Avatar

[Padme]

I thought the rhino things were really well done. I also thought the Navi were better done than Gollum and I like Gollum.

I'm not questioning that Avatar's weren't well-done in the sense of looking realistic, I'm saying they were realistic and boring. The creature's designs were unimaginative and forgettable and good design is ultimately far more important than better tech.

Gollum was better written, his character was better developed. I agree with that. Tolkien was a stickler for character detail and that was translated in the movie. But think of the tech now as compared to then and think about how really kewl Gollum is going to be, should be beyond fantastic.

I'm looking at the new technology as a blessing, as a glass more than half full for use in the up coming Hobbit movies.

[Nin]

I'm a bit afraid of that: the creatures get visually so stunning, that the directors fall in love with them and forget to care about characters...

[Padme]

I liked Gollum, because he was a good character. And there was a good actor behind him. The Na'vi are not characters. And Avatar has no acting, even when the humans are themselves.

Padme, you know when I watch "A New hope" (or King-Kong 1939 or Jurassic Parc), I still think that it is mighty cool, because there is a good story. Avatar is visually stunning (and the 3D did it for me!), but the story line is . But that's what I expected from Cameron and it's the problem with many movies which are written by directors whose job is not story-telling.

I thought the Avatar story was not all that spectacular, a story worth telling but it wasn't the be all end all.

Again comparing the two movies, LoTR and Avatar, we must remember who wrote the backbone of each. Tolkien did wonderful work writing the story of ME. And no matter what the movie fans say, without Tolkien's work, the movies, well just wouldn't be, none of us would know about Middle Earth at all.

The Avatar book??? I've never read it, is there one?

[vison]

Good point, Padme.

LOTR, the movies, were disappointing to me because of the beauty of the book, which was not translated to the screen as I would have liked. My bad, I know. Lots of it was really nice.

But there is no Avatar book, of course. I don't wish to denigrate Mr. Cameron's creation - in its way it is amazing. I mean, I have a good imagination but while I could MAYBE write a similar type of story, I could NEVER put it together as a movie. Never. All the "creative" stuff, writing the story, thinking up the creatures and the plants and the characters AND making it come to life on the screen! All the technical stuff, too.

I don't mean in any way to diss PJ, but when you think about it, he had a pretty good blueprint to work from.

(Yes, I do think the LOTR movies are "better" than Avatar. But Avatar is pretty good, just the same.)

[Primula Baggins]

The visual aspect I'll never forget from "A New Hope" wasn't the quality of the effects (though I think they hold up pretty well when you consider how they had to create them back in 1977!). What impressed my teenage SF-geek mind was that this spiffy space technology, Han's ship, the floating cars on Tatooine, etc., all looked used. Luke's speeder had a crunched front fender. Everything was dusty and worn around the edges.

That just hadn't been done before—it wasn't part of the science fiction film esthetic. You didn't create some cool futuristic device and then make it look as if it had seen forty years of hard use on a farm. You made it as clean-lined and shiny and bright-colored as possible so everyone would go, wow!

Whereas it was the dents and dirt that made me go, wow!

Lucas lost sight of that in the prequel trilogy with his horrible CGI everything, so the actors weren't even standing on a set and often weren't even there at the same time as the people they were "acting" with. CGI is a great tool but a terrible director. When people in a "dramatic scene" aren't even speaking to each other because they weren't even on set together, it shows. They might as well have made all those good actors (and the bad ones) wear shiny plastic masks.

[Elentári]

And no matter what the movie fans say, without Tolkien's work, the movies, well just wouldn't be, none of us would know about Middle Earth at all.

And just what do those movie fans say????


Of course there would be no movies without Tolkien's legacy...no one in their right mind would think otherwise. And they were not perfect by any stretch of the imagination...but, as I've said before, a lot better than we might have got from the Hollywood machine.

Even so, the films can be appreciated in their own right as a ground-breaking cinematical achievement and a work of breathtaking scope; an amazingly powerful and emotional visual experience...

[Padme]

Vison Said:
Good point, Padme.

LOTR, the movies, were disappointing to me because of the beauty of the book, which was not translated to the screen as I would have liked. My bad, I know. Lots of it was really nice.

But there is no Avatar book, of course. I don't wish to denigrate Mr. Cameron's creation - in its way it is amazing. I mean, I have a good imagination but while I could MAYBE write a similar type of story, I could NEVER put it together as a movie. Never. All the "creative" stuff, writing the story, thinking up the creatures and the plants and the characters AND making it come to life on the screen! All the technical stuff, too.

I don't mean in any way to diss PJ, but when you think about it, he had a pretty good blueprint to work from.

(Yes, I do think the LOTR movies are "better" than Avatar. But Avatar is pretty good, just the same.)

I agree about the blue print PJ had to work with. People like to hollar that a movie is a movie, but with out a good story to build the movie on all the effects mean diddly poo. Tolkien wrote the story. period. Everything else we get on ME is a bonus, they might be great movies but as the saying sort of goes You Can Take the Movie Out of Tolkien, But You Can't Take the Tolkien Out of The Movie.

Prim Said:
The visual aspect I'll never forget from "A New Hope" wasn't the quality of the effects (though I think they hold up pretty well when you consider how they had to create them back in 1977!). What impressed my teenage SF-geek mind was that this spiffy space technology, Han's ship, the floating cars on Tatooine, etc., all looked used. Luke's speeder had a crunched front fender. Everything was dusty and worn around the edges.

That just hadn't been done before—it wasn't part of the science fiction film esthetic. You didn't create some cool futuristic device and then make it look as if it had seen forty years of hard use on a farm. You made it as clean-lined and shiny and bright-colored as possible so everyone would go, wow!

Whereas it was the dents and dirt that made me go, wow!

Lucas lost sight of that in the prequel trilogy with his horrible CGI everything, so the actors weren't even standing on a set and often weren't even there at the same time as the people they were "acting" with. CGI is a great tool but a terrible director. When people in a "dramatic scene" aren't even speaking to each other because they weren't even on set together, it shows. They might as well have made all those good actors (and the bad ones) wear shiny plastic masks

Amen to that. The prequels made me sad. I think he did it for the money.

[axordil]

RE: SW prequels
There's a long, nasty and profane but accurate assessment of why Ep 1 in particular applied vacuum as hard as it did floating around the web. It starts with having no protagonist and goes downhill from there.

Found it! It's in seven parts at YouTube. It's NOT safe for work, family, or caring people, but it's funny in some spots and dead-on in more. The most damning bit is when Lucas, the producer, the editor and the senior crew have just watched a rough cut and you can tell they know it's bad. Then the editor starts explaining the problem with the ending, and just sort of trails off, because he knows there's nothing they can do to fix it at this point...

It doesn't sound as if Avatar is at that level of bad.

[yovargas]

I thought the rhino things were really well done. I also thought the Navi were better done than Gollum and I like Gollum.

I'm not questioning that Avatar's weren't well-done in the sense of looking realistic, I'm saying they were realistic and boring. The creature's designs were unimaginative and forgettable and good design is ultimately far more important than better tech.

Gollum was better written, his character was better developed. I agree with that. Tolkien was a stickler for character detail and that was translated in the movie. But think of the tech now as compared to then and think about how really kewl Gollum is going to be, should be beyond fantastic.

I'm not just saying Gollum was better written, I'm saying that, visually, he was more interesting to look at then the Navi, despite the Navi looking more real. I'm saying "better tech" does not equal "better looks".

[Padme]

I'd say the exact opposite. But blue is my favorite color.

[vison]

I'd say the exact opposite. But blue is my favorite color.

Same here. Only green.

[yovargas]

Well then congrats on being wrong.

[vison]

[Elentári]

I haven't seen Avatar yet...if I ever bother....but just from seeing the two images Yov posted, I completely agree with him. Gollum is more aethetically interesting because he isn't so perfect...he has such character! The Na'vi (from that picture) just look manufactured and too blandly beautiful, IMO.

Question: Did Weta use the same image capture process for the Na'vi as they did for Gollum? If they did, then Tolkien aside, it must be Serkis' performance that made the winning difference...

[Padme]

The poster picture does nothing for them.

I guess old wicked creatures are not something I find beautiful to look at.

Coming up next actual pictures of Navi, so uninteresting to look at just skip. Especially since everything in the pictures are done with CGI.








And this isn't even the best eye candy in the movie. The story on the other hand is worth complaining about.

But then again it must not be too bad with the amount of money it's made in a short time.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... past_.html

[solicitr]

Something of the above, and my own thoughts, is analogized in Tim Slagle's review

I think every guy has done it at least once. Sure it’s shallow and in retrospect, we’re probably quite embarrassed. I know that every single one of us has dated a girl that is out of our intellectual depth; but we didn’t care, because she was so breathtakingly gorgeous. They say love is blind, but when it’s not, it can be incredibly stupid.

That’s what I thought of when I was sitting through Avatar.

[vison]

I daresay the guy thought it was funny and incisive but that has to be one of the most sexist little self-exposures I've ever seen.

"Out of his intellectual depth"? Very likely -

[solicitr]

Sexist? Really? Are you claiming women never, ever date big dumb slabs of beef just because "he's sooooo hot"?


___________________________________________

The visual aspect I'll never forget from "A New Hope"

Except when it made such a lasting impression on both of us, it wasn't called "A New Hope....."

[Nin]

Well... not me (now my dating history is quite.... limited)

And I would not consider Avatar beneath my intellectual depth. It's not a movie that you go to see for the depth of characters and the original story line, but for the visual effects. So, it's rather like someone dating a really pretty girl - but telling he does it for her marvellous intelligence. In this case, the one who is dating is a hypocrit. So, if you go to see Avatar and feel intellectually superior or beyond this while watching it, for me this is what you are: hypocrit. Come on, this is not a movie which you see to THINK but to LOOK.

[Crucifer]

The most damning bit is when Lucas, the producer, the editor and the senior crew have just watched a rough cut and you can tell they know it's bad. Then the editor starts explaining the problem with the ending, and just sort of trails off, because he knows there's nothing they can do to fix it at this point...

Lucas himself says that he watched the first edition of Phantom Menace and thought that he may have had to scrap the whole project. It's in the special features of one of the DVDs...