Holy Shit! Over $760M worldwide already? After only 2 weeks? I thought the studios were crazy to give him $300 M for a movie, but I guess that shows what I know.
ComingSoon.Net is now reporting its at 1.02 BILLION and has surpassed TheDarkKnight's total gross and it will easily overtake Transformers 2's domestic intake in a week.
I saw it tonight. It's a pretty damn entertaining 2.5 hours. The action scenes are directed well. Visually, it's stunning. Overall a good movie. My one gripe - furries. The protagonists are a bunch of hideous big blue anthropomorphic kitty cats. With speech characteristics resembling a mishmash of amerindian and islander stereotypes. And the guy that played the corporate boss, he did as good of a job in that role as Jeremy Piven would have. Bravo!
I just saw it tonight. From a technical standpoint, it's absolutely jaw-dropping. Not revolutionary but definitely taking existing technology and moving it forward. Seeing the movie in 2D would definitely be a disservice. The story, well... I think saying that it was uninspired, unoriginal and utterly predictable would probably be more than kind. There are some ideas lifted from Cameron's own 1995 screenplay Strange Days (which was directed by his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow) and a myriad of other stories that tackled the themes much more effectively. As I was leaving the theatre, I overheard a 14-year-old girl say to her boyfriend: "I had no idea the story would be so good!" which goes to show that (a) nothing under the sun is new and (b) teenage kids must not read books or watch classic movies. The one thing that really bothered me was James Horner's score. There were three or four notes repeated throughout the film that were certainly taken wholesale from Titanic's "My Heart Will Go On." I expected Celine Dion to jump out in glorious 3D at any moment and start thumping her chest. Finally, I'm not sure how the Na'vi are ultimately going to be victorious because, to steal a line from a far far better James Cameron movie, "I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
I can also see why the movie is making so much $$$. Not sure about other countries, but here in Canada if you want to see Avatar in IMAX or digital 3D it costs you at least $5 more than a regular movie ticket. What a scam!
In LA, I had to fork out $32 to get two tickets for Avatar, and not even in 3D/IMAX. Worst waste of money and time in quite a while, but my lady wanted to see it.
Well, there clearly aren't enough pro-imperialism movies out there. At any rate it's not the American government and army in the movie. It's a private corporation and mercs, something that shouldn't surprise anyone who's ever seen a James Cameron movie. There's no sense whining anyway. Quaritch was the best character in the whole movie. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was rooting for him. The guy was so badass he didn't even give a shit about whether he could breathe or not.
There seems to be a distinct argument that Avatar puts Americans in a bad light. I submit that if a faction attempts attempts to take away the land or resources of an indigenous population, as has been done in the past, then that faction is evil, regardless of nationality. To assert that Americans, or in the case of Avatar, an American sounding corporation, working with American sounding mercenaries, are incapable of moral turpitude, is a delusion to which no sensible person would subscribe. Greed will drive humans to the worst extremes. History has amply demonstrated that this has happened before. It will happen again.
The "Sky People" are all from a corporation. One that went to great expense to extract the UnObtanium, which was a venture that ultimately failed. Coming back to nuke'em from orbit would add yet another great expense to their previous failure. I don't see the shareholders allowing that. There--plausible explanation!
no time to read this whole monster thread so the point might have been made BUT.... American writers writing for a (primarily) American audience wouldn't be likely to attempt the point that it's only "other" governments that are bad anyway, quite apart from the intended message.
By the way, if anyone is interested Camerons original scriptment for Avatar from the 90's is available here: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/14294813/Avatar-Scriptment-by--James-Cameron I read the first dozen pages or so and it gives more background on what is happening on Earth, along with an explanation for the floating mountains. edit: Also establishes that unobtainium is just a nickname that has stuck over time, it's actually some form of room temperature superconductor.
Well, I just watched it for the second time, this time IMAX 3d. Very impressive. I found myself thinking about grabbing things floating "close" to me. The world was deep and detailed, Story and "message" aside, go watch it in greater detail.
How patriarchal. Could it be that the Na'vi actually have--gasp!--some kind of flaw in their society? 'Cause they sure looked ideal(ized) to me...
Americans have attacked and destroyed indigenous peoples in the name of profit. Having done so once, it is not unreasonable to assume that it can happen again, particularly in a nation so influenced by private enterprise as the United States. That said, had the company in Avatar been forced by the Terran government to use actual military forces for protection, as opposed to paid mercenaries, we would not be having this discussion.
I don't think so at all. The pre-arranged marriage that TKO mentioned, and from what I saw, the Na'vi were very eager to go to war and disregard the warnings of Jake and Grace. After a second viewing, I noticed that the Na'vi recognized Jake was human from the very start. Both Tsu'tey and Ney'tiri were about to kill him at the begining of the movie and this is why. When she took him to the tribe elders after the "sign," her father said that he smelled of "sky people" and the stench was polluting the area or something like that... So you can add racists to that as well. They were far from idealized, IMHO.
That was one of my big complaints with Avatar: that the Na'vi aren't a very realistic tribal society. For starters, they seem to have no dissenters in their ranks. The things the human beings could offer them are of absolutely no interest to ANY of the members of the tribe. There's no Na'vi who says "Maybe we should trade with the humans, or consider their offers." Not a one. Given that there's a tribal hierarchy, don't you think at least some of the Na'vi would be disgruntled and open to changes in their society? Of course, thanks to the contrived "living planet" BS, I guess they don't need anything: transportation is conveniently provided by telepathic connection to flying beasts, magic trees provide all the knowledge they need, and, presumably, their eco-god doesn't let them get sick or suffer natural disasters. So, no need for education or technological development. Convenient. Social development isn't a problem, either. The Na'vi seem to all be happy, healthy, literate, and free of overt racism, sexism, brutality, paternalism, backwardness, ignorance, religious fundamentalism, environmental destructiveness, etc. In other words, the Na'vi are all the things tribes usually aren't. It's all a cheat. Cameron has to make these creatures PERFECT in order to make his story hold together. Once realistic flaws are admitted, then the story COULDN'T be so black and white. In reality, the perfect is not on offer.
That's a lie. That is not now and never has been policy. We liberate. We don't conquer and plunder. Even in the best argument for your case--the conflict with American Indians--it is not nearly so cut and dried. That's an example of what has happened throughout human history: the migration of one group into an area inhabited by another. Americans didn't invent it and they didn't do it for "profit." They did it because they needed space to live. I'd also point out that the Indians are not "destroyed;" there are more American Indians alive today than 500 years ago. I dispute it's EVER happened. Name some examples for me, would you? Sure we would. I'd still call it what it is: a lie.
I saw it and I hated it, James Cameron can't create a charater with more than 2 dimensions, the Na'vi and Pandora are flawed by thier "perfection", and i'm tired of "The white man will rape and destroy everything without thought" message. James Cameron, PLEASE go into obscurity for the rest of your life, you sicken me
It has been interesting reading through the scriptment, because it gives more insight into things that have happened before the start of what we are seeing. Some obviously were open in the past, as Grace had a school at some point where lots of them learnt English. At some point the fight happened which ended that and polarised both sides.
Got to see it yesterday, and, given Paladin's review, with an eye for any modern allegories. I was impressed. The story is fine - nothing groundbreaking, just a lot of unoriginal bits knitted together quite well into something entertaining. Visually it's amazing. If someone could manage the same effort in scriptwriting as so many people like Cameron do to the visuals we'd be amidst a new renaissance... Now I didn't see any of the anti-Americanisms, I saw anti-business, which is hardly new for Cameron - in Alien, Weyland were more interested in the xenomorph than the Nostromo's crew, in T2 it was a company that led to Skynet and the fall of man. I could probably find a more examples if I could be arsed. Cameron has a theme on evil, incompetent or uncaring capitalists. And businesses doing dodgy dealing is hardly something new, or limited to the US - the Chinese baby milk scandal, Dutch diamond dealers being complicit with Charles Taylor in removing whole villages in Sierra Leone... Business itself it ethically neutral, but the people engaging in it need not be. That's all I saw here, a business bringing in hired muscle and a military leader with hard-on for Pandora since it welcomed him with an attempted decapitation and loyalty to a company that pieced him together, as the bad guys. And they were American in much the same way a Bollywood version would feature Indians.
Meh, it's a movie If you want realism, you go watch a documentary! Cameron went for stereotypes and archetypes here, no subtlety. As for the Na'vi, my take is they're the remnants of a society that achieved all they could and, either as a whole or as a subset, bio-engineered themselves as well as a world that would provide all they need as they regressed. Once you've charted every star, wrestled every last answer out of the universes mysteries, solved every social ill, what does a race do then? Progress is finite, so vast that we cannot see the boundaries yet, but with each new improvement, each new technology, and each new answer we get closer to finding the edges of what we can achieve. The Na'vi, after reaching those edges, built a world their species could retire to. A galactic Old Folks Home if you will, they designed it to be hostile, lest anyone decided to get nosy, and networked so it so could escalate a defence is necessary via a Vaal type system. It works for eons, they fully regress into a tribal society, and then one day along come the humans who have found a use for unobtanium and are willing to risk being being skewered by the natives, or being viewed as a mobile buffet to the lifeforms, in exchange for lucre. It'd explain things like the flying mountains (perhaps Slartibartfast got bored of fjords...), and how the world is so ideally suited for the Na'vi when it's incredibly hostile to everything else. I would hope Cameron was angling for something similar to that anyway.
I just can't help myself, it the way I'm wired, but does anyone else find it deliciously ironic that Cameron owes his existence to bloated, excessive hollywood film making? Capitalism created the technology that brought his world to life. A news break just commented that "no movie but Titanic has made more money". I know that making movies isn't drilling for oil, but goddamn, he's not giving away tickets for free.
It sure is funny reading back through the start of this thread. Avatar is now at 1.3 billion dollars worldwide after 24 days and is 500 million behind Titanic. Seems pretty inevitable now that it is going to take the #1 spot.
It is a sad reflection on humanity that something as bad as 'Titanic' can be at #1. Lets hope it gets beat as soon as possible.
