⇒ AVATAR

just saw it in 3D.

Good: Technology, stunning visual effects, 3D, Stephen Lang, Zoe Saldana, hardcore action moments.

Bad: Sam Worthington, cheesiness, corny lines, cliched elements, super uncomfortable 3D glasses, admission price. Lucky I wore contacts today otherwise I might not be able to have seen the 3D! Also James Horner's score didn't do it for me.

Should have been better: Sigourney Weaver, James Cameron's dialogue (though Weaver's numbnuts line was full of win).

other thoughts:
CG/technology: Amazing, previously unseen visuals. photorealism at its best. CGI is so good, feels more like you're watching tall people in prosthetics--the avatars retain some human DNA. The visuals/3D are kind of like those holographic stickers you used to buy. You know, the silvery ones, only this time it's photorealistic and this time it's a full movie, with a very definite foreground and background.

General press speak of a jump in 3D graphics and it's true, everything 'til now has been a gimmicky trick. This makes the screen more like a pane of glass; you're looking through a window and on the other side the movie is being played out.

Also creates a deeper depth of field--you don't just watch the screen, you can scan different parts of it in the foreground and background.

Sometimes I'm pulled out of the fantasy by my brain's unfamiliarity/adjustment to what i'm perceiving. It's difficult to process that most of what you're seeing doesn't exist. Careful craftsmanship by Cameron and crew have managed to confound your sense of perception. I think it made use of polarisation or parallax, or both. I definitely get the sense that parallax was involved, which is why I made the sticker comment.

I really like the sensible use of haptics, augmented reality and user interfaces/displays in the movie. Very practical and realistic, none of that excessively stylish yet impractical to use crap flooding movies now.



Story: Ambitious, corny and slightly cliched. Alot of time has passed since Cameron had his ideas for this movie, and since then, other projects (particularly sci-fi or environmental fantasy), have tread the path. e.g. transfer of consciousness into an avatar (the Matrix); natives and profiteers clashing (pocahontas, fern gully); an outsider joining a clan (dances with wolves, last samurai); it goes on.

One thing that really bothered me: Jake's branded as fearless but I think he's more like reckless and stupid. Initially, being in an avatar would be like playing a video game for him, there's very little physical peril--if his avatar dies, he's still alive.



Design: resembles some of his previous work, particularly the mobile suit and military compound (Aliens). There is something Egyptian/American Indian about the Na'vi.

I thought the Thanator was underwhelming. It's supposed to be more badass than the Xenomorph, but I'm not convinced.

For all of Cameron's soaring accomplishments in creating realistic motion-capture characters and his deft handling of the new era of 3D, "Avatar" feels both familiar and overlong. You've traveled this road before, even if now you're doing it in a blinged-out luxury vehicle with personal seat-warmers and a dozen cupholders.

ifc.com

...James Cameron is releasing his first feature since "Titanic." Yes, "Avatar" is a big, big movie, but is it the cinema game-changer the studio is touting it as? Yes and no. From a technology perspective, absolutely. For all the times you've been told that you've never seen anything like this, this time, for reals, you've never seen anything like this.

moviejungle

from mtvsplashpage:
@MykeNorten Saw Avatar. Good movie. Don't like 3-d experience. Worthington worst US accent ever. Saldana cuter as cgi catmonkey.
-Mike Norton, Artist ("Blue Beetle," "Gravity")

I agree about worthington and saldana remarks.

Casting pt 1: @robertliefeld Dear 20th Century Fox, Please sign Steven Lang as Cable and put him in your next X-men film. Thanks, Rob
-Rob Liefeld, Writer/Artist ("X-Force," "Onslaught Reborn")
Casting pt 2: @robertliefeld Steven Lang's performance as Quaritch in Avatar was brilliant. Just attach a cyborg arm to him and presto! he's Cable. Perfect age too.

YES! Stephen Lang as Cable would kick ass. But a new X-Men movie probably wouldn't.



Final thoughts:
1. Cameron shoulda gone full hardcore and filmed the whole movie in the alien native tongue, like Mel Gibson did on Apocalypto (which was another kind of mind-blowing).

2. I passed by a remark that called Avatar the 'Holy Grail' of 3D. I disagree, while the tech is very impressive and reaches new heights, the movie could have still been made without it. But that's like having the Matrix without Bullet-time, LOTR without Gollum, Wizard of Oz without the flourish of colour. If you ever make a movie that cannot exist/be shown in any other form except as a 3D feature-presentation, that's the Holy Grail.

Way better than the last movie I saw (Watchmen). That piece of sh!t put me off cinema 'til now.

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