Avatar (James Cameron) [SPOILERS]

[Reno]

D9 was, imho, more interesting in that it developed more realistic characters and didn't portray the 'others' as homogenous in the way overwhelmingly Avatar did.

How were the aliens of District 9 were any less homogeneous than those in Avatar ? It's just that unlike with Avatar, in District 9 we only get to know two of them.

 

[revol68]

D9 was, imho, more interesting in that it developed more realistic characters and didn't portray the 'others' as homogenous in the way overwhelmingly Avatar did. That makes it less patronising in my book, tho I do agree it is pretty damn simplistic as well, and that the world of Avatar was probably more consistent (tho various evolutionary scientists have said both sets of aliens were equally implausible, and whilst Avatar was worse, thats only really cos we were shown more of that world)

You might have failed to notice but the 'other' was no more homogenous than the human characters in Avatar, none of them were to any real extent fully developed or characterised and as I said before I found it refreshing, it kept the film focused on the events and wider universal concern.

As for District 9 well I actually found the way it created a 'nice' Prawn for the human to interact with and identify with more problematic. In Avatar there is no significant distinction made between nice Na'vi and alien Na'vi, the Na'vi in other words are to be supported or not supported on the basis of the wider issue that like I said transcends individual particularities.

 

[belboid]

you utter cretin, how on fucking earth did you take the message that conflict is generally bad from it?

Did the film come to a happy ending through the marines and the Na'vi coming to some agreement, to somehow mutually co-exist?

No it didn't, the film comes it's happy ended because the Na'vi kick the shit out of the Marines and send them packing.

The message anyone with a bit of wit would take from that is that the conflict wasn't avoidable that rather it was inevitable and the real choice to be made was one between fighting or not fighting but on what side you would fight for.

The film is about deserting and insurrection and for that alone it has ten times the balls of any other supposedly subversive or anti war film I seen come out of Hollywood.

fair enough that there isn't some nice peace settlement at the end, but that's hardly an original ending. Most 'noble savage' films such as this, that arent factually based, end up in a very similar way. The worst ones are the ones where it takes someone from the imperialist faction to change sides for the savages to win.

Just cos its set in the future doesnt mean one can simply INSERT CURRENT WAR HERE to take its meaning. Sure, anyone can choose to view it like that, but they can also choose not to. It's not a question of 'wit', its about the film being so woolly that almost any interpretation can be put onto it.

 

[belboid]

How were the aliens of District 9 were any less homogeneous than those in Avatar ? It's just that unlike with Avatar, in District 9 we only get to know two of them.

we dont get to 'know' lots of them in D9 either, but we can see in the general behaviour of characters in the background that they were a society, with differing emotions, whereas the na'vi were all just being, iyswim

 

[revol68]

fair enough that there isn't some nice peace settlement at the end, but that's hardly an original ending. Most 'noble savage' films such as this, that arent factually based, end up in a very similar way. The worst ones are the ones where it takes someone from the imperialist faction to change sides for the savages to win.

Just cos its set in the future doesnt mean one can simply INSERT CURRENT WAR HERE to take its meaning. Sure, anyone can choose to view it like that, but they can also choose not to. It's not a question of 'wit', its about the film being so woolly that almost any interpretation can be put onto it.

When was the issue about the originality of the ending? Just admit you were talking shit about it simply being about 'conflict being bad'.

As for the changing of sides, well considering it's an American (even if Cameron is a cannuck) made movie aimed primarily at a western audience, and furthermore is aiming to, nay needs to be a massive block buster just to cover it's costs, it was always going to have it's central character start off as a Marine. It also makes perfect political sense as the films politics are aimed squarely at undercutting support for US militarism in the West, afterall it's not like many Iraqi's need to be offered an alternative perspective on the US military.

Also you can claim the films politics are vague and wooly and really just the product of people reading into them what they want, but that's just bullshit and I think you know it, there are just far too many non to subtle references to the war on Terror and we are left in fuck all doubt that for the corporation we should read US military, surely this had sank into even your thick nut by the time Cameron had blown up the fuck off tree with more than a few winks and nods towards Apocalypse Now.

 

[Reno]

...but we can see in the general behaviour of characters in the background....

That's really clutching at straws.


I'm off to bed, this is getting silly.

 

[revol68]

we dont get to 'know' lots of them in D9 either, but we can see in the general behaviour of characters in the background that they were a society, with differing emotions, whereas the na'vi were all just being, iyswim

like I said you don't get to know any of the characters in Avatar beyond some very broad strokes and to my mind that's a good thing as it keeps the focus on the wider rights and wrongs instead of muddying the waters with individual personalities prying for our allegiances and empathy.

Also the appearance of the 'rational' prawn to interact with the human is politically far more problematic if you thought about it for more than a second, as it acts to move the issue of the prawns away from the political rights and wrongs and instead tends to reduce it to the level of individual sympathies because we can see the Prawn and his son like us, as opposed to those other animalistic prawns.

 

[belboid]

I did admit that, yes, That's what I was doing. Well spotted. The point about the ending is that the conclusion of the film, the conclusin that you are arguing makes it so different, is compltely unoriginal. It's not different. It's a genre trope

As to the central character, yes, they pretty much must be someone who is on both sides at differing times. The question is over the extent to which they then drive the story forward. A better such movie has them as more observer.

And the few mentins about current military methods of fighting are just that, references to current methods.

Plenty of people wont come away thinking it was about Iraq, not because they are stupid or lack the 'wit', but because they dont see Iraq as being about resources, nor them being full of such lovely savages. Those people still know they will use things like 'shock and awe' in any other conflict tho.

 

[belboid]

That's really clutching at straws.


I'm off to bed, this is getting silly.

It is a lil - but its not quite straws, we saw a society, that is important. What kind of society did the Na'vi have? I honestly have no idea, not even of whether there was any attempt to show it.

Which does also show the weakness of that film, so much of that - very probably finely studied and detailed - background has left no specific impression.

 

[revol68]

It is a lil - but its not quite straws, we saw a society, that is important. What kind of society did the Na'vi have? I honestly have no idea, not even of whether there was any attempt to show it.

Which does also show the weakness of that film, so much of that - very probably finely studied and detailed - background has left no specific impression.

Have you mixed these two films up?

The whole point of District 9 was that the Prawns essentially had no society structure, they were broken, atomised and preyed upon, they had been reduced to animals. What made it interesting was that we were forced to ask whether Prawns were 'naturally' like this, that their behaviour and the conflicts this lead to with the human populace (the example of train derailings etc) were the outcome of some sort of primordial difference (be that cultural or biological) or rather product of alienation, poverty etc. It was this critique of multiculturalism that provided the best pieces of satire in the film.

In the case of the Na'vi were spend nearly an hour being introduced to their society by the mechanism of Jake's apprenticeship. Sure it could be argued their society was cheesy and far too unitary and hippy dippy but that's a separate matter to what you are talking about.

 

[belboid]

You saw them doing 'different things' to each other was my point (probably badly made, as was this entire sentence a moment ago), as opposed to the Na'vi society which you just agree was too unitary.

 

[pboi]

oh and it's also just a really fucking amazing looking, fun film, something that seems to get overlooked by middle brow cunts trying to flex their intellectual inferiority over 'popular culture'.

which is exactly what you did in the previous post. cock

 

[TAE]

This is what I thought you had posted:

Also I'd have given DirectX 9 a ton of awards

Thought you were being sarcastic until I read what you had actually written.

It is very clearly NOT cinematography, because the CGI removes ALL need for camera choices.

I don't understand this statement. When you create a virtual 3D world, you need to place the virtual camera somewhere into that world. I know from the little raytracing I've done that camera placement is important even in 3D graphics.

 

[DexterTCN]

Kathryn Bigelow..ex-wife of Cameron....

You know...if you painted her blue....

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

Kathryn Bigelow..ex-wife of Cameron....

She's looking good for pushing 60.

 

[DexterTCN]

She's looking good for pushing 60.

Na'vi must live longer. She certainly looks good for her age...and not really in that Hollywood fucked up botox/implants way.

 

[T & P]

 

[ska invita]

BUMP

I was just looking at something on IMDB and spotted this:

2019 Avatar 4 (pre-production)
2017 Avatar 3 (pre-production)
2017 Avatar 2 (pre-production)

Thats a lot of CGI

 

[5t3IIa]

I think it is quite likely to look crude eventually. It's wonderful now, sure; even my cynical brain enjoyed it, though mostly because of the design rather than the implementation. But given how dodgy lots of older big-CGI films look now, I think in a few years' time we will be saying "yeah it was great then, dated now though, look at how X moves or what the detail on Y is".

I spend a lot of time on Uncanny Valley issues and I can certainly say that Avatar hits a few. There are two things that I think people still don't do properly: firstly, bone/musculature and skin, skin's never proper and what's supposed to be underneath it doesn't help. Skin is not PVC and even very sophisticated skeletons don't properly simulate how fibres and muscles look. To me, they look like rubber still.

Secondly, the animations still aren't as good as they could be - which is an artistic issue, not a technological one. There's a certain sort of overly fluid movement that animated animals have that just feels wrong. You can mocap humans, but for organic things where you can't it's incredibly hard to do - this isn't calling people rubbish, this is very very tricky stuff, but it's still not right.

Watching it now and dug up this thread to find a post saying this, and like it.

I was kind of surprised that I just now thought it looks a bit ropey. Wtf have I been watching to compare it unfavourably to? Rocket and Groot? The Lego movie was more realistic