Cameron faves (at one point in my youth, I could recite the entirety of ALIENS from start to finish). I like ABYSS fine, despite some story issues, but I think its saved by a good cast with likable and/or sympathetic characters. (I even have sympathy for the jerky Michael Beihn who’s slowly going crazy from nitrogen narcosis).
AVATAR had no character subtlety at all. Humans = bad, Smurfs = good.
And, yes, 3-D is total bullshit. I don’t think the future of cinema is getting eyestrain and pinkeye from crappy plastic glasses lazily disinfected by disinterested teenagers. I actually think I may have enjoyed AVATAR more if I had seen it in 2-D.
I didn’t mind the 3-D. I can’t think of one instance it was used to make things pop out of the screen, it was mostly used to give every thing depth. But after about 15 min I totally forgot I was watching a 3D movie. It was cool but I don’t want to see every movie in 3D for now on.
I can see where the pure spectacle can be fun, so on a certain level I understand the movie’s popularity. I’ve just seen and read so much sci-fi that unless I’m presented with a new idea or fresh take on something, it will likely bore me no matter how many damn hammerhead sharks they jam onto the fronts of elephants.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I DO NOT understand why this movie has gotten such great reviews. I kept thinking that there HAD to be some twist that would shake up my expectations, but instead it was even more like I thought it was going to be than I THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BE. And the whole Dances With Wolves/Fern Gully/Pocahontas/Last Samurai/Atlantis: The Lost Empire ripoff crap took FOREVER. The story is: white man goes to live with noble savage and persuade them to move so white people can take their land, but white man learns their ways and sides with them against his masters. That first part took up, like and hour and a half, and at NO POINT does anyone actually ask the Injuns to move! They just peek at his diary and go attack!
Also, why did Sigourney Weaver’s avatar have big tits? The Navi were flatter than Kansas. She obviously demanded some special alterations to hers.
I would rather watch Last Samurai twice in a row than see Avatar again. Despite how ludicrously out of place Tom Cruise is in any period picture, it had a good supporting cast and fun battles/sword fights.
Why did Sigourney Weaver’s avatar have big tits? WHY NOT?
I have to admit I was grinning like a fool when Weaver’s’s avatar first appeared.
I thought that was awesome and hilarious how it looked just like her.
That was probably the most well-articulated Film Pigs review I’ve ever seen.
Avatar = On Deadly Ground, except it’s twice as long and 10 times worse.
If Steven Seagal had been a Na’vi and performed aikido moves against the human soldiers in the power armor, Avatar would have been the best movie ever made.
But it would have cost another $75 million to render his Na’vi gut and bad hair transplant.
Not to mention the hiring of the four Bulgarian voice-over artists who dub him.
Sorry to see Mr. Slingdog lose his eye in that broken 3-D glasses mishap. He should take comfort in the fact that there was a one-eyed film director who made one of the better 3-D movies in the 50’s, House of Wax.
I can’t wait for the Vivid Video version of Avatar.
3-D only works for cartoons and cheezey B-Movies. That’s why I enjoyed Coraline so much, and why I’m really looking forward to the 3-D remake of Piranha.
Speaking of which, how come there’s no love for Cameron’s undiscovered, then discovered, only to be thrown back into the garbage can labeled ‘undiscovered’, masterpiece that is Piranha 2? Hopefully the Piranha movie coming out this year will have a cameo from Mr. Cameron being attacked by flying fish with sharp teeth who just got out of a screening of Avatar.
Didn’t hate Avatar, by the way. It is what it is. Don’t hate the turd, hate the people dressing up the turd and calling it a diamond.