JzeroT1437
Member
Well, I'm glad some people liked it. I still can't get past its flaws and clumsy pacing. Definitely the bottom of my Cameron list, T2 being the top.
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Rottenwatch: AVATAR (82%)
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PhoncipleBone
Banned
JzeroT1437 said:
Ok, let me jump in here now. I am going to use your avatar for the argument. I LOVE Wall-E to death. I think it is a masterpiece. But you could simplify it's story even more than Avatar's to make it sound stupid and insipid. You could call that half hour opening without dialogue pointless without "development" or most of the movie if you REALLY wanted to nitpick.
But with Wall-E, it was the combination of how ALL the elements came together that made it magical. The story (simple yet effective), the visuals, and the sound.
Take another undisputed masterpiece of cinema, Jaws, and you can call that a simplistic and stupid story. Shark terrorizes local beach during the summer, three men vow to kill it. But the way that the story is presented is what makes it effective.
ryutaro's mama
Member
JzeroT1437 said:
Blah,blah,blah...more opinions.
The FACT is AVATAR is scoring high in exit polling meaning it will probably have decent WoM and legs. The problem with your opinion here is you are unwilling to be tolerant of the other people here who hold opposing views.
Expendable.
Member
THAT'S A BINGO!Dead said:
PhoncipleBone
Banned
DanielPlainview said:
Because the top critic scores remove all the fanwank sites. But of course, it also removes the Haterade sites as well.
Which makes me think, how do they classify Armond White?
Hasphat'sAnts
Member
PhoncipleBone said:
He's a category unto himself. An institution, even.
JzeroT1437
Member
PhoncipleBone said:
The difference is those films actually developed their characters past "Marine Grunt bad guy", "Chief's daughter", etc, etc. The reason Wall*E succeeds is its characters--by the film's end I care about them, much in the way Ebert did about Avatar. I never found anything to latch onto in this film though--just a bunch of flimsy stock characters with cliche lines.
JzeroT1437
Member
ryutaro's mama said:
That's not true at all. You guys were the ones completely recontextualizing my Michael Bay comparison and throwing it against me. All I've done is defend my opinion here. This film commits all kinds of cardinal sins of filmmaking. It's heavy in exposition, self-indulgent, cliche and has an underdeveloped story. There's not enough substance to justify its two hour forty minute runtime.
I'm glad you guys liked it, but to suggest it doesn't have its problems or deny why other people wouldn't like it is asinine.
GhaleonEB said:
Size does not equal mass, though. Wood is not a very dense substance.....a child can probably pick up a stick the size of Avatar's arrows.
At this point though I'll note that the arrow argument is not really a criticism of the film, just a point of interest for physics/science dorks. Bullets have an advantage in terms of velocity, but arrows have an advantage in mass and size (in terms of area within which force is applied, smaller size is better). I'm kind of interested in what sort of mass and size it would take for an arrow to outperform a bullet, but am once more too lazy to research and run numbers. It'd be easier if I knew the surface area of an arrowhead versus the surface area of a bullet head, but naturally you'd kinda have to estimate the size of a Na'vi's areahead since they are nearly twice the size of humans.
ryutaro's mama
Member
JzeroT1437 said:
Us guys?
Haha...that's funny. When I gave my unsolicited take on the film, I pointed out things I didn't like (found laughable) but it didn't impact my overall enjoyment of the movie.
You sound 100% negative.
JzeroT1437
Member
Tobor said:
This is probably true. The explosions were still Michael-Bay-esque. That whole tree sequence was riddled with explosions. Though the action that circulated around it distracted from it, at times.
JzeroT1437
Member
ryutaro's mama said:
That's because I didn't enjoy it. The only times I felt even the slightest attachment to the characters were when Jake "tames" his banshee. It felt like a waste of nearly three hours of my time.
JzeroT1437 said:
I honestly have no idea what the Academy will do with Inglorious Basterds. Christoph Waltz for Supporting Actor is a shoe-in, but it is difficult to say beyond that. I think it has a much better shot at the big awards than Avatar does, though. Problem is that it was released months ago, and so many nominations go to December films.
Ollie Pooch
In a perfect world, we'd all be homersexual
really? i think it was the suggestion that people who enjoyed avatar were 'mindless voyeurs' that caused issue.JzeroT1437 said:
i appreciate all forms of cinema and i was still able to be swept up by this one.
and michael bay wishes he could direct something as coherent as that final scene.
are explosions a michael bay trademark now? the film you claim as cameron's best - terminator 2 - is full of them. the truck chase, the cyberdyne building, the helicopter...
JzeroT1437
Member
border said:
Eh--SAG threw it up for a ton of awards, which means it's in Hollywood's mind. Variety even ran it in the Variety Film Series in San Fran a few weeks ago. It's out there--I just dunno if it will win. I honestly hope it does.
JzeroT1437 said:
You could easily tell that it was a tree, and that missiles were headed towards it. Far more complicated than Bay is capable of.
Bay would have done a slow motion pan around Jake as missiles whizzed towards something, then the tree would have flipped end over end.
thesoapster
Member
Just saw it. Ended up seeing it in RealD. Oh man. What a movie. So fucking crazy good. Fuck the haters. 
Ollie Pooch
In a perfect world, we'd all be homersexual
don't forget some kind of Aerosmith/Linkin Park backing track.Tobor said:
JzeroT1437
Member
julls said:
You're yet again twisting my words. It may help if you guys took the time to actually contextualize my comments. I said people who went to the film for the sole experience of being shown around the alien world of Pandora are nothing but voyeurs--which would be accurate. All you're doing is "viewing" a new world. It was in response to a comment which states that exact idea.
The explosions in T2 are well crafted pieces of action cinema. The explosion of "Hometree" was as clumsy as watching two Transformers shoot missiles at one another--there was no focus to the whole thing.
OuterWorldVoice said:
Obviously their arrows are made of impossibilium, a substance naturally occuring in the trees of pandora. Its density is greater than that of dark matter! Of course that doesn't explain why a couple hundred missiles can bring down some lame giant tree, but whatever
Guardian Bob
Member
Man, I saw this movie Thursday night and still thinking about it... I'm really anxious to see this again. PS, I am in love with Neytiri.
ryutaro's mama
Member
With Neytiri glistening in the sun while it all happens.julls said:
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
If it matters at all to this silly battle/Bay discussion, I'll remind people once again that a lot of the last battle sequence and most of the explosions in the film were done by ILM.
JzeroT1437
Member
Tobor said:
Hahaha--you're probably right. Still, the whole explosion of Hometree felt uneventful. It may have been the need to focus on the battle around it, but I didn't find it impressive in the least.
CassidyIzABeast
Member
the tree will throw off sparks for no apparent reason
I would give Best Actress to Melanie Laurent over Zoe Saldanna easily....though I honestly can't think of many standout female performances this year. I'm not sure that Laurent would qualify as a Lead Actress though, since Basterds is pretty much an ensemble film.JzeroT1437 said:
JzeroT1437 said:
Having a sequence "riddled with explosions" isn't exactly what is meant by "explosions being Michael-Bay-esque".. I never thought the explosions were too much or unnecessary in this movie.. but hey - that is my opinion, and i'll have to live with being a moron and mindless voyeur
Ollie Pooch
In a perfect world, we'd all be homersexual
"what i've done" for after theTobor said:
betrayal
JzeroT1437
Member
border said:
All I can say is Christoph Waltz had better get best supporting character. If that happens I can deal with it losing Best Picture--though I would love to see QT walk away with the gold for once.
JzeroT1437 said:
I think so too. I remember thinking that despite all the film's technical wizardry, nothing really has the impact of when The Titanic broke in half as it sank.....even though it was intended to have just as much effect as that scene in Cameron's other most-recent opus.
It reminds me of the "Order 66" sequence of Revenge of the Sith, where a bunch of people mewled that it was the big emotional punch of the film and I was like, "What, watching a bunch of nameless Jedis get shot in the back by faceless Stormtroopers made you cry?" I guess it works for some people and not as much as others. I don't feel like enough was done to establish HomeTree's signficance and make you emotionally attach yourself to it.
ryutaro's mama
Member
JzeroT1437 said:
What was impressive to me was the polar opposite reactions to the tree's destruction.
The military Mercs (no connection to the land) were happy to be a step closer to their overall mission objective while the Na'vi were devasted to see their ancestral home and heritage destroyed.
JzeroT1437
Member
ryutaro's mama said:
So you were impressed because one side won and the other lost?
cartoon_soldier
Member
ryutaro's mama said:
So, apart from a team of 5 people, all the other humans were one-dimensional characters.
ryutaro's mama
Member
JzeroT1437 said:
Yeah that's exactly what I said.
silverbullet1080
Banned
NO REALLYryutaro's mama said:
JzeroT1437
Member
ryutaro's mama said:
Well I don't know what else you could mean. It's not like the "mercs" would be remorseful over winning their battle, given their background in the film, and one can hardly expect any race of people to be excited about losing their homes.
I don't really see what's compelling about two groups of people completely and utterly fulfilling basic expectations about victory and loss.
ryutaro's mama
Member
Sure they were. All their motivations were 1 dimensional as well- GREED.cartoon_soldier said:
That was the only reason the non-researchers were even there.
JzeroT1437
Member
ryutaro's mama said:
Well ya won me over. That's great writing if I ever seen it.
â Narayan
Member
Aye.Speevy said:
ryutaro's mama
Member
JzeroT1437 said:
sigh...it was the way Cameron shot the scene that was impressive. He presented the reactions and buildup to he tree's collapse (and the aftermath) in a satisfying way for me, to the point where I had an investment in what was happening.
ryutaro's mama
Member
JzeroT1437 said:
Haha hoho hehe...unlike you, I don't need to "win anyone over" for my opinion to be validated.
CassidyIzABeast
Member
are we really criticizing Cameron for making mercenaries one dimensional?:lol
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