James Cameron's Avatar Movie

[Niko Bellic 817]

There's a lot of hype surrounding this new movie which uses new technology. Everything in the movie is computer generated. There is a race in the movie called the Na' Vi which are these bluish-looking things.

[Ver-go-a-go-go]

Looks overhyped to me. Probably just because the director is they guy that did Titanic, and even then, that really wasn't my type of movie anyway. I won't be seeing this one, and I doubt I'll spend the omney for it when it comes to DVD either. It just doesn't look that good or interesting to me.

[DinguePample]

I thought it was very good,but I'm a sucker for those types of movies. Though, it didn't really need to be in 3-D..I guess the picture was better, but that was about it, nothing jumping out at you. The natives look more like cats to me...with their noses and ears...Also, there was a weird reference in there....I guess you'd have to see it to get what I was talking about. When Jake (the main guy) is playing with his braid thing, his pink little tentacle things come out, and Sigourney Weaver tells the him "Don't play with that, or you'll go blind". Which makes it sounds like its his...you know. So he was basically having relations with the horse things and the flying things. Creep!
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000244/)

[Kotake]

I thought it was very good.

The 3-d was used to great advantage.

No, nothing flew out at you, but I find that a stupid cliche for 3-d movies.
Instead, they used it to give the forest depth. To make some things in-focus and others out of focus, just as it is in real life.

The plot reminded me of a studio Ghibli movie with it's 'eco' message.

I honestly thought it was amazing. It was well worth my time and money. And I'm definitely getting it on dvd.

[MrMosley]

I actually just watched it today. I must say, Avatar is probably... Well definitely the best movie I have ever seen. The visuals are completely insane and the story, while a bit basic, is incredible. The true appeal of this movie is how good it looks, but after you get passed that, you just get absorbed into it and stop differentiating between computer generated graphics and the real thing, because you really just stop paying attention after a while. While you are paying attention, however, its just incredible to see how much work went into all the minute details of the Na'vi. This film deserves all the hype that it has gotten and then some. I won't spoil anything in particular about the movie, but I will endorse everyone to watch it. As soon as I get the chance, I'm hittin it up in 3-D.

[Smitie]

I watched the 2D version and I was really impressed. As a biologist in training I loved all the weird wildlife and plants. The story was a bit cliché, but every movie has something cliché in it and I don't mind that. I'm not going to watch the 3D version because of one simple reason...the subtitles. In the Netherlands we use subtitles instead of Dutch voices and I heard that while the movie is in 3D, the subtitles are in 2D and float somewhere in front of the movie. If you focus too much on the subtitles (which is needed if you want to read them), your eyes can't take the illusion of the 3D anymore which results in a head ache. The 2D version is also epic enough to be a good movie and thanks to the awesome cinema I go to, there were no annoying breaks in it :D.

[Y2K3]

I've heard mixed reviews about this movie. Some say it was the best thing ever, and others hated it. It doesn't really look like my type of movie, but maybe I'd like it. I doubt I'll be seeing it in theatres (if it's still there), but when it comes out on DVD, if I was somewhere that had it, I might watch it.
I normally dont' like things that are really hyped like this, but perhaps I'll be surprised. :)

[Ikana]

I haven't watch it yet but I heard it's really good but it doesn't seem like the type of movie I would watch though.

[look]

This movie is best watched in 3D! Awesome movie worth the extra cash!<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>

[CZG]

I'd say it's overrated. More than a little actually. It's a good excuse to check out the 3D cinema thingy, as it's a better movie than the fantasy movie I saw last year... But on it's own, I'm not impressed.
The story man, we've been through that a thousand times already!

Only watch this movie when you have nothing else to do...

[Goron Guru]

BEST. MOVIE. EVER. In my own opinion, the movie is not remotely overhyped. Even if it's not your type of movie, even if you don't like the story, there is no denying the glorious visuals, especially in 3-D. It takes "eye candy" to a whole new level.

[DinguePample]

One of my friends told me that she was watching some show, where they said that they were making fun of Bush throughout the entire thing..But I wasn't paying attention for those kind of things. Anyone else notice that?

[Din Akera]

I watched the 2D version and I was really impressed. As a biologist in training I loved all the weird wildlife and plants.

I have taken Botany courses, and someone really did their homework on primitive plant life. It was all very by the book. The 'columns' that they talked about on the big tree are actually called butress roots, the main purpose of them is to support large plants, this is mainly in heavily forested areas and can be found in the rainforest today, but it is a characteristic of primitive plants due to that fact that they were huge.

But I LOVED the movie, I am a sucker for a romance. But it wasn't just that, it was adventure, suspense, action, fantasy, sci-fi, and romance! I thought it was a fabulous movie. THe 3D really added effect for me too. The one scene where the actor was holding a gun and he turned around and pointed it at the camera, to me it really looked like the gun came out of the screen at me and I jumped because there was a gun in my face! Best movie I have ever seen.

[Seanileus]

I think it was a good movie, James Cameron obviously knows what he's doing in terms of directing.
But I think everyone who has a problem with this movie should just shut the FUDGE up, it's a creative movie that looks pretty, don't BISCUIT about the storyline being similar to Pochohantas (or however the FUDGE you spell her name).

I mean, for gods sake!
Sigourney Weaver's character has a line where she says, "I need a cigarette", and anti-smoking mobs just shat all over the movie.

What the hell!? She says one line about cigarettes, then has a three second scene of her smoking, and people go mad about that!

But James Cameron, the giant ******, answered the anti-smoking people, by saying:

"Sigourney Weaver's character is supposed to be a metaphore, about gamers on the internet who care more about their characters than themselves, just like Ms. Weaver's character, she cares more about her Avatar, than her human form."

Okay sure, I get it.
But why put the blame on gamers!?

Avatar is a good movie, but James Cameron has got his head pretty far up his ACE for it.

Plus, this is a movie where you just have to see it in 3-D, it just won't do on a deeveedee or even a blue ray mantis.

[arkvoodle]

Being a fan of Science Fiction, I went to see this movie several weeks ago. I was very impressed by the special effects and character design.
I watched it in 3D, and unlike other3D movies, it was very realisitc. (in my opinion). The plot of the film was a bit odd, but the Special effects made up for that.

Avatar has easily made its way into my top 10 movies of all time, and will probably stay there for another decade or two. :P

[Durion]

I would really like to see this but there are a few things that annoy me about this film, one of them is because it's true but also a lie at the same time because no one thinks of one thing when compared to other movies and it greatly annoys me when I here someone saying it.

Firstly, I was quite annoyed when I realised that this film follows a pretty basic story line that was made famous to kids by the film Pocohontas. Seriously, look a simple piece of written work telling you the main twists in the film and replace each characters name with each respective name from Avatar, it's quite uncanny how similar the two films are, I just wish they made this film a little more original. It's still worth seeing this film in 3-D though because of it's amazing graphics.

The other thing is that this film is said to be the highest grossing film of all time, this annoys me to hear this though. It's only sold just a little more than Titanic and when you think that the price for a 3-D ticket in most countries is around twice the price as a normal ticket this film has hardly sold more than half of what Titanic sold and when combined with fluctuation (I think that's the right word), Starwars is on the same level as these guys because between the Sega I think the Starwars films sold around 6 times more than what Avatar or Titanic (if the money was still worth the same) which means that on average each Starwars film earned just as much.

I'm 100% sure about that last paragraph too...but if anyone can prove me wrong please do so :).

I still think that this is an awesome film though, I think that is worth paying the extra money to watch it in 3-D as I've heard that the 2-D isn't quite as good.

[MrMosley]

The other thing is that this film is said to be the highest grossing film of all time, this annoys me to hear this though. It's only sold just a little more than Titanic and when you think that the price for a 3-D ticket in most countries is around twice the price as a normal ticket this film has hardly sold more than half of what Titanic sold and when combined with fluctuation (I think that's the right word), Starwars is on the same level as these guys because between the Sega I think the Starwars films sold around 6 times more than what Avatar or Titanic (if the money was still worth the same) which means that on average each Starwars film earned just as much.

I'm 100% sure about that last paragraph too...but if anyone can prove me wrong please do so :).

You have to consider that in this day in age, anyone can watch a movie any time they want for free. Anyone can pop up on the net and watch Avatar right now in pretty decent quality if they wanted. Back in 1997, that was impossible. People had to actually go to the theater in order to watch Titanic. There was no free online places or DVD screeners. Sure, a lot of the film has made money off of its 3D version, but in my opinion it at least equals out. At a time when anyone can get ahold of the movie without paying a cent, it makes more money than Titanic, which was released at a time when the only way to see it was in theaters. Not even Dark Knight came close to beating Titanic and people were wild about that movie. Think about all the Twilight films, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter. All these movie series that have been so wildly popular over the years still haven't beaten Titanic's records at the theater, until Avatar. That speaks volumes IMO, and I do believe that the movie deserves every million more it makes than Titanic.

[DisappearingMist]

Finally got to watch it last week and I was pretty impressed. Watched it in 2D. I'm thinking about buying the DVD when it comes out.

[arkvoodle]

Finally got to watch it last week and I was pretty impressed. Watched it in 2D. I'm thinking about buying the DVD when it comes out.

Same here! The only catch is the price...it'll probably be expensive, so I might wait a while for the price to go down. *coughcheapcough*

[octorok74]

I just saw the movie yesterday and it was amazing. The thing I loved about the movie is how it refueled my hatred for the human race. We only care about money and surviving and we will do anything to keep those things; even if it means killing natives on a different planet. Now I know that there are some good people out there like most people on these forums, but humans, in my eyes, are the scumbags of the universe and we are just asking to die.

[Master Kokiri 9]

Okay, who here has seen the movie Avatar? And I'm not talking about Avatar the Last Airbender (which I originally thought it was based upon <IMG class=inlineimg title="lol --> :lol:" border=0 alt="" src="images/smilies/lol.gif" smilieid="33">) with all it's epic bendiness and whatnot. I'm talking about that Scifi flick that everybody seems to hold as the OoT of movies. And this thread is for all you guys to voice your opinions on the movie.

I saw the movie in the normal two dimensions but that wouldn't change my view of the movie as I never really thought visuals were something to look at and judge the quality of a work on.

The plot is kinda boring, with it pretty much being a futuristic repeat of the Europeans versus the Native Americans. The humans from Earth want some mineral that I can't remember the name of and the Na'vi, the dominant race in the world, hold the place where it is found as sacred. Half the time I didn't even know what was going on because the whole plot was more tangled than Gohma's web.

The paralyzed guy who's name I can't remember went through a bit of character development and that was good, but it just wasn't enough to make up for the extremely lack luster plot.

The fight scenes are really good, but that's not nearly enough to make up for the lack luster plot.

It was kinda bad if you ask me.

Anyways, that's just my opinion and I'd prefer you to respect that as I respect all of your opinions.

So, what did you think of the movie? *prepares for a million posts saying it was the best movie of all time*

CRAPCAKES! I entered too fast and now the poll is ruined.

[Austin]

I liked it. It wasn't close to being the greatest film ever, but it wasn't bad either. Honestly, I feel like most of the criticism towards the movie is just popular nonsense. People overhear others saying "ZOMG TEH AVATAR HAZ NO PLOT!" and then they go along and perpetuate that stereotype, whether they've seen the movie or not. What most people seem to be missing is that the movie wasn't designed to have some epic or completely original plot. It's a visual opus, nothing more and nothing less. I don't think it's worth seeing the film in 2D as you don't take in the full experience.

After all, it's not as if it was a BAD story, it simply wasn't anything new. And I support that, because if they had taken a chance and gone with something more unique there'd be those who would be turned off by it, and therefore have something obscuring their enjoyment of the visuals. Which, as I mentioned earlier, is the whole point of the movie. As it is now, the story is pretty hard to dislike. I mean, I can understand not particularly enjoying it, but outright hatred seems unlikely.

Personally, I'd give it an 8/10. The visuals were AMAZING and there were certain scenes that stayed with me. For example, I thought the scene where Jake Sully first enters his avatar and rediscovers the joy of ambulatory motion quite emotional, and the part where he flew in on that huge red dragon thing can't be denied as being extremely badass :D. My only true issue is that it went on a little too long. That final battle scene with the general in the mech suit went on 15 minutes too long. Nothing even remotely interesting about it.

[Pop 360]

I really liked it, Sci-fi with romance
I respect your opinions but, I totally disagree with both of you, I think it was one of the best films ever made!!!!

[Random Person]

I liked it. It wasn't close to being the greatest film ever, but it wasn't bad either. Honestly, I feel like most of the criticism towards the movie is just popular nonsense. People overhear others saying "ZOMG TEH AVATAR HAZ NO PLOT!" and then they go along and perpetuate that stereotype, whether they've seen the movie or not. What most people seem to be missing is that the movie wasn't designed to have some epic or completely original plot. It's a visual opus, nothing more and nothing less. I don't think it's worth seeing the film in 2D as you don't take in the full experience.

After all, it's not as if it was a BAD story, it simply wasn't anything new. And I support that, because if they had taken a chance and gone with something more unique there'd be those who would be turned off by it, and therefore have something obscuring their enjoyment of the visuals. Which, as I mentioned earlier, is the whole point of the movie. As it is now, the story is pretty hard to dislike. I mean, I can understand not particularly enjoying it, but outright hatred seems unlikely.

Personally, I'd give it an 8/10. The visuals were AMAZING and there were certain scenes that stayed with me. For example, I thought the scene where Jake Sully first enters his avatar and rediscovers the joy of ambulatory motion quite emotional, and the part where he flew in on that huge red dragon thing can't be denied as being extremely badass :D. My only true issue is that it went on a little too long. That final battle scene with the general in the mech suit went on 15 minutes too long. Nothing even remotely interesting about it.

I totally agree with you on the part about nothing being new.
I thought it was decent myself. The movie had a good plot and fantastic graphics, but the storyline was way too predictable. There was hardly a time when I was surprised or said "Whoa, I totally didn't see that coming." It's not a bad movie, it's just not anything special. I'd give it a 7 out of 10.

[LozzyKate]

It was a fantastic movie and I can't say much more than that. It is not the best I've ever seen, but there was something different about Avatar that was different from any other movie. It was animated 95% of the time. the animations, to me anyway, didn't even look fake. It all looked realistic. And the the surprising about all of this is that that will change how we use technology when it comes to animating things. So, Avatar was a learning production. It was entertainment as well, but in the end, we all learned more in the animation sense than we got from the movie at some points. I enjoyed the movie a lot. It's something I would want to see again. The only problem with the movie is that it was dragged out a little to much. nearly three hours for a movie I think is a little much. There were people around me in the movie theater falling asleep. So I think if it was shortened maybe more attention prase would've gone towards it. In other words, it was a phenomenal movie. I liked it, but it's not the best.

[yann]

To me, it felt pretty much like an altered and "Hollywood" version of Pocahontas.

After that little shout, I actually rate Avatar incredibley high in my film rankings, which is suprising seeing as it is not a horror film. It was the kind of elixir the Sci-fi genre has been needing since the original Star Wars films, not least because of its popular use of 3-D imagery but also for the deep story and blatent effort that you can see has been put into this film. When I watched it at the cinema, the soundtrack, the special effects and the detail of fictional creatures blew me away, it was nothing I was expecting as I walked into the cinema, it was so much more!

9/10
Misses out purely because it did not fall under my favoured genre.

[Zeruda]

Late reply on this but...

I didn't like it much. Yeah, story was enjoyable, but that's because we've all seen it before (Pocahontas). The graphics.... I have to say that the technology on the characters themselves was great, no arguing that. I especially liked how the avatars and Na'vi looked like their actors. But, I was very disappointed in the scenery. Gorgeous hues and designs, but I could see the texture repeats, image "clones", and some incorrect lighting/shading in various areas. Mind you, that's not something most people see, but people who work in the art field or are experienced with graphics can pick those things up. So, it bugged me quite a bit.

Additionally, what's-his-face was supposed to be a Marine.... now, my distaste of this area of the film is a personal one, so don't get butthurt over it. I (and many other military personnel, I found out) felt insulted by the way they portrayed somebody in the military. Jake acted like a freakin' teenager, completely ignoring orders, just running off to do whatever he wanted. That is NOT how somebody in the military behaves, and it's insulting. Again, that's just something military personnel are sensitive about. Similarly, a salute done incorrectly is going to piss me off.

I did like the Fern Gully feel it had, though. Overall, the film was alright. It didn't really impress me, and the only thing I'm going to remember about it years from now is the hype. Overall, I give it a 6/10.

[Meego]

Okay so I finally saw James Cameron's Avatar. Epic movie. I have to say it was the best movie I have ever seen in my entire life without a doubt. :clap:

But, my dad was looking at what the movie critics had to say about this amazing movie and apparently they thought the story was rubbish. :O

I totally disagree with this and I thought the story was great! :mad:

What do you think?

[LozzyKate]

Okay, the critics are very harsh when it comes to movies and other things. They are trained to notice and point out the bad in a lot of things that are good. It's not necessarily all the time that this occurs, but more often than not, critics will say things that other people may not necessarily agree with. Now, I disagreed and agreed with what the critics had to say about Avatar.

What Was Good:

It was a very well-written film. It was the only movie I have ever seen that has made a green-screen and animations look so realistic. Avatar had a lot of things that really made you dream of what we as people could accomplish sometime in the near future. I liked the idea of how the Na'vi really connected with their goddess and never disowned her. They were loyal to her. The scenery of the entire planet of Pandora, was just...to beautiful to even describe. The vibrant colors really drew you into the movie. It made me feel as if I was actually there with everything that was going on and everything that was happening. Pandora is definitely a beautiful planet (I think that's one of the moons of Saturn I believe) and it has a lot of good things to it.

The plot was very creative and very imaginative. I enjoyed seeing what had to come next after each passing scene. Everything flowed very well and nothing seemed out of place. Not once was I lost in what was happening, nor was I confused. Some movie writers have the problem of mashing things together and making things a little confusing for the audience. The fact that Avatar didn't have the problem is phenomenal to me.

The ending scene was a nice scene and a nice way to end the movie. I'm not the biggest fan of happy-endings, but Avatar's was pretty good. It was good that they were kicking the humans back to Earth, but letting personally selected humans stay. I really enjoyed how they changed Jake into an Avatar. Of course, when we learned that Grace was going to try to be transferred to the Avatar body, you could predict that Jake would do the same...since he wanted to walk again that is. It was an interesting ending.

I honestly really enjoyed the music that they composed for the movie. I like how it really fit with the entire movie. I loved the music so much, that I actually bought the album off of iTunes. The music was well-written and I really enjoyed how they didn't use much music that involved lyrics and voice. I think the only song that really needed that was the song that was used in the credits...not that anyone really pays attention to them though.

What really surprised me though about this entire movie, is that they worked so hard with making everything look so real. They worked so hard on creatures that had been solely created by imagination, and yet Avatar got hit hard. I mean, the animals and creatures were extravagant and beautiful as well. That dragon that Jake tamed before he went to convince the Na'vi to go to war, was very beautiful. I guess I could just sum it up again to the fact that everything that we saw was absolutely stunning.

What Wasn't Good:

The length of the movie definitely needed to be adjusted. As amazing as everything was, I can honestly tell you that I really could and cannot sit through Avatar more than two times. I have seen the movie two times and that is enough for me. Yes, the movie was out-of-this-world, but no matter how out-of-this-world it was, the length of time seriously needed to be modified. Nearly three hours for a movie can lure a person to sleep and there were a few people around me that had done exactly that. James Cameron intended on a movie that was the perfect length, a movie that was written with some sense of perfection, but he didn't succeed one-hundred percent, like I'm sure he had imagined.

I think that some of the scenes did drag on a little too long and they could have been cut down just a little, to make the movie a little bit more fast paced. The war scene was a little overdone, in my opinion. I would have preferred to have seen that cut down to a sufficient length. I thought when they moved everything in slow-motion really just bored me. At that point of the movie, I was starting to get bored and I didn't like how they were dragging things out. I don't know how many other people could tell, but you could see that when this was written they did purposefully drag some parts out. For example, the scene at night, before the bulldozer came are started ripping the trees out of the ground, was not needed.

Back to the war scene though, this scene was done very well. Again, I will say that it was dragged out just a little too much. The end when the general came to destroy and kill Jake took too long to end. I didn't like how Neytiri took too long to figure out where Jake was. It really started to frustrate me that they had to make Avatar so close to three hours long.

As interesting and creative as Avatar was, I wouldn't want, nor would I expect a sequel of any sorts. The only reason that humans were at Pandora was to get a rock worth billions of dollars. Why they would be naive and go back to try and get it, or do something else, really would just dig Avatar a nice hole for itself.

The critics really tore this movie up good. They spoke their minds though and told James Cameron and the entire crew that things definitely could have been better and I agree with that. There were some things though that didn't need to be beat up so hard. So, as I already said, I disagreed and agreed with what the critics had to say.

I'm positive that James Cameron and the rest of the crew that helped create the movie were very disappointed in the fact that their film was beaten up the way that it was, maybe not from a ton of critics, but enough to really make you think. As already stated, it was well-written. The crew tried their hardest to make a movie that would really change how people looked at the world and looked at things in general. There was a big lesson to learn in Avatar. I don't know how many people picked up on it, but there was something very important that we should all realize from watching Avatar.

[DuckNoises]

The story was okay, but it definitely could have been better. Had the Na'vi lost, it would have made for a much better ending; happy endings don't go over so well with critics. The movie also spent way too much time in fight scenes, which could have been used to enhance the theme of corporate greed and further solidify the film as a metaphor for colonization, which would have really delivered. Had they done that instead of focusing on the fight scenes in the second half, the movie would have been astronomically better.

[Hanyou]

Um...rottentomatoes shows Avatar at 83%, which means the critics overall have been quite friendly to it. Cream of the Crop is ridiculously high--95%. Critics didn't give Avatar a negative reception at all. Yes, if you look at the specifics of some of the reviews, the story is panned, but rightfully so.

A number of audience members disliked Avatar, and I was one of them. I find it to be massively overrated, mostly because everything it's praised for--special effects, story, etc.--comes up short in my opinion. Avatar is acclaimed as though it were revolutionary, but I have seen all of these tricks before, and since the movie seems intent on "wowing" me with its special effects rather than its story (which is rudimentary--I'll get to that in a second), when I was yawning about 30 minutes into the film there was a serious problem. Has CGI advanced at all since Jurassic Park? That movie still gives me chills, principally because the CGI was used at the right moments rather than being spattered on the screen as often as possible. Cameron gave us uninteresting cartoon characters that could have been more convincingly cast as real people. Why was the CGI necessary? Because these overgrown sphinx cats had four fingers (okay, okay, three and a thumb)?

Because I found the world so incredibly unpersuasive, the story already had to be amazing. But it was the world we were supposed to be sold on. In this case, special effects were absolutely integral--unlike Jurassic Park, however, they fell flat.

So what of this retelling of Dances With Wolves / Pocahontas / The Last Samurai? The template is already troublesome. It tends to be a (paridoxically) offensive stew of politically correct trash in which the eeeeeevil white man is victimizing the angelic but naive and weak native population with his machines and capitalism and weaponry. Oh my God. It takes a white savior to rescue them from these destructive ideologies/devices and send the white devils back to where they came from. These movies try to teach us something, but their underlying message is always (unintentionally) that major events turn on the actions of white men (or their surrogates), some of whom may choose to be influenced by natives when they are put in dangerous situations. Unbelievable. Admittedly, I liked The Last Samurai, so it's possible for a film to use this template to great effect without it crippling the storytelling. But let's keep in mind that this template is, at its core, a sermon. It's a sermon on greed, multiculturalism, and environmentalism, and I would rather sit myself at a World Music concert to which Al Gore hauled every presentation he has ever made than to watch a movie which pretends to entertain me. If a movie is going to present a message, it should do so in an artful, and not a clumsy, way.

Avatar is just the sermon. Peel away the special effects (if you don't, I would argue that the movie is only crippled further) and you get an incredibly simplistic "Capitalists bad, Jakesully/ natives good" scenario here. Relationships between virtually all characters are strained an nonexistent, and the only actor here who delivers any depth is the seasoned Sigourney Weaver, who miraculously doesn't look a day older than she did in Alien. A simple, preachy template is not bad in itself, nor is a derivative one. Indeed, the classic Star Wars trilogy is ridiculously derivative and preachy (even multicultural!), and those are some of my favorite films. But when we are presented with a story which is telling us a message we have heard a hundred thousand times, we look to the bonds between characters to carry us through the journey. How memorable is the bond between Jake and the nerdy scientist dude? Or the nerdy scientist dude and Sigourney Weaver? How much did you actually relate to/ feel for any of these characters? As for the romance, it wasn't bad, but it was forced. The two characters were forced together, so of course they would fall in love. It's a movie. No surprises there. This had all the substance of the Star Wars prequels in its handling of the romance. What charm was there? How many witty one-liners were exchanged? Hell, where was the wit at all in the movie? The damn thing takes itself so seriously that the only humor we could really derive from it would be from laughing at it (see the ridiculous mech with a knife). There's some degree of tension, but it's crushed when you realize that these characters are tired archetypes and nothing more. They are devoid of personality and individual identity!

I was honestly surprised. You're talking about the director of Terminator, Terminator 2, and Titanic here. Cameron's strength used to be character development. But I'm hard-pressed to remember any of these awfully neutral characters.

EDIT: Funny story. Sort of by coincidence, I saw District 9 for the first time only a day after I saw Avatar. What's funny about that is that it made me think about the contrast between two films which were actually trying to present a similar message. In District 9, the message is no less obvious, but we are shown, not told, why the filmmakers want us to think these specific evil corporations are evil. There are subtleties and nuances. The prawns, in spite of being disgusting to the point of being transgressive, become sympathetic because the movie organically demonstrates their environment. There is a difference between that and the attempt at visual pornography Cameron foisted upon us, where nothing happened for long stretches of time.

I even thought I would compare a scene from District 9 with a scene from Avatar to demonstrate the difference. Here's a scene where our "hero," Wickus, shoots an innocent prawn. Some special effects, but that's not what we're invited to watch. It is the substance--and only the substance--of what is happening here that is meant to bother the audience, and it is presented in such a convincing way, with characters which I already buy, that it made me flinch. Warning, there is language in this scene and it is graphic.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F867HfHd8eU

Compare this to (spoilers) the home tree scene in Avatar, an overlong demonstration for which Cameron and co. may as well be holding up a giant cuecard directing the audience to "CRY."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps-W83wg3hQ
(sorry about the quality, but remember, it's content we should be focusing on. If anyone finds the same scene in better quality, by all means, I'll post it).

This is an incredible contrast. A one-minute sequence that probably didn't cost very much and could have been produced in a garage elicits more emotion than a 5-minute-long scene that probably cost thousands upon thousands of dollars in its own right. Says something about Cameron's storytelling philosophy, and the weakness of Avatar's plot. Obviously, the scenes are not dealing with the same subject matter, but if we took that into account, you'd expect it to work to Cameron's advantage as well (I mean, a whole tree is falling apart and hundreds of overgrown blue sphinx cats are dying!).

This is just really, really clumsy filmmaking. It took all of 5 seconds for Alderaan to blow up in Star Wars, and all we needed to understand the impact of that pivotal event was Obi-Wan's now-famous line about voices crying out and being silenced. Even Gandalf's death in Lord of the Rings didn't merit or receive this kind of ridiculous response. I was damn near insulted by the amount of spoonfeeding in this movie--it wouldn't even let me assess the impact of these characters becoming homeless. As a result of these decisions, I was actually laughing when the scene was over when (I guess) I should have been horrified. Which is true of everything else in this movie as well--it all went on and on for an eternity in a cheap attempt to elicit emotion, without anything of note actually happening for most of the ride.

Avatar is oversaturated in every sense of the word.

[Majora16]

Meh, I think it was much more of a visual masterpiece than an actual deep, memorable story. The graphics were absolutely marvelous but the story to me was just ok. It could be that it's not my taste in movies though.

[Ice6661]

k so my opinion on avatar
amazing graphics in the movie
like i was so into it, no i dont think this is the best movie of all time
personally its overrated, but good overall i thought. i just think it was kinda dum that they decided to put out an extended version of it to make the movie 3 minutes longer. and i will agree with everyone who is saying its like an altered version of pocahontas.
i loved it, but it did have its flaws =]

[Hanyou]

There were no fewer than three threads about this topic, so I merged them. One of the threads was about the critical response, which might account for some of the posts discussing that; ultimately, though, it only had 4 posts and wasn't all that different.

My own opinion on Avatar is now visible at the top of this page. Suffice to say, it is one of the most obnoxious movies I have ever seen in my life and I have little respect or patience for it.