Avatar

[theswede]

Yeah, it was as pretty as I expected, and about as deep as a puddle. A Star Wars for the 21st century, so to speak. Except it had much higher budget. Cameron's attention to detail was evident as usual, as was his haphazard ability to allocate meaningful motivations to characters. Black and white in the extreme, the plot had few redeeming features.

Comments

[10dimensions]

You people are not inspiring me here. Also you made me think of this thing I have been meaning to post. Well worth the watching of every last one of them. ;)

Hiiii! Good to see you, and Happy New Year. :)

[theswede]

Well, as I've grown older I've found that I loved the original Star Wars IV and V (not VI) for mostly nostalgic reasons - although V contains some pretty interesting twists and turns which make it at least passable storytelling. I was hoping the new trilogy would be a more mature take on the saga, but instead it was the opposite - which shouldn't really have surprised me.

Good to see you too, and a Happy New Year and hopefully great continuing of the year to you as well! =)

I concur.

[cefforts]

IV was not a bad film, especially in context.

But V is very good. How many big-budget epics can you see where the good guys relentlessly suffer and lose?

What a pity VI was mosty retreads and Muppets (nt that there's anything wrong with real Muppets, mind you...).

[jhubert]

I dunno. Yes, the plot was formulaic, but very well executed in its details. And the villains came over not nearly as one-dimensional as I had feared.

It's a retelling of old Planetary Romance stories in the same way that the first Indiana Jones movies were a retelling of old Pulp stories.

[theswede]

Never liked Indiana Jones either, for the same reason. Black and white plots seldom appeal to me. Subtlety works much better, and there was precisely none of that in Avatar. But it was very pretty.

[jhubert]

The plot was not subtle - but many of the details were. I liked it that the villains were not cartoonishly evil, for instance. If this movie had been done by others, they might have been intent on committing genocide just for the heck of it, but Selfridge and the Colonel actually try to be somewhat restrained at first, and the big bombing mission only happens when the realize the natives are about to gang up on them.

And many other background details have a lot more internal consistency than it might first seem.

[theswede]

You may note I made this observation in my post. =)

However, it takes a lot more than attention to detail to make a movie enjoyable to me. And one major detail which is completely broken is the evolutionary chain which has lead to the blue humans - because that's what they are, push come to shove.