I wasn't commenting on Avatar, but more along the lines of "you guys love basic hollywood stories" like avatar. For the record, I think I probably trust your opinion on movies a little bit more than gov, since him hating No Country for Old Men is basically unforgivable. But you both like stuff a little too main stream for my tastes.

Such a republican.

I liked the story, and the techno-ecosystem.



Pandora I can live with. Unobtanium was just a real WTF moment for me. Totally egregious.

That's gregarious!

Both kind of bugged me. That said, it's not beyond English to have silly words like that. Think about classical 'aether'...it eventually did morph into chemistry as 'ether'. Maybe that's not the best example. Let me think on it some more. Basically, I could see 'unobtanium' being some sort of slang for the material that's totally different from its scientific name.

Same here. The storyline was fine, it just wasn't nearly subtle enough. The ecosystem thing was cool as hell.



I laughed at that and the little chanting/dancing thing that was reminicent (sp) of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Awful.

Wait, is the discussion of unobtanium about the name or its place in the movie?


Edit: Originally, the term "unobtanium" was used to describe the material as a joke. However, over the years, the name appears to have stuck.

So, um, I guess lazy writing really is apropos.

http://www.webelements.com/einsteinium/

http://www.webelements.com/nobelium/


Good thing real life elements never have lazy names.

Yeah, the name. That's exactly what it sounded like -- a story-stage placeholder that no one ever bothered to come up with a real name for.

I don't think this has showed up in this thread yet, and I'm too lazy to go through all the pages:

Heh....

Yeah...this supports my pseudo-argument.

I mean...yeah. That's actually what I was thinking of while I was watching the movie (despite never having fully seen Pocahontas).

I was thinking it was like Dances with Wolves also.

I only saw the movie once, but I don't recall any properties of "unobtanium" being discussed...other than it being valuable and hard to get it courtesy of being buried under a holy place.

So unless the main properties of einsteinium are...being really smart, or understanding relativity and of nobelium are...being an award, or understanding whatever Nobel researched...I don't think this argument holds water.

The name is hilariously lazy. If any of the rest of the movie had a sense of humour, I'd laugh about it.

Oh...and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dances_with_Smurfs

http://www.thrfeed.com/2010/01/espn-launch...on-network.html

The story reminded me of Fern Gully.

That southpark ep looks promising.

Also:

Avatar has become the second-highest grossing movie of all time, earning $1,135,383,229 worldwide in just 20 days, knocking Lord of the Rings: Return of the King down to number three. Number one of all time of course belongs to Titanic ($1,842,879,955), another James Cameron-directed film. If you’re keeping score at home, James Cameron, who once said that Titanic was about F-you money, now has F you money, S my D money, lick my Bs money, come on your Ts money, take a steaming S in your C money, and money that he lights on fire to keep his other money warm money.

See, kids? This is what happens when you’re not afraid to go out there and really live your dream, and jump on the Leonopteryx. Said the Avatar forums:

I just rolled my 12-sided die and drew the corresponding Magic the Gathering card, and the card said “that’s a burn.”

So the wife and I saw it 3-d in a regular theater because the Imax was sold out.

It was okay, but now I get what everyone was saying.

Good special effects, completely campy corny story.

This weekend, this movie will pass the original Star Wars in box office total, and be #3 all time.

http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/domestic.htm

Yeah, but it's not that impressive when you look at it like this:

http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted....yr=1&p=.htm

This lists them in terms of tickets sold, which really is the most logical way to compare movies. Doing it by box office gross is a really stupid way to compare for many reasons.

Plus Ocean's 11 made over $1 billion world wide.

Well, that still doesn't tell the whole story, but it does become less impressive when it's below "The Robe" in terms of adjusted gross.

Wow, people really liked 101 Dalmatians.

An even better way to compare theatrical runs would be "tickets sold in the first year" so we don't have to consider things that were released several times. Star Wars and Gone with the Wind are so high up there because they've each had several releases over several generations. Even better would be to take the domestic number of tickets sold in the first year and divide that by the population of the United States at the time. That would be "tickets sold per person in the US," which would be much more telling of how much of a "phenomenon" a movie release was.

Yeah, there's a bunch of shit to be considered, so even this has problems. Think of how much less access people had to movie theaters when Gone with the Wind came out. Etc.

I'd say proportion of tickets sold in a given year would be a good measure. I don't think people had as many other choices in some of these other years.

This is an excellent point. Most towns only had one theater. It was Gone With The Wind or nothing.

This is true. It's impossible to compare 1930's to now. But I think my way makes sense when comparing, say, the 70's or 80's to now.

But, I agree with you all, it's impossible to have one objective way to compare.

I think the best measure would be inflation-adjusted per capita spending among potential audience.

Wow, you guys were bored today.

shutter glasses are not the same thing.


LOL

Went to see it in 3D this afternoon with my wife. Wanted her to experience it. Still quite enjoyable and engaging the second time around. Noticed a few little things that I didn't catch the first time. For example, I noticed that the Avatars had 5 fingers, while the Na'vi had 4 fingers. Also, Sigourney Weaver's avatar had a much more human nose than the others...which I guessed was probably due to her avatar being an earlier "version".

One kind of nagging problem that I have with my suspension of disbelief is that they have the technological ability to "link", but that doesn't come with any sort of tracking or ability to see what's going on from the Avatar perspective. I suppose acceptance of that and the presence of the "vortex" are somewhat necessary for the plot though.

This is pretty good. Shortened script, added hilarity.

http://www.the-editing-room.com/avatar.html

I've watch this film with my girlfriend and all I can say is, the movie was okay but not superb still I love the 3D effects

So I finally broke down and saw this movie tonight. I had been avoiding seeing it, because I thought the plot sounded incredibly dumb, and when I saw commercials for it, I thought it looked very cartoony and bad. So, even though the entire world has seen it, and it's getting some rave reviews ( along with some harsh critiques), I'd been refusing to watch it. But finally, I heard one too many " this is a game changer of a movie" type statement about it, and I broke down. So, if I'm going to see this big, dumb, rediculous thing, I'm going to go whole hog, and do the IMAX/3D experience. I don't think i've seen a 3d movie prior to this in my entire life....



And what I have to say is... Wow. Just wow. I can't remember the last time I was this visually blown away by a movie, this captivated by the world that was created... Probably the Matrix or saving private ryan ( though "Captivated" is the wrong word by Ryan.. Ryan did visually take me to another world, just to different ends). But even the matrix didn't fill me with this much wonder. I felt like I was transformed into a kid again, seeing star wars or indiana jones again for the first time. It was like looking into the future.


That's not to say that it was a "good "movie, because the plot indeed was retarded. The characters were shallow ( some of them literally laughable caricatures), the plot was shallow and predictable, the dialog was brutally bad. It was yet another in a long line of great white saviors, saving a not white culture. It had the impressive quality of being offensive to both blacks and native americans. And yet, I still absolutely loved this movie. I was still swept up into it, flaws and all, because it was just so beautiful, so visually stunning, so... unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Every build up of the 3d, ever little thing just wow'd me.. the first hour or so I was barely paying attention to what was going on, plot wise, and just soaking in the atmosphere of the 3d. The first night in the jungle was just.. magical.

The reason I like this movie so much, is it both did something new, and did something unique to what movies can do.. only a movie can create a world like that, and in a way that i've never seen. Honestly, I think if I'd seen this in a non-3d theatre, or heaven forbid on my TV, I would have hated it, would have mocked it, because so much of the writing is so bad.


So I guess My recommendation is, if you're on the fence about this movie, see it in 3d, in as big of a screen as you can find, and immerse yourself in the experience. Or don't bother seeing it at all. I feel like the way my dad described feeling like, after seeing 2001 on Cinerama when it came out. I suppose it's to much to ask for in this day and age to marry cutting edge special effects with brilliant narrative film making... I guess I'll just have to settle for magical as opposed to brilliant.

When you see it next (I've seen it 3 times now), you will like the first night in the forest scene even more. It gets better every time. When he's standing on the tree with the chick and the 'life seeds' or whatever are floating down and surrounding him... it's just one of the greatest things ever.



From page 2 of this thread:

I saw it for the second time this week, and enjoyed it again, but since I was kind of used to the visual effect, I was able to spend more time watching the mythology of it. For instance, the representation of the Colonel as a machine --he was almost literally mechanical. He wore that huge robotic exoskeleton (this was effectively his avatar out on Pandora -- your avatar is not just an empty fantasy, its really a representation of the inner you), and barely had need to breathe air. The first thing out of his mouth is "These are the rules...". He represents the anti-creative force..The Machine. I like how he tries to leverage Jake by promising him his legs back -- when it was actually The Machine that took his legs from him in the first place (figuratively his freedom to move), and is as always only interested in using him for its purposes. Ultimately he can only get his literal and figurative legs back from the creative force.

Anyways, I think it says a lot about the movie that I appreciated it more after seeing it the second time. I don't disagree at all about the cheesiness of the acting and the characters, but I think the symbology is solid enough for the story to have some depth despite the ostensible shallowness of it. If that makes any sense.

I saw it first in 2D at a good theater, and was still blown away by the visuals. After all the talk on here about 3D, I went back and saw in in 3D at the Omni theater. There was definitely a different feel to it, a richness that wasn't there in 2D. And certain details of the landscape came out in 3D that I think were impossible to see in 2D. One of the best surprises was the 3D screens they carried around at the control room. It caught me off guard and made me smile -- of course they were 3D, why wouldn't they be?

As for Omni, if you have a good theater nearby, with good sound and brightness, there is no reason to go to the Omni theater. They really didn't use the full screen -- it was just across the bottom half. I wondered how they'd do that, because when they use the whole screen you can't see the top very easily anyway without turning your head -- it's just too big. Normal Omni movies are mostly scenery where any action appears in the lower part, with the top half just lots of scenery. Avatar clearly wasn't filmed that way. So Avatar at the Omni is just like sitting up front at a good, non-Omni theater in 3D.

I don't know what an Omni theater is.

I believe those are domed IMAX's. I saw one at the museum of science and industry in chicago ages ago. . I dunno, I thought it looked great on an imax.

The weekend numbers were just released and it made 30 MILLION this weekend. I seriously can't believe it. I simply don't see this movie making less than 800,000,000 domestically.


Rupert Murdoch is a genius. Other than starting and owning Fox News, even though he's not a Republican, this dude decided that he was not seek other studios to share the risk of the 300,000,000 investment, and they already made 2BILLION worldwide. Incredible. I need to go buy some News Corp stock.



http://boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/

yeah Omnimax is the domed imax, then there's "real" imax, then there's "pseudo imax". i saw it on a large pseudo imax screen and it was pretty cool. the closest "real" imax is 5hrs away, and not that much bigger

Hmm now i'm going to be obsessed if I saw it on a real imax or not

IT's going to make 3 billion world wide before it's done.

yeah i was for a while, then i realized that if i had seen on on a real imax it wouldnt have filled the screen anyways (aspect ratio isnt going to change), and the one i saw it at was almost as wide anyways. also, im not sure if avatar CAN play on a real imax, due to the length. i think it would still be in imax digital, although on a bigger screen, so, meh, i'm happy now. kinda.

Our Imax still isn't showing it and probably never will... but I was very happy with the experience in a regular 3D theater. It will be TOTALLY WORTHLESS to see this at home on dvd.

Till the 3d tvs come out.

...which will literally be no sooner than 2013, for an average middle-class family price.


And by that time, most movies will look like this, and there might even be several that are actually written well.

So let me get this straight?


No Country for Old Men = absolutely no story, terribly written.

Avatar = Amazingly crafted and subtle story that has great depth.


Oh.

haha