FLAPJACKS: I hate these 3D glasses.
ME: Why?
FLAPJACKS: They make me look like Elvis Costello.
ME: I think that is actually what you wish happened when you had them on.
FLAPJACKS: I totally would if I had the hair and was also much cooler. Besides, you hate them too.
ME: Yeah, but I hate them because the 3D always sucks unless it’s a Pixar movie. The mix of in-focus and still-in-focus-but-not-in-focus is so distracting. In real life, there aren’t fancy staggered levels of sharpness that you see. In real life, things you’re not focusing on are slightly blurry. The movies had already managed to achieve that with regular old cameras. Why do we need to make everything look like a giant Viewmaster reel?
FLAPJACKS: Because it is new and special and therefore better than old and regular!
ME: Sadly accurate. I mean – whoa.
FLAPJACKS: Whoa.
ME: Whoa.
FLAPJACKS. Whoa.
ME: Whoa.
FLAPJACKS: WHOA!
ME: Holy fuck WHOA!
FLAPJACKS: Okay all of that was pretty awesome with the chasing and the flying and the monsters and such.
ME: It almost made me forget that one of the characters actually said “we’re not in Kansas any more.”
FLAPJACKS: Wait, somebody actually said that in this movie?
ME: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: I guess I was too busy being pleased to see that Vasquez actually survived the end of Aliens somehow.
ME: That’s not Vasquez. That’s Michelle Rodriguez being… somebody. I think her character might have a name.
FLAPJACKS: Whatever. She’s Vasquez.
ME: Why do so many of the Nav’i speak fluent English? I mean, did Sigourney Weaver teach everybody English?
FLAPJACKS: Only the important ones. And they taught her Nav’i. Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if they totally lied about the meaning of a word to her? And the humans who spoke Nav’i would say things like “honored chief, we have come to bring you tidings of great penis.”
ME: I think that movie would have to star Rob Schneider. James Cameron does not roll like that.
FLAPJACKS: This is true.
ME: Also, it is totally disturbing how all life on this planet basically communicates by rubbing tentacle-genitals against one another.
FLAPJACKS: No, see, the entire planet evolved as a system of something or another. It’s a systemic system of systems. It’s like how we have eyes and dogs have eyes and cats have eyes. All of these things have eyes. And also tentacle-genitals.
ME: Yes, but – whoa.
FLAPJACKS: Whoa.
ME: Whoa!
FLAPJACKS: WHOA!
ME: You know, I have to admit – the Nav’i look totally natural.
FLAPJACKS: There is no uncanny valley.
ME: You only know that concept because of that one episode of 30 Rock.
FLAPJACKS: So?
ME: I’m just sick of critics who learned a new phrase thanks to Tina Fey and want to show off.
FLAPJACKS: Speaking of that episode of 30 Rock, I’m pretty sure I didn’t need to see the blue aliens doing it.
ME: Oh, quit whining. You barely saw anything.
FLAPJACKS: But now it’s in my head.
ME: Okay, the scientists are totally going about this the wrong way with Giovanni Ribisi, Businessman. They should have been all “this entire planet is a gigantic biological computer more advanced than anything we’ve ever imagined. Think about how much that would be worth.”
FLAPJACKS: Wouldn’t work. Giovanni Ribisi, Businessman, is all about the quarterly profit report. I know this because he said “it’s all about the quarterly profit report” at the start of the movie. He is an Exxon-type guy and you are presenting a Google-type business plan. Ne’er shall the two meet, because despite what people might say about Google, Google is never going to hire mercenaries to kill aliens.
ME: They might hire mercenaries to spy on aliens.
FLAPJACKS: Well, that’s Google for you.
ME: The evil mercenary guy just sucks. “Wow, that’s an amazing giant tree. Time to blow it up, I guess.” How am I supposed to hate somebody this lame?
FLAPJACKS: Well, he did kill Sigourney Weaver.
ME: Until this movie came out, I thought Sigourney Weaver was dead. And then it turned out that it was just her career that was dead. If James Cameron can bring her back from Hollywood death, she will be back again in Avatar 2: Avatarz In The Hood.
FLAPJACKS: Okay, but whoa!
ME: WHOA!
FLAPJACKS: WHOA!
ME: What the shit whoa!
FLAPJACKS: MOTHERFUCKING WHOA!
ME: Aw, Michelle Rodriguez died.
FLAPJACKS: Vasquez isn’t dead until I see a body.
ME: See, I’m of two minds about this turn of events. On the one hand, the idea of Nature Itself rising up to fight the evil mercenaries and their warbots is incredibly dorky. But on the other hand, it looks completely fucking awesome.
FLAPJACKS: So why didn’t you like Transformers 2?
ME: Because despite the vast amount of money they spent to make that movie, Michael Bay is completely incapable of shooting a decent single shot, let alone a scene, or editing together a scene that looks coherent, or anything at all really. Even Michael Bay’s explosions are crappy, and given that all he really has a rep for is explosions, that’s just sad.
FLAPJACKS: That’s not true. He also has a reputation for bizarre editing decisions!
ME: This movie, on the other hand, is made by James Cameron, and even if the story frequently gets formulaic, illogical, or just plain stupid, it will look goddamned shitballs amazing, because James Cameron knows how to direct an action sequence like nobody’s business. Nobody else in Hollywood period can direct a scene with six billion things fighting six billion other things in it without it looking busy and incoherent and essentially impossible to watch: they’re directing the scene for DVD playback so nerds can jerk off to the one Jedi in the bottom of frame four million and twenty-three. James Cameron, on the other hand, says “twelve billion guys having a giant war? Hmmm.” And then he thinks about it for five years and then figures out how to make it look completely awesome and entirely involving all at once.
FLAPJACKS: All that thinking about making it look awesome probably came at the expense of making the story be, like, good.
ME: Yeah, but who cares when it looks this great? Because – oh come on, why does the giant robot have a knife? What the fuck, James Cameron? The giant robot should not have its own machete in a pop-out scabbard!
FLAPJACKS: Maybe the war robot was designed by Boy Scouts. Or the Swiss. Or Swiss Boy Scouts.
ME: And the movie ends with Sam Worthington failing to disguise his Aussie accent yet again as he turns into a Nav’i all permanent-like. I smell sequel.
FLAPJACKS: Hopefully written by Not James Cameron. Also, not by Michael Bay. We can’t set our standards too low here.
ME: Good thinking, but if you’re not more careful with your qualifications it’ll end up getting written by Paul Haggis. “Nav’i and humans are both racist!”
FLAPJACKS: Or it’ll get written by Akiva Goldsman and it’ll end with a tattoo on some extraneous character’s back being a sign from God – sorry, the planet – that dying to make a point is what has to happen here, or something like that.
ME: Or it’ll get written by Joss Whedon and there will be a secret order of female Nav’i who hunt vampires.
FLAPJACKS: I would probably go see that one.
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43 users responded in this post
A reasonably accurate, if not that succinct, report. I’ll buy it.
However, I did have the same reaction as you to the armoured robo-suit equipped with a knife. Two seconds later, I recalled that the humans had been trying to pacify and exploit Pandora for years. These mercs in the tinkertoy suits had been walking perimeter patrol in the jungle for a LONG time. Obviously, the giant knife was a locally added accessory for this Pandoran action figure.
That’s largely what me and my friends thought, although we also started yelling “Pocahantas!” halfway through.
And then, because we are nerds, we spent the next 161 minutes rewriting the movie to sf better. We started out by swapping “unobtanium” (seriously, that was barely plausible in The Core) for trying to strip the planet for biologicals and ended up with something halfway to Solaris. It was practically as much fun as watching the movie to begin with.
As I pointed out, “Avatar” and “Aliens” have the same basic plot, except that Cameron makes you root for the aliens in the former and the humans in the latter.
I hear Avatar is just Fern Gully IN SPAAAAAAACE!
So true
I was impressed at how many characters mapped perfectly to someone less blue in Dances with Wolves or The Last Samurai.
He is back on the market now.
Also, I thought the South Park “Avatar-is-about-smurfs” episode was spot on.
@BlackBloc: Bwahah! God bless Lindy West.
Spoiler warning would have been nice. Granted, I don’t think I should be concerned about the plot of this movie.
*raises hand*
Dude, holding a conversation in the cinema? Not cool.
Also, if you’re sending a giant robot into the jungle, it makes sense to give it a big knife to cut through the vines which the local homicidal teddy bear equivalent wrap round its legs.
There’s a plot?!
Will, I thought we established that Flapjacks is just MGK’s Id. So really, it’s an internal dialogue.
No movie conversation violations here!
If the knife had been, like, an attachment to the mech’s arm instead of HAVING ITS OWN HOLSTER, I would have bought it more easily. Which is not to say it wasn’t entertainingly hilarious the way it is.
I didn’t think this movie was so mindblowingly awesome from a visual perspective that it excuses the utterly shitty script. Action scenes need some emotional stuff going on in the background that we care about. See: all the lightsaber duels in the prequels.
Avatar is the bastard love child of The Abyss and Aliens, think about it. Having seen Avatar, I think that it is a solid movie, better than some not others. This coming for a guy who knows that Aliens is the BEST MOVIE EVER MADE.
Maybe I’m black. Ever think of THAT, smart guy?
So glads Im not the only person who made the “Michael Bay WISHES he made movies like this” comparison.
So I take it Dances With Smurfs was visually a treat?
Nobody else in Hollywood period can direct a scene with six billion things fighting six billion other things in it without it looking busy and incoherent and essentially impossible to watch
Peter Jackson?
Woah! WOAH! A spoiler warning would have been nice! I didn’t need to know which characters died and how! Damn.
“Peter Jackson?”
I am thinking of Return of the King, and thinking “not quite”.
If the Star Wars prequels would have been *all* lightsaber duels, instead of painful “romantic” conversation before fireplaces, then I wouldn’t have cared too much about the plot, either. :p
You want a film to really, really suck and be full of plot contrivances and holes, but very ‘important’ and pompous, then you hire Whedon.
If you want good, competantly made fun, Cameron blows Whedon and his browncoats out of the water.
fuck you the movie was good in every way and im gonna go see it again but this time in 3d
/trolling
But seriously, come on, why hate on the not-bad, just not-very-good script? It is a fun movie, visually gorgeus, and it’s not stupid.
In this case even, and for someone who loves the LSH so much, youre sometimes really too much of a… complainer? (sorry my english fails me here).
But seriously, come on, why hate on the not-bad, just not-very-good script?
Because it’s James Cameron, who really is capable of doing much better films but has chosen not to.
At least, that’s the vibe I get off various reviews for the movie. Since my expectations for Cameron are apparently much lower than everyone else’s I wasn’t expecting him to do anything all that great. But I wasn’t expecting him to do “Dances With Wolves … IN SPACE”. Anyone who writes a picture in this day and age in the “What These People Need Is a Honky” genre and thinks they’re saying something original or new really does deserve to be mocked. Even if they remember to include awesome CGI effects.
I wanted to hate this movie sooo bad
But this is the first 3d movie I’ve enjoyed and felt that the effect enhanced the film
It was also captivating from beginning to end. I didn’t look away from the screen once.
Damn you, Cameron! Damn you! I wanted to bitch about this film soooo bad.
The only thing that would have made it better was if the giant robot knife had a chainsaw blade.
The badass colonel’s mecha had that bigass knife because the badass colonel insists on knife fights with Gundams every f-cking chance he gets.
And he wins.
George Lucas once said the one thing that makes good movies is a good story. This lacked such a story. You cannot buy me with flourescent floating jellifish.
I’ll take boring-costume-drama Dances With Wolves over super-realistic-new-world Avatar anyday. And Serenity over either of them.
I wanted to love this movie. Fail.
Actually, that’s about accurate. From the Pandorapedia page for AMPs:
The knife is pure Rule of Cool. And I will accept that. The film has its bad parts, it follows the story model a little too closely, but the knife is awesome therefore it stays.
I’d say there are a few directors who can direct a good large-scale action sequence- Cameron, Jackson, and honestly I would include Lucas. Maybe the Wachowskis, too. But it’s definitely not served well by the modern “move the camera all the time” concept.
[...] as they note in this post (humorous intentions aside), James Cameron does know how to put a scene together. Orchestration as [...]
Just got back from seeing the movie, in 3D. Some spoilers to follow:
Frankly, I would have preferred to watch it in normal HD/format that Films are shown normally in cinemas. Even when still, some things seemed fuzzy when they weren’t meant to be, but I guess it may be because I had to wear the 3D glasses over a normal pair.
The tried and tested and reviled “All they need is a Honkey” story could easily be changed if the lead character was black. It wasn’t because he was white, but because he was a human who saw the situation for what it was: unjust, inhumane genocide. I thought it was a nice touch that the guy decided to go full Na’vi rather than stay in those pod things.
The villain didn’t get a gruesome enough death. The guy was practically Hitler and Stalin, rolled into one Post-Nam Vet. Normal soldiers, those who were purposely left unaware of the situation, got killed in exploding airships, eaten/bit by alien-pterodactyls and crushed between two creates of plastic explosives. The big, evil guy, got shot with three arrows. Say what you like about neuro-toxins, but I wanted to see him gibbed.
Lastly, do people really think so little of mankind’s care for sapient life? Frankly, I’d rather think that if one of the good guys went to the soldiers and said “Hey, remember that other guy who wanted to murder an entire race of people? Walked funny, terrible moustache, only one testicle?” and there would hardly be any soldiers left willing to take to arms.
But, yes, an average story (I dunno if you could call the story of a fight against genocidal mad-men “average”) but with some great computer effects and directing.
I’m surprised the mech’s knife is the sticking point it seems to be.The only reason to use such an impractical device as a mech in the first place is to duplicate human versatility, and the way to exploit that is tool use. By way of comparison, a sword is in every way a superior weapon to a katar or punch dagger. Therefore, a machete is superior to a extending utility blade. And ask anyone who has done a tour in serious jungle, a machete is just not optional.
And Lash, how can you think so much of Mankind’s regard for sapient life? We still have genocide today, and Hitler was just over fifty years ago. Give us a few years more to get over the personal reactions to his atrocities, and he’ll just be another historical ruler (like, say, Alexander the Great) who drew the world into a more global culture. And then add in that the Na’vi aren’t even human? I’m sorry, but that is all too realistic.
Except according to the background material for the movie, it is.
Beautiful effects. Horrible writing. Cameron may be a god of cinema direction, but he needs to hire a True Geek to write the technical parts of his sci-fi scripts. “Unobtanium”, Weaver’s character’s (top-flight scientist, remember) inability to describe the organic neural-net computer the Na’vi can communicate with, blowing up the giant tree instead of tunneling under it or taking it down from the top down like proper forestry. All signs of someone who has no tech chops. It’s almost into “380-point font on all the computers territory” a la “Mission Impossible 2″. And what’s up with Weaver’s and the other scientist guy’s Navi bodies having such a resemblence to their human selves while Worthington’s body looks completely Na’vi with no human facial characteristics?
Michelle Rodriguez has been playing Vasquez for pretty much her entire career.
I felt that closest comparison to the plot I made was Dune right down to very specific scenes, but ripping on something for taking points from Dune would be attacking all Science Fiction that happened post Dune
Screw the knife — I was laughing at the bayonet. “Why the hell does the mech-rifle need a bayonet? Do they fight robo-space-Hessians?” It was like James Cameron anticipated my question so perfectly — so the Duke University mascot and the guy in power armor can have a sword fight.
As others said, if you’re tromping through a jungle in a human-emulating suit, you’ll want a knife.
And if you’ve got tigers the size of Chevys you’ll want a bayonette on your gun.
Giant notwithstanding, what’s a space tiger going to do against several tons of titanium and servos?
A tiger attacks a regular old grunt, yes, you’re going to want a bayonet. Because even the most hard-assed U.S. Marine can’t punch a tiger to death. But if he’s wearing power armor, he sure can.
Why is the mech with the knife the sticking point? We’ve been seeing that since Neon Genesis Evangelion. They armed their giant mech with a BOXCUTTER, scaled up. Not even one of the cool boxcutters either, but one where the blades are designed to snap off.
Why a knife? Why not a fucking chainsaw?
“I thought it was a nice touch that the guy decided to go full Na’vi rather than stay in those pod things.”
Nice touch? His legs were useless as a human; as a Na’vi, he could run, jump, fly, bone Na’vi ladies. I’m surprised the evil colonel thought he was a good idea. He had everything to gain by “going native.”
Did anyone catch the evil colonel’s line “We’ll fight terror with terror”? WHAT TERROR?
I was ready for the rollicking, non-stop thrill ride that everyone keeps talking about. I really didn’t get it. I was bored pretty much until the final climatic battle. No, sorry, plants under blacklight don’t “awe” me. I’ve been to the ET ride at Universal Studios.
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