"He started reading philosophy. He devoted more time to communing with nature. 'I would go out into the woods and spend time there hiking,' he says. '"Avatar' made me feel like I could sit out in a forest and just be.'... Though 'Avatar' altered the course of his whole life — arguably more than even James Cameron’s — he doesn’t really think there’s anything that special about the movie. It was just the thing that happened to cross his path at the moment when he was already searching.... The story of 'Avatar,' however hacky it may be, still suggests that humanity can save itself in the face of rapacious profiteering. This is something we have a moral imperative to keep believing....."
Writes Jamie Lauren Keiles in "'Avatar' and the Mystery of the Vanishing Blockbuster/It was the highest-grossing film in history, but for years it was remembered mainly for having been forgotten. Why?" (NYT).
I've never seen "Avatar," but I am a huge fan of the HBO show "How to With John Wilson," and I feel satisfied — and more — with his plot summary:
John Wilson on the plot of Avatar is some of the funniest stuff I've seen in a long time pic.twitter.com/jriI8s8IJV
— David Neary (@DeusExCinema) January 3, 2022
On the actual episode of Wilson's show, he goes on to meet a group of Avatar fans/believers, and they turn out to be surprisingly wonderful.
Here's this on Reddit: "I am the co-founder of the AVATAR fan group featured in S2:E5, "How to Remember Your Dreams", ask me anything!"
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When I saw Avatar it seemed like a modern sci-fi version of the Pathfinder, just rehashed Noble Savage stuff, 19th century romanticism.
But I guess if you don't read much you'd never notice.
The story of 'Avatar,' however hacky it may be, still suggests that humanity can save itself in the face of rapacious profiteering.
That’s the message?
[Avatar] was the highest-grossing film in history, but for years it was remembered mainly for having been forgotten.
Success.
It was an unapologetic remake of dances with wolves. The story is identical and some of the dialogue borders on plagiarism.
he doesn’t really think there’s anything that special about the movie. It was just the thing that happened to cross his path at the moment when he was already searching
I started reading this excerpt rolling my eyes, but this passage rescued it.
I feel the same way about Bill Murray's The Razor's Edge. It's one of the most personally important movies I've ever seen. Looking back, I can recognize that it's a flawed movie--Bill Murray's clown act was cringy--but as a kid growing up in suburban Cleveland before the internet, it was my first exposure to a different way of seeing reality. It changed my understanding of what is possible and what it means to live a good life.
Avatar used as its plot an ancient trope, where the backward but spiritually superior natives are saved from colonial white men by a rebellious white man who joins their tribe and leads them to victory.
It is demeaning to the natives and not that fun to watch. Hence, Avatar made a splash with its animation and left not a ripple because of its lame story.
Avatar was weapons-grade stupid but had some amazing special effects. The plot revolves around an "element" called, (yes really) "Unobtanium".
Do they offer other examples of 'vanishing blockbusters'? As I recall Avatar had the benefit of a great weekend to open and the competition gave it a wide berth, they started the trend of cheating a bit with 'early showings' before Friday night, and Cameron was still 'King of the world!'
...Avatar was also hyped as an 'important' movie, i.e. politically advantageous for lefties (just like Borat). In addition to new habits post covid I think half the country* knows to avoid lecture movies...
(*a bit more than half, actually...)
Sure, let's return to the days of the noble savage, when the life expectancy is 40, where child death is routine, where slavery is nit just lawful, but required, where nobody gad bothered to invent the wheel, where women are both property AND do all the work. And where we do human sacrifices.
This is the Green Agenda.
I never saw it upon it's initial release. I purposefully avoided it on cable tv, mainly because I was aware that much of the movie's power came from the 3D presentation. Recently it was back in theaters for a short run and I finally saw it. I'm glad I waited. The story is fine - nothing ground breaking - but the 3D integration is astounding. Nothing I've seen in the format matches what Cameron was able to do, especially when so much of the film is created in a computer after the fact.
As the kids say these days.. not my jam
'Avatar' got huge box office because it had spectacular visual effects. And it promptly dropped into the memory hole because the story was cliched and forgettable: 'The Smurfs Dance with Wolves in Ferngully, the Last Rainforest.'
I've never seen it either, but in boomer terms it seems to be ultimate Disney (wild creatures in a forest/jungle are superior to us, or at least can teach us some damn good lessons), ultimate JFK (we can do imperialism in space, but this time it will be good rather than evil), and of course a healthy dose of tech that doesn't exist yet. The most fanatical Swiftian projector would say: if our tech becomes more extreme, with almost unbelievably cruel experiments inflicted on a lot of people, violating most or all traditional taboos, then we increase our chances of bringing about a utopia that is also extreme. The problem is that if "everyone" gets the idea that a kind of arbitrary expression of will is the path to making everything better, then any objective measure of progress, including the scientist's pursuit of truth, becomes extremely questionable.
Actually Avatar's road to highest grossing film was a long burn. It's opening weekend was big, but not crazy huge. It held well its second weekend (Christmas) and played solid for at least a month. Unlike most modern blockbusters, it didn't make a good deal of its money opening weekend. It has a box office multiplier over 10, which is insane.
I remember when the trailer came out people started to poo poo it because they said the effects looked bad. There was actually a lot of negative going into the film release. But audience is saw it and quickly word of mouth spread that it was worth seeing in the theater.
"He started reading philosophy" never means Descartes, Hume or Kant.
My understanding of the plot is that the original screenplay had some environmental themes, but was more subtle and creative with it. Fox execs asked Cameron to tone it down. In a fit of pique (Pretty in-character from what I have heard of him), he made it as ham fisted as he could instead.
It seems clear that he could give a fig about the story- it was all about the technical 3D technology as far as he is concerned.
The sociopolitical path of following Green deals to flatline and a gray world.
I think I watched Avatar because it came out around the first time I owned a Blue Ray player….. streaming killed Blue Ray for us. Didn’t like the plot.
Never saw it.
His Oscars probably prove me wrong, but I think Cameron is a hack director...
mikee said...
Avatar used as its plot an ancient trope, where the backward but spiritually superior natives are saved from colonial white men by a rebellious white man who joins their tribe and leads them to victory.
It is demeaning to the natives and not that fun to watch. Hence, Avatar made a splash with its animation and left not a ripple because of its lame story.
Exactly what I was going to say.
Rather the same way Titanic was just a stupid teen romance story wrapped up in cool effects.
Never saw Avatar. Never had an ounce of an inkling to see Avatar.
To quote Paul Newman in "Nobody's Fool" when asked if he'd like some tea, "No. Not now, not ever."
I am huge James Cameron fan, but Avatar was breathtakingly stupid and vapid. Had I been alone in the theater watching it, I would have walked out midway through.
Sam Worthington is a dull actor, and the cat people were hard to tell apart.
..but the 3D integration is astounding.
As I recall I saw it in a theater with new tech 3d that added like 5 bucks to the ticket. That helped goose the box office as well...
I tuned out of Avatar about halfway through. It was just annoying. There is a major setup issue that Cameron didn't deal with. On Earth, all mammal species are Quadra pods. On Pandora, only Navi are quadra pods, everything else is hexa pods. How do you explain that? The best I can do is speculate the Navi are the result of an original Shake and Bake bioengineering colony that lost contact with Earth and went native.
They want to be real-life Na'vi? That's pretty simple. Wear nothing but a loincloth in Wisconsin in the winter. They'll be blue in no time at all.
Saw the movie once. It was about an hour too long.
The scenery was terrific. The plot sucked.
One of the leaders of AIM, who was at Wounded Knee when FBI snipers went all Ruby Ridge on them, remarked that Europeans had had the same thing done to them that they did to the Indians, it just happened a lot longer ago, and that many still longed for the life that was taken from them. Avatar is a way to talk about this without bringing on the wrath of the woke.
Unobtainium, A 2" X 4" X 18" piece of 416 stainless after 4 on Friday.
What Jim said.
"One of the leaders of AIM, who was at Wounded Knee when FBI snipers went all Ruby Ridge on them, remarked that Europeans had had the same thing done to them that they did to the Indians,"
Indeed. The tribes the Romans fought were without exception warlike, brutal, merciless and often ate those that died in battle. Much like our Native Americans.
"One of the leaders of AIM, who was at Wounded Knee when FBI snipers went all Ruby Ridge on them, remarked that Europeans had had the same thing done to them that they did to the Indians,"
Indeed. The tribes the Romans fought were without exception warlike, brutal, merciless and often ate those that died in battle. Much like our Native Americans.
Saw it on the original release. Given that I consider Cameron’s two Terminator movies to be some of the best SF filmmaking around, and also liked “Aliens” and “The Abyss”, I thought I’d try it, despite passing on “Titanic”. The good - best use of 3D ever, even better in that regard than “Gravity”. The bad - everything else. The ugly - I practically had to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from guffawing long and loudly during the “Tree of Souls” scenes; some of the most unintended hilarious stuff .I’ve ever seen.
But the whole movie was clueless. The essence of drama is for the protagonist to have to make a hard choice, and why wouldn’t Sully join the Na’vi? He gets legs, status, power, and the girl, with minimal repercussions, no hard choice at all. Combined with the utterly hackneyed rest of the plot…except for the 3D visuals, it’s just trash.
#1835 Avatar (2009)
It's really an amazing achievement, with spectacular imagery. On the other hand, the acting is really bad. I think James Cameron has decided that he doesn’t like humanity any more. So he’s not going to pay any attention to his actors at all. If you want to sum up this movie, the CGI is amazing and the people suck. In fact, Cameron’s eco-politics are so sappy and anti-human that it's kind of hard to enjoy the damn thing. This movie does for humanity what Aliens does for aliens. Kill the human slime!
I got kinda freaked out by the aliens plugging into their rides. They'd plug into giant birds, they'd plug into trees, they'd plug into anything. They were really promiscuous about where they would stick it. If it was me, I'd be worried about some kinda avatar v.d. Or, I dunno, a computer virus. I mean, he was going from flying dragon to plant to girlfriend to flying dragon to girlfriend to plant. Put on an alien condom, at least.
You'd think James Cameron's head would explode as he makes his 3-D geek boy movie about how technology sucks and we ought to go back to nature. I think if he went camping once in a while, stepped on a beehive or got ants in his pants, he wouldn't be so gung-ho about life in a tree. One of my earliest memories is when I sat down on an anthill. I remember it cause ants suck, man. I also remember sitting in our man-made bathtub, using our human-devised water distribution system to pump water through the faucet and get those ants off my ass. If I was living in James Cameronville, I wouldn't be allowed to shower. I'd have to learn to live in harmony with my new ant buddies. Oh sure, I could squash 'em, but I'd have to issue like a zillion apologies.
People are binging on The Office and NCIS.
Nobody wants to watch a cribbed preachy woke misinterpretation of Eloi and Morlocks.
Movie reviewers are woke liars. So are many parents.
I saw parallels between Avatar and the3-D western Hondo. As you might expect the Duke came out on top. Better female lead,too.
I saw parallels between Avatar and the3-D western Hondo. As you might expect the Duke came out on top. Better female lead,too.
I saw parallels between Avatar and the3-D western Hondo. As you might expect the Duke came out on top. Better female lead,too.
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