Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[atomfullerene]

I thought it was rather good myself, although I will allow that it used a perfectly standard plot.  But I thought it executed the plot quite well, and seriously, archetypical plots make up some of my favorite stories.  And it was gorgeous, even on a normal screen.

Interestingly, I nosed around and found quite a bit of cannon backstory at the avatar wiki (or they called it something like that...it wasn't really a wiki though, being small and linear)  Anyway, there was a fair amound of backstory gems that actually made the movie make more sense...
A) Apparently, the Navi don't use actual DNA, some sort of translation process was required to translate human genes into native ones, and splice them in.  The DNA mention in the movie was just nontechnical shorthand
B) Unobtanium (I think the name is great lampshade hanging) is some sort of superconducting/antigrav material.  It's used on earth for transportation purposes, also plays a big role in spaceship travel (cough....oil/melange spice).  Still, it's use (making things float) ties in well with it sitting under the tallest trees (weight reduction) and making up the floating mountains....which I thought were ridiculous but stunning enough for me not to care.
C) The corporation in charge of mining was prohibited by treaty from bringing WMD's into space, and was under pressure from the governments of earth to avoid outright genocidal disasters.  Though they were also able to bribe enough to do some smaller scale exploitation.  And, has been stated before, really mechs and gunships and whatnot are pretty heavy duty against bows and arrows (and defeated them repeatedly).  And the exec on the ground was clearly too weak willed to push for an all out "nuke from orbit" strategy, and had to be coaxed into a military option for just knocking down one tree. The corporation can no more get away with an outright nuclear or biotech slaughter of the Navi than Exxon can get away with carpet bombing a section of the rainforest before putting up oil wells.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

I thought it was rather good myself, although I will allow that it used a perfectly standard plot.  But I thought it executed the plot quite well, and seriously, archetypical plots make up some of my favorite stories.  And it was gorgeous, even on a normal screen.

Interestingly, I nosed around and found quite a bit of cannon backstory at the avatar wiki (or they called it something like that...it wasn't really a wiki though, being small and linear)  Anyway, there was a fair amound of backstory gems that actually made the movie make more sense...
A) Apparently, the Navi don't use actual DNA, some sort of translation process was required to translate human genes into native ones, and splice them in.  The DNA mention in the movie was just nontechnical shorthand
B) Unobtanium (I think the name is great lampshade hanging) is some sort of superconducting/antigrav material.  It's used on earth for transportation purposes, also plays a big role in spaceship travel (cough....oil/melange spice).  Still, it's use (making things float) ties in well with it sitting under the tallest trees (weight reduction) and making up the floating mountains....which I thought were ridiculous but stunning enough for me not to care.
C) The corporation in charge of mining was prohibited by treaty from bringing WMD's into space, and was under pressure from the governments of earth to avoid outright genocidal disasters.  Though they were also able to bribe enough to do some smaller scale exploitation.  And, has been stated before, really mechs and gunships and whatnot are pretty heavy duty against bows and arrows (and defeated them repeatedly).  And the exec on the ground was clearly too weak willed to push for an all out "nuke from orbit" strategy, and had to be coaxed into a military option for just knocking down one tree. The corporation can no more get away with an outright nuclear or biotech slaughter of the Navi than Exxon can get away with carpet bombing a section of the rainforest before putting up oil wells.

they probably wrote all that after the film was made, just to cover their tracks

[Aqizzar]

So, there is of course a requisite promotional tie-in vidjagame for Avatar.  That's hilarious for two reasons.  First, because especially compared to the OMG EVERYTHING CHANGES NOW computer generated graphics of the movie, the game looks like it was made in 2002.  What, did all the graphics development computers in the world have to be melted down for the film, so the game had to be made on some old Amigas they had lying around?

Though that may be explained by the second hilarity - a cheap-ass tie-in game of a movie that was itself ripping off Halo so hard that the resulting product is a Halo-clone so trite it tore open a hole in time.

[Neruz]

I thought it was rather good myself, although I will allow that it used a perfectly standard plot.  But I thought it executed the plot quite well, and seriously, archetypical plots make up some of my favorite stories.  And it was gorgeous, even on a normal screen.

Interestingly, I nosed around and found quite a bit of cannon backstory at the avatar wiki (or they called it something like that...it wasn't really a wiki though, being small and linear)  Anyway, there was a fair amound of backstory gems that actually made the movie make more sense...
A) Apparently, the Navi don't use actual DNA, some sort of translation process was required to translate human genes into native ones, and splice them in.  The DNA mention in the movie was just nontechnical shorthand
B) Unobtanium (I think the name is great lampshade hanging) is some sort of superconducting/antigrav material.  It's used on earth for transportation purposes, also plays a big role in spaceship travel (cough....oil/melange spice).  Still, it's use (making things float) ties in well with it sitting under the tallest trees (weight reduction) and making up the floating mountains....which I thought were ridiculous but stunning enough for me not to care.
C) The corporation in charge of mining was prohibited by treaty from bringing WMD's into space, and was under pressure from the governments of earth to avoid outright genocidal disasters.  Though they were also able to bribe enough to do some smaller scale exploitation.  And, has been stated before, really mechs and gunships and whatnot are pretty heavy duty against bows and arrows (and defeated them repeatedly).  And the exec on the ground was clearly too weak willed to push for an all out "nuke from orbit" strategy, and had to be coaxed into a military option for just knocking down one tree. The corporation can no more get away with an outright nuclear or biotech slaughter of the Navi than Exxon can get away with carpet bombing a section of the rainforest before putting up oil wells.

they probably wrote all that after the film was made, just to cover their tracks

The site was up something like a month before the film aired.



Vidjeo Games of Movies never work Aqizzar, never. The absolute best you can hope for is that it's mildly boring.

[Aqizzar]

they probably wrote all that after the film was made, just to cover their tracks

The site was up something like a month before the film aired.

And the Cameron was supposedly started writing the script while he was still filming Titanic.  Anything that's not actually in the movie may as well have been pulled out of a producer's ass for what it matters to the inanities of the story.

[dragnar]

Vidjeo Games of Movies never work Aqizzar, never. The absolute best you can hope for is that it's mildly boring.

Oh yeah? What about... uh... well some of the Spiderman games are pretty good, that's all I can think of though.

The best possible example of a bad game based on a movie: E.T.

[Neruz]

they probably wrote all that after the film was made, just to cover their tracks

The site was up something like a month before the film aired.

And the Cameron was supposedly started writing the script while he was still filming Titanic.  Anything that's not actually in the movie may as well have been pulled out of a producer's ass for what it matters to the inanities of the story.

Cameron's been working on Avatar, on and off, for 14 years, he's been waiting for the technology to catch up to what he was doing.


Aqizzar, the entire story was pulled out of James Cameron's ass, what makes one piece of asspull better than another piece of asspull, and do you really want the movie to spend 15 minutes explaining the politics on earth?

[Zironic]

He's only ever done The two terminators, Aliens, Titanic, and Avatar, the common denominator of majority is being over top action/scify. Aliens being his best film and possibly the best scifi film in a long time (it's not as scary as alien).

[Aqizzar]

The best possible example of a bad game based on a movie: E.T.

Everybody talks about how awful that game was.  I'll bet I'm only person here who's ever actually played it.  It was awful, yeah, but just because it was an unplayable mess of nonsense.

Regarding asspulls, yes I would like to hear more about Earth politics in Avatar, but that's because I'm a nerd like that.  For what it matters to the discussion, I still think most of the "backstory" explanation was made up by somebody else during post-production, but whatever.

By the way - Unobtanium makes the floating islands float right?  Wouldn't giant trees growing on them make them... tumble or something?  Maybe not fall, but at least tip over from wind resistance.

Oh, and thanks for not pointing out how I mangled that sentence.  "And the Cameron was supposedly started writing..."  Jesus, I need to lay off the Cuervo.

[Footkerchief]

For what it matters to the discussion, I still think most of the "backstory" explanation was made up by somebody else during post-production, but whatever.

Yes, somebody who's now laughing their ass off as people attempt to take it seriously.

[Sean Mirrsen]

If I were making a movie about the galactic war in Multiworlds, I'd likely also write explanatory stuff to complement the onscreen events, even though most of the universe has been thought through by this point. There's only so much stuff you can fit in the film, and not every film can afford to have its characters explain the details of background events like certain sci-fi series do.

[JoshuaFH]

Hey, I just want to know, what's it called when when something starts on a subject, and then veers off into another one?

I know there's a technical term when movies do that, I just can't remember.

[Neruz]

Derailing.

[DJ]

Cameron is a poor man's Verhoeven.

[CJ1145]

Hey, I just want to know, what's it called when when something starts on a subject, and then veers off into another one?

I know there's a technical term when movies do that, I just can't remember.

I think it's called a segue or something like that.