Mighty Whitey and the Smurfurries

[the_gneech]

Was submitted to Avatar over the weekend; there was absolutely no point. It was a pretty light show over the same tired, old The Last Lawrence of Arabia Samurai-Dances With Pocahontas at King Solomon's Mines -- IN SPACE! Every moment, every bit, every gimmick, every dramatic beat, all done before, right down to The Chosen One having his messianic death and rebirth. Twice for good measure. At one point I stepped away, making the prediction that when I came back, Mighty Whitey would have 1) had his first Scary Encounter With Native Monster, 2) Prove Himself Valuable to Crotchety Scientist, and 3) Meet Native Princess He Would Eventually Marry.

I came back, and there he was with Native Princess, right on cue, after having fought Native Monster.

Honestly, moviegoing public -- if you keep eating up junk, that's all they're going to serve you. -.-

-The Gneech

Comments

[frostdemn.livejournal.com]

Wait, didn't it just come out on DVD? Did you watch it in the theaters?
Wow, how confusing.
But yeah, you're right on that front. I called sooo many tropes from when I watched the film.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

In-laws bought it on DVD.

-TG

[frostdemn.livejournal.com]

Ah, cool. Though I did check movie listings. It apparently IS still in theaters!

[mecampbellesq.livejournal.com]

One of my teachers made the single best statement about Avatar that currently exists: "It's a great film--If you're under 40."

[ccroft.livejournal.com]

I will up the ante and say "If you're under 25".

[dennisthetiger.livejournal.com]

Hey! It's a great film and I'm 35, you insensitive clod! =)

[ccroft.livejournal.com]

You're still not proving megcampbellsq 's teacher wrong...

[rhanlav.livejournal.com]

I suggest Chester A. Bum's review of Avatar.

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

But yeah, it looked pretty, but yeah... meh. Huzzah for the smurfy kitties!

--Salen

Avatar Review

[tamahori]

My summary: Weta Digital made a really great travelogue and demo-real ... I'm not quite if the writer in fact showed up or submitted anything.

-- Brett

[bigtig.livejournal.com]

That being said, I thought it was a fun film. Not every novel has to be James Joyce.

Completely unrelated, I'd be happy if I was one of the tech geeks risking the major shift to real-time CG effects. Everyone is bitching about the plot and not the tech. That is about the best compliment you can get for that.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Not every novel has to be James Joyce.

I agree; but for the level of geekgasming over Avatar to be warranted, it needed to have been a much better movie than it was.

-TG

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

Not every novel has to be a Harlequin Romance in blue fur, either...

[rhanlav.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Everyone knows that the Harlequin Romance novel section of the book store is currently filled with Vampires and Werewolves right now. Damn Romance section co-opted my Sci-Fi/Fantasy books!

[rowyn]

Yay, I'm not the only one underwhelmed!

I think if I hadn't heard so much about the "whitey hero saves the day against evil evil capitalists" trope, I might've been able to ignore that it was a tired retread of ideas I'm not impressed by to start with. As it was -- very meh about it. Was bored for at least two of three hours. z.z

[rhanlav.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, the CG effects are really freakin' sweet, although I just have this really weird problem with the Na'vi, since they only have 2 arms and 2 legs, while every other creature on the planet with limbs seems to have 4 arms/wings/forelegs and 2 legs. From a biological standpoint, it wouldn't make sense that if they were so close biologically that they could USB themselves into each other... why the heck don't they have 4 arms and 2 legs?

But it looked pretty and so hopefully we'll see a lot more awesome CGI to come.

--Salen

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

Their top two appendages fused way back in their evolution, leaving them with 2 arms and 2 legs.

[rhanlav.livejournal.com]

Meh. I don't buy that idea, mostly because my brain found it too distracting. Yes, while watching, my mind was going, "Hey stupid, the second pair of arms/forelegs could have gone away much like snakes and certain fish evolved with moving superfluous limbs", but then the other half of my mind was saying "They just did it because it would be a pain in the A$$ to render and motion cap 4-armed smurfy cats."

So once again, money trumped scientific reasoning. And I found that ironic, because that's what the badguys were doing. And...

You see, this is the problem with the movie. It's so beautifully designed and stuff, you start trying to make it all fit and you fall apart mentally trying to make the square pegs into the round holes instead of just watching the movie and enjoying it like say... Star Wars. Oh sure, you can try to figure out how the Millennium Falcon can travel FTL, but your brain doesn't have time to do that and so you just watch the enjoyable movie and Ooooh and Aaaah a lot.

Plus, I still am going to call shenanigans on the lost/fused limbs thing.

--Salen

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

Seriously, that's the official explanation. I think it's in one of the books about the movie.

[kevinjdog.livejournal.com]

But you're supposed to love the visuals the visuals are all that matter so what if the story's old and lame didn't you love the visuals and the visuals and did we mention the visuals?

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

Dull, dull, dull. Whooptie doo, it looks nice. In five years, we'll be calling it old hat. Hell, I call it that now. It doesn't help that he's been dismissive of the work his animation team did, as well as animation in general.

[canisrufus-uk.livejournal.com]

Avatar does not have the most original, or greatest plot, it's pretty predictable. As a "great work" it certainly has plenty of flaws...

However I have one criteria on judging a movie, and one criteria only: How much did I enjoy watching it?

Some of what are considered to be the higher quality, most thoughtful, well written movies...... I didn't enjoy watching so I rank low. Avatar however I really enjoyed... Yes I could predict pretty easily what was about to happen next, but I don't really care, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. So for me Avatar is a success.

Movies are for entertainment, did it entertain me? Yes. Job done. :P

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't go so far as to call it "junk".

[radbaron.livejournal.com]

Here, this should cheer you up!

http://www.complexactions.com/archive/061.shtml

[suerankin.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed seeing it in the theatre. I enjoyed absorbing the excitement around me. I didn't even mind suffering through 3D glasses that do nothing for me.

Here's the thing: Just about everything has been done before.

I enjoyed how they handled something that's been done before.

[dennisthetiger.livejournal.com]

I figure this. It's the Bwana Devil of our time. It was not great, but it was the first implementation of a really cool technology.