Well I loved every second of it.

Then again I went high as a fucking kite and watched it in 3D.

Didn't give a shit about the simplistic plot, don't care about the white guilt, just sat down and enjoyed the ride.

 

This.

I think that people are looking too deep into the movie because it is a mega-budget film that took years and years to develop and release. The expectations are sky high.

I think this is the kind of movie that one watches in the movie theaters for the 3D effects.
I enjoyed the movie, but I probably won't watch it again. I think it will lost most of its luster after being released in 2D.

 

Once you go black, you never go back.

On another note, it's definitely a nice film, so long as the viewer can ignore the agendas being presented.

 

I saw it on Saturday - I enjoyed it on the balance, but agree with the common opinion here: it was a stunning-looking movie with a very ordinary, predictable plot. It's the sort of movie I was glad to see in 3D - and probably won't ever watch again, particularly not on a small screen.

Here's the nerdofacts that are floating around about Pandora on its Wiki, for what it's worth:

Diameter 11447 km
Mass 0.72 Earths
Gravity 0.8 g
Atmospheric density 1.2 Earths
Surface pressure 0.9 atm

Atmosphere: "Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide (over 18%), Ammonia, Methane and Hydrogen Cyanide"

 

I saw it with my mates the first day it came out. Sat in the best seats, and watched it in 3D. I, like Dr. Strange, enjoyed it heaps. People say its a rip off Dancing With Wolves, I don't really care. Its a good, entertaining movie. I thought the fight at the end was epic.

 

The movie was fun to watch, so long as I pointedly ignored the anvils being dropped on the audience left and right. There wasn't much reason to have the Antagonists be so damned flat.

 

I assume it helps the audience empathize with the protagonists all the more. It eliminates the factor of the well-intentioned antagonist and gives the watcher someone to hate and someone to root for.

Addressing the people frustrated about the simplicity of the plot: the movie was meant to be enjoyable from what I saw. It didn't try to bombard you with philosophical arguments and religious theory. (Even the alien 'religion' had an actual pseudo-scientific explanation.) The line between good and bad is clearly drawn, and I assume Cameron didn't intend for people to try to interpret much more than "natives are pretty cool guys, humans suck."

TL;DR - Stfu with your over-analysis. Smoke a bowl (or not, I dunno what you like to do) and watch it in 3D; sit back and enjoy it.

 

I saw it yesterday and I was not really impressed. Sure it had amazing visuals and great 3D, (was funny seeing my old man ducking once when the smoke grenades were launched :awesome) but the nicest visuals cannot save a weak plot like that.

Ok, weak is maybe the wrong word, predictable was more like it. You knew exactly which characters would die and you even knew at which points they would die. You also knew how this was going to develop.

Maybe the Bum review from the Nostalgia Critic has the best description of it:

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/bum-reviews/15043-ep036

Especially the part where the bad guys don't believe the scientist they have invested millions of dollars in and arrest her for doing what she was being paid to do.

Also the whole plugging in into the everything in this world seemed kind of stupid and the fact that every plant in this world could glow was also a bit strange.

That holy tree which had the ability to cut the soul out of a human and paste it into the avatar body was really convenient to have around since I can't see much use to it for the Na'vi, except in that one case. I mean healing is one thing, soul transfer another.

But I loved the animals in it. The flying birds, the jungle cats, the strange rhinoceroses, the nightmare`s/horses they all looked pretty epic, and it was kind of kickass to see them riding on them.

Also as far as fight scenes go, the last act was pretty good. Loved the douchbag of a Colonel who seemed like the toughest guy around with the knife on his mac :awesome

So, if you want to see it than yeah, watching it in the cinema is better than watching it at home, the CG and the 3D are the only remarkable things in it but otherwise, not worth watching.

 

Has anyone read the original scriptment for Avatar, or heard anything about it? There's a long summary here.

It's too long to fit in a single movie, but other than that I agree with the article author: it does sound more interesting than the Avatar story we got.

 

Damn.

I normally assume that every movie that makes it to the big screen is heavily watered down from the original script or book, so if a $230 million-dollar budget isn't enough to satisfy the original vision, then....damn.

 

Sounds pretty cool to me.

 

... I hope they make a book out of this. It sounds awesome.

 

This would seem more fitting in a miniseries, and I doubt investors would want to spend their money on something that isn't a "sure thing".

 

I am so lucky to read this AFTER I have seen the movie otherwise I would have been really disappointed. This way I at least expected what to get, lame story with great CGI but this script is great, I would have loved to watch that movie. Seeing Avatar after reading this would have made me hate the movie in the theater.

Didn't Cameron also invest a lot of money in the CGI development since he had to wait until the technical development reached the point that he could actually make this movie or is that already included in the 230 Million dollar?

 

http://www.learnnavi.org/

Decided to search for "Speak Na'vi" after finding a ridiculous analysis of Na'vi Phonetics and Phonology over at Pandorapedia

Seems like a pretty sweet language, and frankly I have a lot of time on my hands.

So yep, doing it.

 

I finally got around to seeing it yesterday when my uncle and aunt went to see it.

To put it simply. I didn't like it. I'm enough of a gaming and fantasy fan that floating mountains really don't impress me all that much. Since that was the high point of the supposedly awe inspiring scenery I wasn't all that impressed with the rest of the planet. It also didn't help that in the back of my head I kept getting bugged with the fact that it was like watching a long ass documentary of how the white guy has been screwing over Africa for as long as anybody can remember. Just, you know, with pretty lights and colors. Hell even that's not too far from a metaphor about how strange the animals and plants are to your average American/European.

On top of that the bad guys, as stated before, were pretty much flat and uninteresting. We've seen these guys in many other films. Their the throw away villains that are supposed to make it a lot easier to sympathize with the dude that just betrayed his entire race. Maybe the most awesome part of the movie was when the huge tree was destroyed/cut down.

In the end it's a mediocre story about a Xenos lover betraying his own people for twu luv just because his life sucked.

This movie was made of fail...still better then G.I. Joe was.

 

@Boo: Madlibs win :awesome

 

Saw it, loved it. I don't really care about the so-called dumbing down of the story. Technical details aren't suited to the movie format. The anti-technology stuff is a bit overbearing, but the whole point of the story is that by the end you don't feel so. Though they do cheat a fair amount by making the deity real.

There are a few less believable moments (e.g. that the indigenous actually won, that arrows were able to pierce the cockpits of the aircraft) but I didn't really care.

With regards to the floating mountains: my immediate interpretation was that the gravity of the gas giant held them there. But that has lots of holes, so probably isn't true.

Now, onto something far more important: the complete lack of Avatar porn on the net. There's none. It's shocking.

 

The floating mountains are caused by an interaction between the magnetic fields of the planet and the unobtanium inside of the mountains. The detailed explanation is in the guide book.

Also, give rule 34 some time, it might not be instant but it will be there, rule 34 is like the tides, its inevitable.