Avatar [SPOILERS]

[IanKennedy]

Star Wars 1-3 were dire, they had absolutely no redeeming features what so ever.

[Captain Seafort]

Of course they did:

TPM - the big fight with Maul was well done
AotC - Christopher Lee, the Accy, and the parade ground scene with the Imperial March
RotS - as good as the originals - McGregor's entire performance was believable as a precursor to Alec Guinness, the Battle of Coruscant was spectacular (albeit too cluttered to be as good as Endor), and the duel between Vader and Kenobi was better even than that in ESB.

Plus, throughout the whole thing you had Palpatine - the Francis Urquhart of the galaxy. McDiarmid played the role excellently.

[IanKennedy]

Of course they did:

TPM - the big fight with Maul was well done
AotC - Christopher Lee, the Accy, and the parade ground scene with the Imperial March
RotS - as good as the originals - McGregor's entire performance was believable as a precursor to Alec Guinness, the Battle of Coruscant was spectacular (albeit too cluttered to be as good as Endor), and the duel between Vader and Kenobi was better even than that in ESB.

Plus, throughout the whole thing you had Palpatine - the Francis Urquhart of the galaxy. McDiarmid played the role excellently.

Nope, a load of rubbish. Obviously your opinion is different. But they were just pretty daft kids films and nothing in any of them excuses Jar Jar Binks.

[Sonic Glitch]

Of course they did:

TPM - the big fight with Maul was well done
AotC - Christopher Lee, the Accy, and the parade ground scene with the Imperial March
RotS - as good as the originals - McGregor's entire performance was believable as a precursor to Alec Guinness, the Battle of Coruscant was spectacular (albeit too cluttered to be as good as Endor), and the duel between Vader and Kenobi was better even than that in ESB.

Plus, throughout the whole thing you had Palpatine - the Francis Urquhart of the galaxy. McDiarmid played the role excellently.

TPM: Very few if any redeeming Qualities
AotC: Christopher Lee as Count Duku, Duku vs Yoda, the WWII-esque scene where the Clone Army is boarding the ships
RotS: The Music. Anakin vs Obi-Wan was alright. Yoda vs Palpatine.
But they're still not up to par with the original

[kostmayer]

The battle at the end of Star Wars II was pretty good, if a horrible waste of Jedi. They should have just all hung fire for the Clone Army to show up.

Didn't like the battle at the end of Star Wars III - the understated Lightsabre fights in the Original Triology were more to my taste. I did enjoy the most inept rescue I've ever seen though - Dr Who's The End of Time included.

[Sionnach Glic]

TPM - the big fight with Maul was well done

It was visually impressive, aye. But the problem with it was that it was all so artificial looking. I think the music during that fight was the highlight of the movie, personally.

the Battle of Coruscant was spectacular (albeit too cluttered to be as good as Endor), and the duel between Vader and Kenobi was better even than that in ESB.

I didn't particularly like the Battle of Coruscant. Nor the Vader/Kenobi fight at the end. Again, visually impressive. But the main problem was that it went on far longer than it really should have and just seemed to be trying to one-up itself by making them fight in all sorts of bizzare places.

[Tyyr]

When they were swinging at each other on cables 1940's pirate style I just said, "Oh, come ON!"

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

The OT space and lightsaber battles were far superior. More steak and less sizzle with Luke, Vader and Obi-Wan. There was something intangible there that the PT duels lacked.

[Tyyr]

If they'd toned it down just a bit with Obi-Wan and Anakin in the final fight it would have been much better.

[Tyyr]

I've been trying to organize my thougts on Avatar and put them into some kind of order. This first pass will just be a stream of conciousness dump.

FX - Well first off I suppose I should get the good out of the way. Avatar is the most gorgeous movie I have ever seen, probably that anyone has seen, ever. The amount of detail was stunning as was how realistic so much of it was. I often knew I was looking at something that had to be fake (during scenes with actual humans in them) but I couldn't find the usual tell tales in it. If this movie doesn't win the Oscar for best FX then something is very, very wrong.

3D - I'm still not sold on the idea of needing every movie coming down the pipe to be in 3D but Avatar convinced me that it might not be a bad technology to embrace. The 3D was well done enough that I often forgot it was 3D and they managed to restrain themselves and not go for a lot of "Whoa, 3D" moments where someone throws something out of the screen or something.

The Ship - A lot more cluttered than I imagined it. The positionig of the radiators would necessitate a larger super structure to push around other objects in space but I'm still not seeing any reason it couldn't do it. There's actually a lot of questions raised by the info that LH found and the ending of the movie. I'll save those for later though.

Pandora - An interesting place, very interesting. Hexapedal locomotion seems to have become the norm there which makes the Na'vi sort of strange as they only have four limbs. I'm curious what the atmosphere is actually composed of that makes it deadly. That was sort of a nice touch on the part of the film makers really.

Jake Sully - He has a good heart and is gutsy for going to Pandora. How do we know this? Several other characters tell us this. Never the best thing when most of what you know about a character's nature is just told to you by another character, not really shown through. I actually take a bit of exception to everyone who told him how brave and tough he was taking a tour on Pandora. That I kind of wonder about given that Jake signed up to lay in a metal box in the center of the base and only ever actually venture out into Pandora via his perfectly ambulatory avatar. Only during the battle with the colonel was he ever in any actual real danger. I really think that they missed the boat here. Jake's video logs would have made the perfect avenue to develop the character. They were used a bit ot that end but not enough. Frankly I never really felt like I knew Jake as a character beyond the group of cliches and tropes he was built up from.

Avatars - This was something that interested me quite a bit. First off it's said they're made from a combination of human and Na'vi DNA. Well that's pretty damn incredible right there, that two species evolved on two seperate worlds have compatible DNA. little pink/blue babies be far behind? Also, take a look at their faces. Most of the Avatars have very human faces, Jake's was far more Na'vi like. A new generation of Avatars or an attempt to move them towards a more Na'vi appearence to facilitate relations?

Grace - I liked her, though the malfed up her growth some I think. She actually had a nice character arc. The only part out of place was after Jake's initial run in his hospital gown she's smiling as she tosses him the fruit. Given her overall belief that he's an idiot and he's just done something very very stupid greeting him warmly seemed an odd reaction. Move that fruit tossing scene to the point after they get him back from the first sortie and it would make a bit more sense. Still, I liked her. Pity that after Quaritch busted up the love fest she served no more purpose than to demonstrate how you can stuff a human in an Avatar body and VOILA! Instant furry dream sequence. One of the most fascinating things that no one in the movie makes any mention of, directly at least, is Grace's relationship with the Na'vi. It's obvious she made some inroads including schooling them in English. Also when she is allowed to come back to hometree most of the residents seem happy to see her, not the general contempt they all show to Jake. Finally, when Hometree burns and both she and Jake get disconnected hard the Na'vi load her avatar up in a sling and pull it with them but leave Jake in the burning ash of the tree. To me it all says that Grace had a very close relationship with the Na'vi, not to the bang the chief's daughter level of Jake, but pretty up there and more well regarded by them all than Jake. Hell, they were willing to sit around the glowy tree and sing Kumbiya to download her into her Avatar. These people seemed to absolutely love the woman, most of the time. TVTropes is useful though in that someone pointed out she tended to be happier and more upbeat when she was in cat/elf form than human, which looking back is actually right. Now if she just identified more with her blue body than her human or if it's just a coincidence I dunno but if its not a coincidence it makes for an interesting bit of characterization. In fact it could have been a good Grace/Jake bonding point. "I'm starting to wonder which world is real and which is a dream." "Me too."

Colonel Quaritch - Sure he's the villian, but if you don't have a little bit of a man crush on him you're a liar. I know he's as much a group of cliches and tropes as the rest of the crew but unlike most of them who phoned it in he seemed to pour everything he had into every line. You know its cliche and dopey half the time but it's delivered with such zeal and conviction that you just don't give a shit. When I speak of "If you're going to do something that's already been done you'd better either do it really well or...." this is what I mean about doing it really well. I'm man enough to admit that when the gunship was on fire and crashing and he's climbing into his suit ON FIRE then jumps to the ground, I had a little wood. In the end I really was rooting for him as opposed to Jake. Not really on the kill Neytiri thing, hate to see a perfectly good piece of ass go to waste, but putting a round or two in to the traitor would have sealed the deal. Seriously, the guy is the evil villain of the movie and as she's fighting the film's "hero" I'm wanting to shout, "KICK HIS BLUE ASS!" He's still a badass, the only character in the movie who's next action/line I was always eager to see.

The Operation - Something I was surprised by was the size of the mining operation. Based off the ship's stats I was under the impression that the upper limit on unobtanium shipments was 300 to 350 tons per year and a correspondingly small mining operation. If its in some ore form I'd expect what we saw could have dug up 300 tons in a shift. The other possibility is that unobtanium is a trace element, only a few parts per million or even less. Of course some of the unfortunate implications of the ship's stats were glossed over anyways in the film so I'm starting to wonder if those stats were official or what. The size of the operation gives me the impression that this place had been up and running for a long while. A decade or two at a minimum, probably more.

Norm and Trudy - Marginalized side kicks. They're there they get the occasional line and... I had to look up their names when the movie was over. Norm just seems to be there because they thought Grace and Jake alone didn't work well and they needed a third. I have a sneaking suspicion that more could have been done with Norm in perhaps making him a bit of a mentor for Jake on the Avatar program but that would likely have been more for the book than anything else. Trudy's defection was also very weak. There's a great big gulf between "I don't wanna kill the cat people," to "I wanna kill all the humans and alienate my only ride off this death world." If anything she was more of a plot device than a character. When she died what was obviously meant as a gut wrenching end passed with barely a "meh."

The Vortex - Conveniently knocks out advanced sensors, leaves everything else electronic alone, including the avatars' controls. Go figure.

The Na'vi - What the fuck was Cameron thinking? They're no an alien culture, they're Hollywood Indians. They even dressed them like Hollywood Indians and gave them Hollywood Indian haircuts. WTF man? I get the relations between the situation with the Na'vi and the situation of the American Indians in the 1800's. I really do, but I don't need you to dress up the other worldly aliens like Indians and have them act like aliens to get it, I really don't. I don't mind the cat people thing or even that they glow (bioluminescence was pretty firmly established as a common Pandoran trait) or have tails. I find it amusing that apparently Cameron's method of refining the look of Neytiri was to ask people, "Would you bone her?" and tweaking her until most people said yes. I am one of those people. Still, sadly, hotdog down a hallway. The girl's ten feet tall and I apparently lack the equipment that would let her mind rape me.

The Plot - Cliched, Trope Storm, phoned in, pick one they all fit. The most depressing part of it is that you can see the potential to make this something more. To take the bones of Pocahontas in SPAAAAACE but put some meat on it, do something new with it, and yet the movie consistently fell right back on the same tired cliches with no hint of innovating with the plot. A little look at the original scripts and ideas he had for the movie shows quite a few interesting ideas and scenes that could have moved the film in the right direction, and a few bizarre ones, but mostly a desire to not do Pocahontas. He still made Pocahontas though. The script is a joke, everything is telegraphed half an hour in advance, you know what most of the characters will say before they speak, and the whole photocopying the script to Pocahontas carries so much truth its scary. The one place where it's given me real pause is the ending. The Na'vi achieved a costly victory over a small force of mercenaries using mostly small arms. Given that you can be sure the next wave of humans will be armed with anti-tank weapons and far messier gear that will neutralize the Navi. Hell, they can just bomb them from orbit if they really get the urge. Given that the operation on Pandora is a 1.2+ trillion a year operation, which would make that mining operation more productive than 80% of the countries on the planet, the corporation will be back. At best the humans will just go somewhere else on Pandora and set up shop again, solving the Omitaka's problems by dumping them on another tribe. At worst the humans are not amused and return with a kilogram of weaponized anti-matter. In between those extremes are varying degrees of "everyone dies." To make matters worse, if you take the ship's stats at face value there are at least 5, maybe as many as 7 more ships carrying men and material from Earth to Pandora. They'll all need to refuel and resupply and who knows if the Na'vi will allow it. The Na'vi might have a 6 to 7 year window of peace from the sky people. At the end of that they could very well be exterminated. So the second movie will either be real depressing or really shitty.

The Ending - Did anyone else feel distinctly uncomfortable at the end? I realize that at this point in the movie I'm supposed to see the humans as total monsters and Jake and the Na'vi as paragons of virtue but I just never felt that great watching the final battle. I guess I'm still daft enough to have sympathized with the humans. After all, Quaritch and Selfridge were running the show, the grunts were following orders. Now you can always say that's no excuse but mind you these men and women are stuck on a world over four light years from home. The company they are working for not only controls everything human related on planet but also controls the ships that you depend upon to get home, all communications between the outpost and Earth, and has euthanasia in its standard medical procedures. The company doesn't even have to suggest that the grunts might want to do as they're told as the implied precariousness of their position pretty much does the job for them. Sure, you can pull the contentious objector card, but then you might find yourself getting bumped from the ship for the next rotation or two, or maybe you get sick and the doctor's decide you're too sick to treat. Even the possibility this can happen would be enough to snap even the most recalcitrant person in line. On top of this for most of the base personnel they were threatened with a growing force of Na'vi they were told was intent on busting in and killing them all. Now dismiss that if you'd like but these people don't have help just over the next hill, it's 9 months away at best in the next ship, or 7 years away on Earth. There's no real "fall back" position. I'm not claiming the humans were blameless in all of this but it doesn't really let me go "Rah Rah, Jake, kill'em all!" especially when he's machine gunning down fellow humans.

[Nickswitz]

The Ending - Did anyone else feel distinctly uncomfortable at the end? I realize that at this point in the movie I'm supposed to see the humans as total monsters and Jake and the Na'vi as paragons of virtue but I just never felt that great watching the final battle. I guess I'm still daft enough to have sympathized with the humans. After all, Quaritch and Selfridge were running the show, the grunts were following orders. Now you can always say that's no excuse but mind you these men and women are stuck on a world over four light years from home. The company they are working for not only controls everything human related on planet but also controls the ships that you depend upon to get home, all communications between the outpost and Earth, and has euthanasia in its standard medical procedures. The company doesn't even have to suggest that the grunts might want to do as they're told as the implied precariousness of their position pretty much does the job for them. Sure, you can pull the contentious objector card, but then you might find yourself getting bumped from the ship for the next rotation or two, or maybe you get sick and the doctor's decide you're too sick to treat. Even the possibility this can happen would be enough to snap even the most recalcitrant person in line. On top of this for most of the base personnel they were threatened with a growing force of Na'vi they were told was intent on busting in and killing them all. Now dismiss that if you'd like but these people don't have help just over the next hill, it's 9 months away at best in the next ship, or 7 years away on Earth. There's no real "fall back" position. I'm not claiming the humans were blameless in all of this but it doesn't really let me go "Rah Rah, Jake, kill'em all!" especially when he's machine gunning down fellow humans.

This I actually liked, because i think the point of it is that there is no "good" or "bad" guy, there are people trying to survive. That may not have been what they were meaning to get at, but that's what I got out of it. Which, although it was a little awkward, I liked the fact that you realized both sides did horrible things to advance their cause, and that neither side was in the "right".

[Reliant121]

The thing for me is that a lot of what Tyyr has said is true.

But, especially on the cliche bit, I really dont care. I want to enjoy watching it, not enjoy comparing it to everything else in the world. Perhaps it is just a personal difference.

[Tyyr]

This I actually liked, because i think the point of it is that there is no "good" or "bad" guy, there are people trying to survive. That may not have been what they were meaning to get at, but that's what I got out of it. Which, although it was a little awkward, I liked the fact that you realized both sides did horrible things to advance their cause, and that neither side was in the "right".

I agree, that would have been a very good way to end the movie, the problem is that I don't think that's the way it was meant to go. I get the impression that I was supposed to be sitting there cheering Jake and his furry friends on as they killed the humans. If I wasn't then the final battle was a significant departure from the humans evil, Na'vi good message the movie had been cramming down our throats to that point.

The thing for me is that a lot of what Tyyr has said is true.

But, especially on the cliche bit, I really dont care. I want to enjoy watching it, not enjoy comparing it to everything else in the world. Perhaps it is just a personal difference.

Probably. When I watched Avatar I was very conscious the entire way that I'd seen this movie many times before. Sure the female lead was blue instead of brown, and the male lead didn't have blond hair but it was Pocahontas in space. And Pocahontas was already a cliche ridden mess so this was a cliche ridden copy of a cliche ridden mess. It was gorgeous to look at but like a cheerleader there was no one home upstairs. I couldn't just turn off my brain and enjoy it because every time I turned around the script was telegraphing itself, someone was phoning in a line, or they were trotting out another cliche. It never stopped sucking long enough for me to get in the right mood.

[Graham Kennedy]

If they'd toned it down just a bit with Obi-Wan and Anakin in the final fight it would have been much better.

That applies to a LOT of things in the SW prequels, and indeed to a lot of other movies. Lucas seems to think that every single thing has to be ramped up to the maximum possible level. In his mind the best lightsabre battle is the one where the guys move as fast as possible, make as many moves as possible, and are on the most difficult ground possible, and so on and so on. The best ship battle is the one with 500 ships and 50,000 fighters all shooting at once...

Nobody seems to realise that if you go far enough down that road you just end up with an incomprehensible mess. Remember when Vader taunted Luke about Leia in Return of the Jedi, and Luke lost it? No finesse, just a scream of anger and then wailing on Vader, smashing him again and again and again, BATTERING him down with pure rage. That worked, because it reflected what Luke was feeling at the time, how the prospect of Vader going after Leia had pushed him over that line that he'd been trying not to cross.

There's not one lightsabre battle in the prequels that offers a single moment like that. It's all just a meaningless blur.

[Reliant121]

I seem to have a distinct ability to just switch off my brain and go "ohhh pretty pictures" when watching a film.