what makes me hate the movie avatar (i guess its kinda a spoiler)

[rodimusprime]

Originally Posted by spooky

I'm not picking on him, I like him, too. Also, he started this thread, I assume he's more than happy to have his ideas poked and prodded. But your post was funny. There's room for us all.

Okay but when he starts the "Tooth Fairy" thread asking why the Hockey scenes with Duane Johnson weren't realistic enough I don't want anyone to respond to that thread.

[Saint Marcos]

Originally Posted by BrownEyedBtch

When you said unobtanium is irrelevant to the film, then said it was placed there by the native mother, that is what I thought was contradictory. Again, I am not talking about the name itself, which I thought was silly. It was the red herring plot, but it was still relevant because it was what drove the general and the corporation to want to get the natives out of the tree so they can have the metal.

The "placed there by Eywa" was just me being silly. But nope, still irrelevant. You really don't think it could have been replaced by almost anything? by some completely different concept? Like if they didn't think up the metal, they'd have just said, "fuck it, scrap the whole movie, we can't figure out a reason for conflict"?

Of course not -- which means it could be replaced -- which means it was irrelevant what the conflict was created by.

[Saint Marcos]

Originally Posted by rodimusprime

Okay but when he starts the "Tooth Fairy" thread asking why the Hockey scenes with Duane Johnson weren't realistic enough I don't want anyone to respond to that thread.

deal.

[DWarrior]

The unobtanium struck you as the most unexplained story element? This is not even worth expanding. That's just stupid.


What I found interesting about the movie is I don't see why 3D is necessary, I don't think you gain any more info visually than with 2D. Everything just kinda looks glossier, but. I don't know how the 2d->3d works, but was trying to change focus to see if depth was there and I think each frame has only one level of depth.

That's not to say finding cost-effective tech to make everything focusable will produce a good move, since the point of every scene is usually focused on somewhere specific. Hence, 3D is unnecessary and will probably never be more than a gimmick. (ok, it'll work for scenic stuff for science documentaries, but I doubt those will drive the consumer tech)

I'm guessing we're at the stage similar to where you see old people ducking to avoid an oncoming train in the movies (I don't even know if that ever really happened). We'll probably look back and see how primitive and incomplete our current 3d tech was.

/shrug, I'm not the type of nerd film makers target

[BrownEyedBtch]

There were several plot holes, only one was the unobtanium. Why didn't any of the other corporate morons go under as avatars? Why just this guy? If they really wanted to know the secrets of the tree, any of them could have gone to get it. Michelle Rodriguez's character abandoned the mission, but suffered no consequences, certainly not to the point of helping them escape jail?

Still, I will say I enjoyed the movie, if anything because it was so beautiful. It wasn't perfect and I am not going to rush to get it opening day, but I certainly don't regret it. I am happy to have found people not taking every bite Cameron wants to spoon-feed them. Too many other places I have seen are too full of nerds to talk about it.

[Bucho]

The economics didn't bug me, we weren't told anything about the economic reality back on Earth beyond knowing that Unobtanium is worth mining for so there's no context in which it can fail. That's why it's not really a plot hole. But something else seemed like a genuine plot hole because we were given a context and then the movie seemed to break its own rule.

You know how Jake and the Avatar team broke out of prison and took their other base far up into the Hallelujah Mountains so that they could go where the mercs' instruments and communications wouldn't work properly? If the mountains were in some kind of disturbed field then how did the avatar link ups continue to work? How was Jake's pod successfully communicating with his na'vi avatar if they were all in a bad communcations area?

Originally Posted by Saint Marcos

Please understand that I'm not defending this as some brand new well told story for the ages, although its hard to say its not a well-told story when everyone keeps comparing to other successes like Dancing with Wolves & Pocahontas. Its well told, or the comparisons couldn't have been made.

Being able to recognise the beats and archetypes employed in Avatar as being practically the same as those other movies doesn't mean Avatar was a story well told. Being able to tell a story well, in any medium, is much different from just knowing a good story. A story is just what happens. It's the telling that brings that story to life and lets us feel something.

Cameron took the well-worked formula and gave it, on the surface at least, a different context than it had had before. And I think he came up with a good, fun context to set it in, I like the ideas and I like the world he created. That's not storytelling though that's just setting up the story. The right beats are there (hero wins the girl, hero rises from a fall, hero makes battle speech, former rival of the hero dies heroically, etc, etc) but they're hit weakly because the fabric in between the beats is weak. The characters are half-assedly conceived and fleshed out and so I didn't feel for or care about the fates of any of them. That's not how it happens with good storytelling.

Originally Posted by BrownEyedBtch

BTW, if anyone listens to filmspotting, their reivew of Avatar summed up a lot of the points many of you are making. For this movie they took the words out of my mouth.

I used to love Filmspotting, it was one of the shows I discovered around the time I first found KATG in Sept or Oct '05, but since Matty came on board I stopped listening. That guy just rubs me the wrong way and as much as I enjoy Adam it's not enough to make me listen to Matty.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by Bucho

... something else seemed like a genuine plot hole because we were given a context and then the movie seemed to break its own rule. ... If the mountains were in some kind of disturbed field then how did the avatar link ups continue to work? How was Jake's pod successfully communicating with his na'vi avatar if they were all in a bad communcations area?

Ah well, y'see, there are disturbed fields and there are disturbed fields. In one kind you can't communicate at all. In the other you can't communicate across its boundary (with the rest of the universe), but comms inside is fine because you're all in the same bad communications area.

[Saint Marcos]

Originally Posted by Bucho

Being able to recognise the beats and archetypes employed in Avatar as being practically the same as those other movies doesn't mean Avatar was a story well told. Being able to tell a story well, in any medium, is much different from just knowing a good story. A story is just what happens. It's the telling that brings that story to life and lets us feel something.

You misread me.
I said the story was "well told". In the same way a comfortable saddle might be 'well ridden'. As in, 'its been told a lot'. I'm definitely not saying, 'its great story-telling'. (Great story-telling doesn't require repeated, overly-blatant foreshadowing.)


I'd like to think that better dylan simply overstated his subject line when saying "what makes me hate the movie avatar" -- to hinge your whole opinion of a movie on this single innocuous detail is silly. As though, if it weren't for the lack of description, he would have LUVED it. (And, as you mention, its clearly not a 'plot hole', although BrownEyedBtch continues to call it one.)

[Junkenstein]

Originally Posted by Saint Marcos

I'd like to think that better dylan simply overstated his subject line when saying "what makes me hate the movie avatar" -- to hinge your whole opinion of a movie on this single innocuous detail is silly. As though, if it weren't for the lack of description, he would have LUVED it. (And, as you mention, its clearly not a 'plot hole', although BrownEyedBtch continues to call it one.)

Not to speak for Dylan, who is more than able to speak for himself, but i guess the subject was done to attract the attention of the forum readers and start the discussion.

A line like that is definitely more eye catching than "A thing i noticed in Avatar". That's basic journalism, pal.

[Saint Marcos]

Originally Posted by Junkenstein

Not to speak for Dylan, who is more than able to speak for himself, but i guess the subject was done to attract the attention of the forum readers and start the discussion.

A line like that is definitely more eye catching than "A thing i noticed in Avatar". That's basic journalism, pal.

Then I feel tricked -- Not Nice.

But seriously, sensationalistic headlines doesn't make the focus in the body of his 'article' any less silly when there are numerous other valid things to poke at, many of which are mentioned in other peoples posts here:

• Renegade Chopper Pilot suffers no apparent consequences

• The movie looked better in 2D because the 3D was hokey-looking

• Communications work for the science base on the floating rocks, but not in the military ships

So, as you quoted me: "I'd like to think that better dylan simply overstated his subject line..." rather than think his entire subject matter was completely ridiculous. I believe there are only those two options -- had he let it go at the origins of the post, I'd have believed the former. His staunch defense of his 'the movie is about unobtanium' comment, however, makes me believe the latter. So "I'd like to think that . . . ." but I don't.