News   Jul 26, 2024
Amexon Looks to the Future of Transit-Oriented Living with Central Park
 1.4K     1 
News   Jul 26, 2024
Maple House Wins Sole Canadian ULI 2024 Americas Awards for Excellence
 1K     0 
News   Jul 26, 2024
Three Towers up to 55 Storeys Proposed near Sheppard West Station
 2.9K     2 

avatar.....did it live up to its hype?

D

drewp

Active Member
Member Bio
Joined
Nov 15, 2009
Messages
342
Reaction score
2
I just saw Avatar and was disappointed with it. Yes it was visually beautiful, but wooden characters and a choppy plot, and AWFUL acting made me wonder why everyone seemed to like it. I think if this was shot with humans, you take away all the visuals and what you get is a script like transformers.....all style no substance.
 
I DESPISE YOU WITH MY ENTIRE SOUL.

Personally, I totally loved Avatar. Not only were the visuals amazing, but I actually found the storyline deep, and it played all my emotions at least, excellently. If you ask me, it's an example of an excellent movie in every respect. The fight scenes really bring out the epic in the movie, notably when the gunship squadron blows the tree to bits. And the way it uses the life and intelligence of Pandora to make it all the more tragic, you dread every single one of those gunships firing a missile into a tree or crashing down on who knows how many little amazing creatures.
I actually found the acting pretty superb. The voice acting was at leas excellent for me, and while the general guy might have been a bit over the top, it wasn't blatantly obvious and it moved the storyline well.

My final argument is this: if you can put half an audience to tears by having a 9 foot tall blue alien crying over her dying human lover, you've got to be doing something right. It's a totally crazy concept, but Cameron's made it work beautifully in a way that also makes us look upon ourselves, on our humanity, and on what we're doing to our planet. If I graduated from critiquing school or whatever, I'd stamp it with a certified 5/5 star epically good rating.
 
Second_in_pie said:
I DESPISE YOU WITH MY ENTIRE SOUL.

Personally, I totally loved Avatar. Not only were the visuals amazing, but I actually found the storyline deep, and it played all my emotions at least, excellently. If you ask me, it's an example of an excellent movie in every respect. The fight scenes really bring out the epic in the movie, notably when the gunship squadron blows the tree to bits. And the way it uses the life and intelligence of Pandora to make it all the more tragic, you dread every single one of those gunships firing a missile into a tree or crashing down on who knows how many little amazing creatures.
I actually found the acting pretty superb. The voice acting was at leas excellent for me, and while the general guy might have been a bit over the top, it wasn't blatantly obvious and it moved the storyline well.

My final argument is this: if you can put half an audience to tears by having a 9 foot tall blue alien crying over her dying human lover, you've got to be doing something right. It's a totally crazy concept, but Cameron's made it work beautifully in a way that also makes us look upon ourselves, on our humanity, and on what we're doing to our planet. If I graduated from critiquing school or whatever, I'd stamp it with a certified 5/5 star epically good rating.
Click to expand...

I agree with this review. I loved the storyline and thought the acting was fine. It definitely got a range of emotions out of me, and for that reason, I too give it a 5!
 
Despise me all you like, but I agree with the opening post: Avatar was pretty to look at, but the story was not all that original and the acting was cartoonish at times.
 
lol......ok so i see that you really liked it. Its hard to argue over preferences, so the only thing that i wonder is why didn't they just blow up the tree and the village instead of creating a story.....when really we knew this was coming from the beginning.....it would have saved me two hours of boredom.

my point is take away the visuals and you have a sub par script.........that to me is what i was hoping for more of in this story.....it was like watching a video game on the big screen.

to me an overrated movie.....I'm glad people liked it
 
Personally I went in as a skeptic and came out convinced it's a great sci-fi movie (and yes I intend to see it again). No, it wasn't about the acting or even the script - but there is just something very convincing about the sum total. I suppose "immersive" is the term I am thinking of - you simply lose sight of the fact that the world is completely artificial. Logically you know that's the case, but all your senses tell you otherwise - and it's actually took me some time to adapt to reality after seeing Avatar. It's almost like you just wanted to stay longer and find out more about this world yourself and interact with it...

And given what we know about the movie beforehand, it's awfully difficult to even go in with the expectation of original plot and great acting. No matter, these are secondary after your mind had been enraptured by the beauty of Pandora - and the briefiest of narrative is all that you need to align yourself to the broader strokes of the plot - like, how can you NOT sympathize with the "good guys" once you have experienced the wonders yourself (which FX provided)?

If you want a more interesting criticsm of the plot, here is one:
http://io9.com/5422666/when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar

AoD
 
Last edited:
I saw it on Imax 3D, a truly spectacular experience. I can't help but wonder how much of the effect would be lost if it were viewed in regular 3D. I'm sure it would still be a superb experience. The movie would easily hold up without the 3D but it certainly added to the spectacle.

I'm glad this movie is being praised, it's just downright excellent. People love to take pot-shots at big blockbuster movies as if it's the cool thing to do or to go on about how they were let down by it and then rant and rave about some art house movie. This was everything a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster should be. The writing, acting, directing, cinematography, audio etc was all very well executed.

10/10, no I give it 100000000000000000000000000000000/100000000000000000000000000000000
 
gabe:

Saw it in regular 3D - planning to go back to see it in IMAX this coming weekend - will let you know how that goes.

AoD
 
Yes it did!

Great Movie, saw it in 3d and I would definitely go see it a couple more times!!!

As for no substance, not sure what you really mean? There were numerous moral messages through out the film :)
 
wonderboy416 said:
I saw it on Imax 3D, a truly spectacular experience. I can't help but wonder how much of the effect would be lost if it were viewed in regular 3D. I'm sure it would still be a superb experience.
Click to expand...

Probably not much since the movie was not shot with IMAX cameras. What you saw was an upconverted version of a regular 3D movie. Well, like many other upconverted to IMAX movies (Superman, Star Trek, etc)
it should be slightly better than the standard version, but not up to truly breathtaking scenes in The Dark Knight (shot with real IMAX cameras).

Great movie, by the way!
 
The movie was fun, but it was in no way as 'epic' as so many have made it out to be. First off, it was way too long. The CGI/effects were in fact amazing, but I expect that quality from a sci-fi blockbuster in 2009. Finally, the story felt like its been told many times before. Anyone who has seen Disney's Pocahontas or The Last Samurai (among many others) can attest to that.

At the end of the day, it was a great popcorn flick and nothing more for me. Everyone I know who has seen it falls into one of two camps:

1) The best movie of all time, truly epic
2) A good fun movie, however not deserving of the hype
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top