Comments on: Avatar Review (12-19-09)

By: Bryan John Sauriol

Bryan John Sauriol — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:35:00 +0000

I didn’t love Avatar. I agree the main story was painfully uninspired and unoriginal. But the world was actually well fleshed out. Ignoring the lack of creativity in naming the macguffin “Unobtanium” (which is actually a narrative term that refers to a special substance required by a peice of fiction, such as Dilithium in Star Trek or Eezo in Mass Effect), the floating mountains are explained as related to Pandora’s unique magnetic field, which tied into the effects of the Unobtanium and its properties as superconductive. This was also tied into the hair thing Spoony complained about, which was supposed to be the core metaphor (which clearly disappeared after repeated rewrites) which was about the interconectedness of ecosystems. Just wanted to point out that Spoony in this case was way too busy looking for things to complain about and missed the fact that some of his points were actually addressed in the movie.

By: Flipsta Flippy

Flipsta Flippy — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 02:32:00 +0000

Yeah…. WoW has those elements… but to say Avatar got it’s visual inspirations from WoW is to utterly insult the skill of the CG developers. The scenery for Avatar was FAR superior to WoW.

By: Beqa Khitiri

Beqa Khitiri — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:04:00 +0000

Another thing Avatar was derivative of was World of Warcraft… Really :D At least how it looks :)

Floating islands with waterfalls -
http://wowfan.tiscali.cz/pic/gameinfo/lokace/nagrand.jpg

Purple nature-attuned bow-and-arrow using Native American-like people - http://bosskilling.com/misc/images-ne/1%20(1).jpg And, of course, the giant tree that these natives live around -
http://elvesarenotfake.com/images/wow_world_tree.jpg :)

By: Allaiyah Weyn

Allaiyah Weyn — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 09:01:00 +0000

Pocahontas Dances with Furngully.

Blue-skinned avatars? Hindi mythology did that first.

By: Senna4ever

Senna4ever — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 21:22:00 +0000

Avatar is a great piece of kid’s entertainment. It really is. My kids love the cartoon it keeps them entertained.
But it’s no Sci-Fi masterpiece.
It took Cameron 10 years to write and me 10 mins to forget.
How can Cameron say it took 10 years to write when all he did was steal ideas from other films? You could knock up this plot in an hour with a 30 min lunch break.

By: Daniel Thomas Stack

Daniel Thomas Stack — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:33:00 +0000

Not to mention the woman obsessed with getting the Great Forest Spirit’s head separated from its body. She was way too ambitious and almost got the whole world killed. Its that aspect that makes me say its the same track in messaging instead of really being a foil to Avatar.

By: veryatheringofice

veryatheringofice — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:52:00 +0000

When you said the thing about plugging into trees and animals, I thought of the series “Crest of the Stars.” There’s a genetically engineered race of beings called Abh who are designed to live in space. They have a third eye (which is like a hole in the middle of their foreheads) that they put this tiara into and then use to plug into a ship and with their sixth sense, they can feel the ship–where it is in space, whether it’s damaged, etc. They can pilot ships so well because they can feel everything the ship does and respond to environmental changes faster. But, this race was designed for the purpose of traveling in space, so I buy the idea of them plugging themselves into a ship. In Avatar, it sounds like they just somehow evolved that way.

There was no reason for Lucas not to develop Clone Trooper costumes for the prequel. He just CGI’d the costumes because he could. That is improper use of CGI, as you said with the blood effects.

You know what’s funny about the real Pocahontas and the “White guilt” thing? She moved to England and dressed as an Englishwoman the rest of her life.

By: veryatheringofice

veryatheringofice — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:57:00 +0000

Princess Mononoke. The ultimate environmentalist film because it never takes sides and lets you see the positives and negatives of the forest dwellers and the people who want to mine the forests for iron.

By: Daniel Thomas Stack

Daniel Thomas Stack — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 08:51:00 +0000

Want to know what the best Cinematic Foil to this movie is? It was made in the 80′s The Dark Crystal.

Its not the same story its a simple quest but THERE ARE NO HUMANS IN THE MOVIE. And it HAS A HEART. This movie has no heart.

By: Miika Kuusisto

Miika Kuusisto — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:10:00 +0000

Even Spoony found SOME things in Avatar that were enjoyable. I think most people do. But there are just some major things about that movie that irk it’s critics (me included). Avatar loses to the other films with the same plot (Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai…), cause it isn’t believable and feels more like it’s pushing it’s message down your throat (to me).

And the backlash to a film because of it’s popularity and hype? Well, obviously it’s harder to just pass a film with a shrug when you are hearing praise about it everywhere and you go “I thought it was just kinda alright at best, wtf is everybody going on about?”. That’s why you get the “backlash”. If a movie isn’t popular, the critique isn’t going to be as vocal, cause NOBODY CARES.

And really, to me it’s just that based on the previous James Cameron movies, going to the theater to see Avatar, I just expected to see a better and more original movie. Avatar almost made me go “Fuck you James Cameron” as well. Well maybe more like “what were you thinking?!”

Still, I enjoyed Avatar. I was entertained. But honestly I’d rate it to be about as good as the A-team movie, which I similiarly enjoyed to see… But in no way are either of those top 10 of the year movies or anything like that. 5/10 films, both of them.