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Rottenwatch: AVATAR (82%)
- Thread starter SCULLIBUNDO
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Expendable.
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GhaleonEB said:The comparison stands in so far as it's all that's between Avatar and #1 at this point (or rather, all that will stand in the way in a few weeks). But yeah, not much further than that.
It says a lot about the recent exposion in international box office that Avatar is currently #4 on the all-time world-wide charts, but "only" #15 on the domestic chart right now.
Damn straight, on both counts.
One person chose X-Men Origins as the best film :lol A number of people also (not spammers, which I deleted) chose Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. So sad.
Aaron Strife
Banned
You know on the gaming side how the standard response to "Wii sold 600 bajillion!" is "Well it doesn't have any good games which is what really matters"?ryutaro's mama said:
It's kind of like that.
GhaleonEB said:
From the very title of the thread:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/avatar/
Consensus: It might be more impressive on a technical level than as a piece of storytelling, but Avatar reaffirms James Cameron's singular gift for imaginative, absorbing filmmaking.
Which is not to say that every critic is working within this line of thought (certainly not Armond White), but it seems to be a pretty clear theme throughout most of the reviews. And just from anecdotally talking with people the reaction seems more along the lines of "It was good" or "It was pretty cool".....not exactly the OMG THIS IS THE SECOND COMING OF STAR WARS line you hear online.
Zeliard said:
They're both event films in different ways and for different reasons. It seems mildly petty to sit around arguing which one is MORE of an event film......as if the title really implied merit when it more accurately just implies a film that is driven by celebrity and special effects.
ryutaro's mama
Member
Aaron Strife said:
I don't frequent that other side.
Still, to address your "example", whether or not AVATAR (or the Wii) has good content is subjective.
How well they do financially isn't.
A RT summary is the consensus? Okay. Can't argue with that.border said:
And even if so, that summary does not say what you were saying. Just saying.
FWIW, sub-par story telling even with superb visuals do not do what Avatar has done.
Edit: to be clear, my primary objection to so dismissing a wide range of opinion into the consensus as you've defined it. To the extent that there's a consensus, it's that the story is simple but the visuals astounding, and there is a wide range of views as to whether that is a good thing or not.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
AniHawk said:
Iron Man 2 comes out first. Then Toy Story 3. Then Inception.
We have two other big event movies to get through before Inception. And I think Iron Man 2 will open huge. The first opened close to $100 million, and it was a first movie from a not as well known superhero. I bet the sequel makes at least $120-$140 opening weekend, unless the reviews are HORRIBLE.
Giolon
Member
GhaleonEB said:A RT summary is the consensus? Okay. Can't argue with that.
And even if so, that summary does not say what you were saying. Just saying.
FWIW, sub-par story telling even with superb visuals do not do what Avatar has done.
While it may be an unoriginal story, I don't believe Avatar is sub-par storytelling.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
Chichikov said:
It really is. There are certainly some similarities in the plot and you can see where Lucas got the inspiration for the roles that R2D2 and C3PO played in the movie (Star Wars would have been 1000 times better if the robots plotted to rape Princess Leia), and a few other things. But overall the movies are very different (and not just in a space opera vs. samurai movie way).
I forget if Mifune wore short shorts in The Hidden Fortress it's been several years since I've last seen it but I seem to remember him having some (I want to one day go dressed as Kikuchiyo during Seven Samurai's climax for halloween), but anyway it would have awesome if Alec Guiness had sported that type of look.
Since practically no movie has done what Avatar is doing it's hard to say exactly, it's pretty much in uncharted territory.GhaleonEB said:
However, the US's all time box office top ten has between 3 to 7 (depends on who you ask) movies that have sub-par story and superb visuals.
So I don't know what make you think that such movies cannot be super successful; there are plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Nor do I. I think the story telling was superb (as was most of the acting). Lots of people disagree, which is fine. I'm just nitpicking his description of the consensus view of the movie as being: "medicore story - bad dialogue - middling acting - AMAZING effects and art design." Because that ain't it.Giolon said:
I wasn't talking about the US chart, but the world-wide records broken in less than three weeks into what is going to be a long run.Chichikov said:
But I'll drop it now.
The story is pretty much the same if you look at the world-wide all time list.GhaleonEB said:
Again, no movie has done what Avatar is doing, so it's hard to make predictions about it or to project from it to the rest of the industry, but I don't think there is more successful genre (and I use this term loosely) than the stupid special effects film.
"God's Beard!"
Member
This movie was cool, but I was disappointed to find out the humans weren't all cg. I wanted to believe.
Le sigh. We had this conversation a while back about trying to find a movie that's ever opened anywhere near this big and then gone on to increase in its second week (which it did world-wide). I'm not talking about total box office gross, but box office behavior. And while it's hard to say why any given movie performs a certain way, I don't think it's a stretch to say that when a movie does what Avatar has done, it's the effects alone driving it. But that's just me. I could be wrong.Chichikov said:
Agree, well said.Nazgul_Hunter said:
Nazgul_Hunter
Member
Yeah. The story might not be so original. Everything having to do with the actual telling of the derivative story is phenomenal.jett said:
Yes it's Pocahontas / Dancing with Wolves etc in space. But it's a very complete, innovative and all around genius alternative universe; told in a spectacular manner.
Giolon said:
Sums it up pretty much. Unoriginal story, I am completely unwilling to deviate from that, my opinion on its story is just set in stone, it was VERY run of the mill. But there wasnt anything wrong with its delivery. And the CGI was second to none.
The only reason I was a bit disappointed was because I was hoping all aspects of the movie would be firing on the same groundbreaking cylinders that the CGI was. And that didnt happen, but they came close, and its clearly paying off.
The Phantom Menace (which I think most people would agree is a good example for a stupid story with great special effects, at least I hope so) performed pretty similarly.GhaleonEB said:
Its highest grossing weekend was its third, which was also a holiday.
Of course this is not exactly a fair comparison since it didn't have world-wide simultaneous release.
But really, we're working with a pretty damn limited sample size here.
p.s.
We can drop this point if you wish, it's really not that important.
I finally saw it today. IMAX 3D. $17. Decently visible ghosting.
Didn't care.
Setting aside the 3D (I'll reserve judgment on that until I see it in a RealD theater tomorrow and I'm not sitting right on the aisle- yeah, I'm mildly obsessed, but I'll get into that later), there's not a whole lot innovative in this movie except for the sheer scale of the required visual effects. 3D's a great bonus, but even in 2D, the reason this movie works is Pandora, and without the unbelievable superteam of Weta Digital, ILM, and Stan Winston Studios, Pandora just wouldn't have been possible. The Na'vi, too. When you compare the final product with what was actually captured to traditional film, I'd wager this has the lowest percentage of live-action content of any live-action movie ever released. (Not counting stuff where one/three CG characters are the focus of the movie: Garfield, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, etc.) Without killer CG, this movie probably couldn't have been made, and Cameron's postponement of its production by an entire decade proves my point.
Now. The movie. One of the best spectacles I've seen in a long, long time. Cheesy in bits, "They're really going to make the main company that evil" moments throughout, but you're watching this to be swept off your feet, and in that regard, Avatar comes through in spades. Pandora is such a living, breathing place that it feels almost effortless, the Na'vi (with just a little suspension of disbelief on the visuals; they come ohsoclose to overcoming the uncanny valley) seem like actual beings, and while I wish Cameron hadn't hewed so close to the Native American tropes for their culture, that sucked me in, too.
Avatar is far greater than the sum of its parts. It's got heart, it's got helicopter lizards (don't get me started on the fauna), and what's more, it makes me forgive Cameron for his epic E3 Ubisoft speech. Congrats, Jim. I'm a believer.
Didn't care.
Setting aside the 3D (I'll reserve judgment on that until I see it in a RealD theater tomorrow and I'm not sitting right on the aisle- yeah, I'm mildly obsessed, but I'll get into that later), there's not a whole lot innovative in this movie except for the sheer scale of the required visual effects. 3D's a great bonus, but even in 2D, the reason this movie works is Pandora, and without the unbelievable superteam of Weta Digital, ILM, and Stan Winston Studios, Pandora just wouldn't have been possible. The Na'vi, too. When you compare the final product with what was actually captured to traditional film, I'd wager this has the lowest percentage of live-action content of any live-action movie ever released. (Not counting stuff where one/three CG characters are the focus of the movie: Garfield, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, etc.) Without killer CG, this movie probably couldn't have been made, and Cameron's postponement of its production by an entire decade proves my point.
Now. The movie. One of the best spectacles I've seen in a long, long time. Cheesy in bits, "They're really going to make the main company that evil" moments throughout, but you're watching this to be swept off your feet, and in that regard, Avatar comes through in spades. Pandora is such a living, breathing place that it feels almost effortless, the Na'vi (with just a little suspension of disbelief on the visuals; they come ohsoclose to overcoming the uncanny valley) seem like actual beings, and while I wish Cameron hadn't hewed so close to the Native American tropes for their culture, that sucked me in, too.
Avatar is far greater than the sum of its parts. It's got heart, it's got helicopter lizards (don't get me started on the fauna), and what's more, it makes me forgive Cameron for his epic E3 Ubisoft speech. Congrats, Jim. I'm a believer.
You don't expect me to drop this subject on a factual error, now do you?GhaleonEB said:It dropped 21% its first weekend and 36% its second. Avatar dropped 1.9% its first and 9.4% its second. That's not similar.
*drops topic*
Code:
May 2123 1 $64,820,970 - 2,970 - $21,825 $105,661,237 1
May 2831 1 $66,904,298 3.20% 3,023 53 $22,131 $207,099,058 2*really drops topic, wait anxiously to see if you can stand not having the final word
*rollingstart
Banned
jett said:
Avatar has subpar drama, which is fine considering how good the action is. It's not really a negative when the current standard action movie is fuck awful drama and bad action (Transformers 2, Quantum of Solace, GI Joe). The drama isn't as good as The Dark Knight or older Cameron movies, but like I said, the outstanding action and visual pounding the movie gives you makes you forget how subpar the drama in Avatar is.
Chichikov said:You don't expect me to drop this subject on a factual error, now do you?
Code:May 21–23 1 $64,820,970 - 2,970 - $21,825 $105,661,237 1 May 28–31 1 $66,904,298 3.20% 3,023 53 $22,131 $207,099,058 2
*really drops topic, wait anxiously to see if you can stand not having the final word
You're considering Monday as part of the second weekend. That's cheating.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
jett said:You're considering Monday as part of the second weekend. That's cheating.
Yup.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
Chichikov said:
Box office mojo usually lists the three day weekend, and the four day one seperately.
Date
(click to view chart) Rank Weekend
Gross %
Change Theaters Change / Avg. Gross-to-Date Week
#
May 2123 1 $64,820,970 - 2,970 - $21,825 $105,661,237 1
May 2830 1 $51,399,863 -20.7% 3,023 +53 $17,002 $191,594,623 2
SCULLIBUNDO
Banned
Agree with Solo and I love TDK.
You can tell its an event movie when its sold out all showings after its second weekend. When you see people talking about it constantly and you see the lines always around the cinema block. See: STAR WARS, JAWS, TITANIC and AVATAR.
TDK was crazy front-loaded. I managed to book a ticket to my second showing of TDK the next morning after opening night (to see it that morning) and got great seats. AVATAR is selling out in every country for more than a week in advance most of the time.
You can tell its an event movie when its sold out all showings after its second weekend. When you see people talking about it constantly and you see the lines always around the cinema block. See: STAR WARS, JAWS, TITANIC and AVATAR.
TDK was crazy front-loaded. I managed to book a ticket to my second showing of TDK the next morning after opening night (to see it that morning) and got great seats. AVATAR is selling out in every country for more than a week in advance most of the time.
adg1034 said:
Just for trivia's sake, I imagine it is beaten in this aspect by something like Song of the South or one of those weird Ralph Bakshi movies (probably Lord of the Rings). There's also animated movies with a live-action frame story like The Pagemaster. I think it's fair to consider rotoscoping a primitive ancestor of performance capture, so in that sense it might be beaten by something like Waking Life or A Scanner Darkly......just in terms of the live-action:animation ratio.
The verbatim quote is maybe too harsh, but I think it's not unreasonable to say that most aspects of the film are considered serviceable at best (not sub-par, just regular parGhaleonEB said:
) and what elevates it is the world-building and effects. To call it an event film or a spectacle film is more or less to concede that traditional dramatic elements bow to the service of setpieces. The same could be said of Star Wars so it's not exactly that bad of a thing.bonesmccoy
Banned
Nazgul_Hunter said:
I tried to like this movie, I really, really, really tried. In the end, the recycled and inexcusably predictable storyline, the over reliance on special effects (the final fight scene just didn't carry the same 'wow' factor as the first few forest scenes did) and the poor editing (there are 3-4 five minute scenes that were wholly unnecessary and included at the expense of fleshing out the universe) were just too much. While I can accept that my first two complaints are in the harsh side, the third is not: this is the same James Cameron who gave us the impeccably pacedAliens and Terminator 2, two of the greatest action flicks of the last 30 years.
Having said that, there is so much good stuff there however that I'm actually really anticipating the impending sequels to be much better films (for some who applied a metric like I did). So despite my problems with the film, I can't wait to watch the next trip to Pandora.
adg1034 said:
I'm trying to understand your point, because the way it's written you make it seem like a negative?
My view is that the tech employed for the motion-capture is to the level that the vast majority of the movie might as well be considered a performance by actors wearing makeup. It's a 1:1 representation of their performances.
bonesmccoy said:
In Terminator 2 the T1000 disappears after the asylum escape and there's nearly an hour's worth of brooding downtime. Plenty of people would argue that T2 is not that well paced, though I think it's a testament to Cameron's skill that he can go down a subplot for so long and still hold an audience.
Onix said:
That's a fair assumption to make, but I honestly didn't think of that as a negative. Due to Cameron's script/design choices, CG literally was the only option he had when it came time to make this movie. And they managed to pull it off flawlessly for practically the entire film.
Motion capture, though, is definitely a place where Avatar innovated. It's worked before in other movies (see: Gollum), though in order to succeed there, they probably needed a kick-ass team of animators behind the scenes filling in the details their mo-cap equipment couldn't provide. I don't know how labor-intensive Cameron's process is, but he seems to have proven that you can literally turn anyone into anyone else, and give them the emotional/facial complexity that's been lacking in most previous attempts on this scale.
ryutaro's mama
Member
bonesmccoy said:
So you liked the film?
Awesome.
I've watched Avatar again (my second viewing) this time in RealD. I notice the 3D effects behave like a 2.5D compared to the Imax experience. It was very pleasant today, without headache or eye strain problems. I've never watched a movie 3 times in the cinema, but I will do it for Avatar. Cameron really made something special.
I've typed and erased my response to this several times now, because it keeps getting too long and I can't quite capture what I'm trying to say. Part of it is that my opinion of the film, what its strengths and weaknesses are, has changed each time I've seen it (four and counting). I'm not really settled on it yet. But I really disagree with your assessment. I totally respect your opinion, but since we have fully opposing views and had different experiences with the movie, there's not much sense in arguing. So I'll just lay it out quickly and call it good.border said:The verbatim quote is maybe too harsh, but I think it's not unreasonable to say that most aspects of the film are considered serviceable at best (not sub-par, just regular par
I do not think this is the case of a script being good merely for the genre. I think it's simply very good. And that it's elevated further by superb execution across the board.
I think it's a simple script in the broad strokes, but has a surprising level of nuance. Cameron writes simple prose, but it's appropriate to the story and to the characters. Simple is not necessarily better or worse than complex, because it depends on the story you are telling and how you are telling it. Jake and Neytiri's relationship is one I find myself wholly invested in every time, and it's partly the script, partly the performances (stellar, both) and partly very sharp directing. And without that investment, all I'd feel in this movie is occasional (okay, frequent) awe.
The story is simple in its broad strokes but deep in its themes and realization; very much like the characters. There is an attention to detail in both story and character (even if a few side characters got mostly chopped in editing, the leads are simply superbly realized).
I guess the bottom line is I got emotionally invested in this movie, and far beyond just awe and wonder. I actually give a shit what happens to the characters - and that does not happen when a script is merely good. There are many, many moments in the film that move me, and as many of them are the quiet character moments as the big spectacles.
'sub par' is definitely too harsh, but we shouldn't pretend that Avatar's story/plot is not pretty simple, formulaic and VERY predictable. In fact, it's the predictability that was my only real sticking point. I was fine with the rest of it, mainly because the presentation is still top notch and it is still an entertaining 'ride'.
But, then again, that kind of combination is definitely one way to draw in huge mainstream numbers. Cameron knows this.
But, then again, that kind of combination is definitely one way to draw in huge mainstream numbers. Cameron knows this.
ryutaro's mama
Member
GhaleonEB said:
You're a cool dude, Ghal.
No sarcasm.
SCULLIBUNDO
Banned
I also think the story isn't getting enough credit in terms of the creation of the world as its written, not just visualised. People keep saying its 'Dances with Wolves in space' without giving any credit to just how well he's done the 'in space' part. He's created a wonderful milieu and interesting future.
GhaleonEB said:
Plenty of people are just as if not more emotionally involved in the exploits of a vampire named Edward and his girlfriend Bella, but I don't take their involvement of really be indicative of anything more than an equally simple story that hits a certain sweet spot for a certain sort of viewer. If Avatar hits all your sweet spots, then all the better for you....though I don't think it should have much bearing on perception of a critical consensus. I'm certainly not above praising my favorite tropes despite problems -- everyone here seems to think The Boiler Room was pretty lol-worthy, but it'll always be on my DVD shelf because I really like stories about the stock market and stories about fathers and sons.
I'd argue that the acting is okay, but nothing "stellar". Everyone does the best they can with the script they had, but all the characters are pretty broad and quite black & white. I'm struggling to find the nuance that you praise. Pretty much all the tertiary characters are glossed over, and the leads lack the charisma or uniqueness of a Jack & Rose. I find it hard to care about the characters because the outcome has been determined from the beginning, and the only mystery about the plot ("How will Jack become a Na'vi if he is a human in an Avatar?") has its solution telegraphed 3/4 of the way through the film.
SealSqueal
Member
Saw this the other night in 3D at IMAX Sydney and all I can say is wow. I actually felt like I was floating during the first scenes in space. The 3D effect seems subtle but you do actually feel like you are in the scene with them, some special girl next to me was reaching out to try touch things which made me lol.
Agree that the some of the plot felt a bit clunky, but as a whole it is an entertainment experience hardly rivalled by anything I know, and that is what movies are all about imo. Don't think I've ever been stunned like I have when the scenery first came to life at night. Will definitely double dip on this and I'm not normally one to do that.
Agree that the some of the plot felt a bit clunky, but as a whole it is an entertainment experience hardly rivalled by anything I know, and that is what movies are all about imo. Don't think I've ever been stunned like I have when the scenery first came to life at night. Will definitely double dip on this and I'm not normally one to do that.
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