I noticed that much more on the second viewing. I like how the relationship part of it is never talked about until it comes down to jake saying "hey wanna be my wife?" We just see her starting to warm up to him and vice versa. I thought it was a really nice change of pace from what we've seen in the past where characters stand around and talk to each other about how much they're falling in love etc...

Wow, see my opinion of why it didn't matter that it was cliche is because I thought they very much made it my own.

Well, you cared about the protagonists. Only really two of the baddies had any real name or intrigue. Vader and Tarkin, and really there wasn't much to them either. In Avatar I think many of the Navi protagonists were written well enough to care about them as well as a few of the humans. Probably the biggest exception would be the Rodriguez character but that's mostly due to casting I think. The bad guys were a little too much stereotypical Black Water, hoorah mercenary, and Aliens corporate greedies.

I thought the characters had little value at all. I found myself not giving a **** when someone died, or when the tree fell, or Grace became one with the Force, or the old man died . Overall the movie was "turn off brain watch purdy lights"

Exactly - I completely agree.

I couldn't disagree more.

Well, I have to mostly agree. I felt more emotionally attached to the experience of watching the movie than the characters or story.

Well I feel better now that we all agreed to disagree and/or partially agree.

Finally saw it. I agree and disagree with the recent posts >_> I didn't feel too attached to any of the characters, but I certainly was emotionally envolved. I caught myself getting tense a few times.

Example of a well written and original movie that pulls at your heart-strings entertains you with amazing action and dialog and leaves you in emotional ruins...about Aliens: DISTRICT 9

NOT that: AVATAR


(http://threemonthstime.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/snooze-and-awe-why-james-camerons-avatar-sucked/)

I agree with SAJN, but I think District 9 was more gripping/exciting because it was way more raw and extreme than AVATAR. By all means it should be considered the better piece of "film"... more original, more creative, way more intense.

That said I enjoyed AVATAR more. Maybe I'm going soft, but when I watched the movie the parts I enjoyed the most were the fantasy pandora land that were created - which kind of crossed the border from a sci-fi world to being more of a fantasy lala-land. I mean that in kind of a good way - it makes you feel like if you had to choose between living life as a human on Earth or as Na'vi on Pandora, you pick Pandora. Unfortunately I also agree with all the weaknesses that SAJN and the others that didn't like the movie have pointed out - I was for some reason able to ignore them and enjoy the movie.

Ultimately, I really wish I could hop in a time machine and watch this movie as a kid. This would be completely awesome for any kid who's never seen a Dances With Wolves type movie before (Eg, pocahontas, last samurai, fast and the furious etc), and who could completely immerse themselves in the fantasy universe. I think it's impossible to say that anyone with the open mind of a child and lacking previous to exposure to such a film would react to this film any other way than positively.

Eh, I've seen that kind of storlyine many times, but this is the first time I've truly cared about the characters. I was gritting my teeth wishing the main bad guy would die. I almost said "noo" when I thought the main character was going to die, etc etc.
I felt very strongly indeed for the characters, despite the overall story being cliche

Hah, I see you what you did there.

I agree with both Antony and Deadman. Seriously, when Hometree was destroyed I was about ready to cry.

But that's just me, I tend to relate very well with the characters, even if they're cliché.

I really wanted to like District 9 but it just seemed kind of dopey to me. I still kind of like it but I have to partially disagree with SAJN's most recent post. I didn't get too much emotion from either film. Not even when the thing got somethinged in Avatar although my wife said she heard some people crying behind us. Treehuggers.

Really? I only reacted to that character biting it although it wasn't a moment so much as a "aw hell no James Cameron you ****en tool"

Emotional ruins? Lets turn down the hyperbole.

I thought both were profoundly unique movie watching experiences, but for different reasons. District 9 was unlike any movie I had seen before, even to the point where I couldn't describe it to people besides saying, "go see it." With Avatar I felt completely immersed in another world, and while the story itself was ho-hum, it did fulfill that idea that movies are supposed to transport you, and I by no means felt cheated out of my $13.

$13?? That's not cheating, that's rape.

it was probably imax 3d

It's normally $12 here....
And I just saw Avatar for the second time tonight (and it;'s very rare for me to see a movie twice in the cinema... or twice at all even) and I still got a little emotional at all the right moments.
I found myself having a little more respect for the main bad guy, cuz he's pure bad-assery, but apart from that my reactions still ran pretty much the same.
I even still got all devasted when in the penultimate forest fight scene, and the dramatic music plays and all the main good guys are being killed off, and you think this might be one of those movies where they blow the place up and leave you with a morale lesson which really just has you thinking "THOSE BASTAAAARDS"

Finally got a chance to see it, yesterday in imax 3d.

I'm pleased with it. Hands down the best special effects ever created, and the story functioned admirably as a vehicle for an audience to explore the world and the alien culture. Cameron only changed 2 or 3 things from the script I read in the 90s.

If this doesn't win an Oscar I'll be astounded.

Movie prices here are $10 (non-matinee), $13 (3D, non-matinee). One screen has a larger screen, better sound, nicer seats and the standard price for that is $13 (non-matinee), but $15 for a 3D movie like Avatar.

Yeah, just a bunch of goddamn savages getting in the way, right?

Seriously? The paper thin, predictable characters and story didn't seem to impact your opinion at all?

I mean, without trying I literally saw everything coming. Everything. Every behavior of every character in every scene was almost 100% predictable.

Well, pretty much. The Navi weren't really utilizing their planet to its full potential and were basically a stagnant and primitive culture. The humans saw the potential the planet held to benefit humanity and really were left no options other than the ones we saw them take.

Yeah but not everyone wants the same thing as one person or group wants.
You think the native americans wanted all the modern and advancing technology and Christianity the Europeans had to offer? No, they seemed to be well off with their peyote and agrarian life styles.

Living ain't living without plasmas and ipods.

Just because the Na'vi had no use for the deposits doesn't justify moving them. Also, benefit to humanity? We don't even know what purpose unobtainium had for the company besides the selling price. If it went to producing some luxury good it hardly justifies the attempted eradication of a tribe.

Of course you saw their behaviors coming, if you didn't they were either A: not well developed characters or B: random/silly/someone people find themselves not caring about.
When characters re-actions aren't predictable it's usually because they're doing things completely out of character, or they are just non-characters that do random stuff, both situations are still quite rare in movies for good reason: it means bad scripting

Primitive... arguably, stagnant? Definitely not. As for human benefit, ever think of how much humankind would benefit from learning more about a species that can interconnect with any of the wildlife around it? Or learning more about the trees that intercommunicate and have a resulting environment that was compared with a giant super efficient brain?

I was just giving Emon want he wanted to hear since he already came up with something ludicrous about savages from quoting me. How on Earth he got there is beyond me. I guess because I didn't feel too much emotion when the something got somethinged. Or maybe it was the pun (treehuggers) I used to describe the crying movie goers behind me (come on, I thought that was funny). I guess to me it was because it was just way too much of a stereotypical, corporate evildoer thing to do that I was surprised Cameron took the obvious, predictable route.

Unobtainium is said to be a room temperature super conductor.

EDIT: And strangely, Avatar's box office grosses are only getting better with time. It passed 300 million domestic and 785 million worldwide yesterday. For two weeks release that's not bad, especially considering like I said, the numbers are only getting stronger.

The stereotypical corporate evildoer wouldn't have tried the diplomatic route first but you do have kind of a pint

The more I think about this movie after having seen it twice, the more I am dumbfounded at what it accomplishes as a film.

I saw it on a small screen in 3d. It was great, but I can't imagine seeing it in IMAX 3D. Seems like there would be way too much to take in, and not in a bad way like Transformers with its hyperactive editing and such. The thing that baffles me the most about it, is we're presented with this whole new world full of amazing creatures and such and it's so grand in scope it's almost unbelievable, yet the best term to describe the overall feel of the movie is intimate. It's on the level of what Peter Jackson accomplished with Lord of the Rings. It's grand in scale and amazing to behold the wonderful world created, but at the same time, it's a story about a handful of people/creatures among thousands.

I had thought I wouldn't say this about Avatar, but I'm really interested in seeing how many awards this movie rakes in by the handful. The Hollywood Foreign Press and the Academy both love James Cameron, so I'd say we can expect to see a decent number of Golden Globes and Oscars won.


And, on another note, I, also did have one pang of "**** did you have to do that" when Trudy got killed. She was awesome.

I'd argue that it surpasses the LotR movies: visually more impressive and coheres better as a film. The only impressive aspects of LotR that Avatar doesn't surpass are Howard Shore's score and the remarkable fidelity of the movies' realization of the books (which isn't even a basis for comparison).

oh man if lord of the rings was filmed with those 3d cameras...

I've had many pints but that is another topic. Anyway, the diplomatic route pretty much always makes sense to try first as it is the least confrontational and expensive. Pretty much all hostile takeovers start not very hostile.

Yeah but saying **** like "why didn't they try harder for a diplomatic solution" is like the people who say "why don't they make videogames where you're a doctor and you go around helping people?"

It's funny that you guys compare it to Lord of the Rings. This is probably the movie I felt most engrossed in since Fellowship. It's really weird but I still find myself thinking about the movie many days after viewing, not many movies have that kind of pull.

In real life, yes, in movies with overly cliche' corporate bad guys they just go RARARRARRRRRR!

But don't get me wrong, I'm not really trying to argue the movie isn't cliche, only a madman would try and argue that.

...it was one of the major messages of the film? Especially District 9.


Uh, no. Characters doing unexpected things is a way of showing depth. It means there is more to the character than was originally shown to the viewer and to the other characters.

Simple example, maybe the chopper pilot wouldn't have defected along with the rest of the group. Why wouldn't she just follow orders like everyone else? There was NO development with her. The only reason you weren't surprised by it was because she was positioned as, "hey, I'm this loyal sidekick character!" without actually explaining anything. It's like each character had a slot of a predefined role and there was never any explanation as to how or why they got there. Once you see the first five minutes of each character you know exactly what they're going to do.


Oh don't kid yourself. The story was complete wash! The only interesting thing was the explanation of spiritual connections via biochemistry in the forest.

I get the feeling too many people (not just here) are fooling themselves into thinking it's better than it really is. They see something visually stunning, but they don't want to admit that something so beautiful, especially by James Cameron, is just hollow rubbish underneath. If it had an average CG budget and was directed by someone else, you'd all be laughing at it right now.