I thought sitting in a completely crowded theatre for almost 3 hours, wearing ridiculous 3D glasses would be the start of a bad night, but this movie went way beyond my expectations and the 3D glasses actually suited this movie fantastically; a movie containing a world where one wants to enter. They didn’t get in the way at all. You might even want to go dish out the few extra dollars before seeing this movie to buy a decent pair of 3D glasses/goggles to avoid using the standard shoddy theatre ones, but it probably doesn’t even matter — after the first 30 minutes of this movie, I didn’t even notice the people talking to the left of me, or the person putting his feet up on the back of my chair; I was zoned into this movie.
I highly recommend this movie. It’s James Cameron at his best. I know Cameron says he will be turning this movie into a trilogy if it succeeds, but this movie left me fulfilled at the end, something very few movies can do nowadays as I get older and more judgmental with every second of every day……but Cameron did create Terminator 1 then Terminator 2, a progression of true greatness seen rarely in series. Who knows? Go see this one.
I’ve been looking foward to this movie for a long time, and I had a feeling it was gonna be really good, but they make you wear those glasses? How embarassing…
I saw it. Wow! Cameron does an old but good mythic archetype really, really well.
Here are some things that surprised me:
[SPOILER]1) Either Cameron was somehow exposed to FF7 and Spirits Within(the Final Fantasy movie for those that don’t know), or he somehow tapped into some Jungian all-consciousness of mythic truth, but the plot seems like what Square has been beating us over the head with for over a decade now. The planet, Pandora, has a life network of energy that is focused on a giant tree(mana tree, anyone?). When people die, they return to the life energy. And all living things are connected to it; this grants the Naavi(the blue aliens featured in the movie) supernatural abilities at times, the ability to commune with ancestors, as well as a respect for all life. They believe that when the life network of the planet is hurt, they are all hurt.
This could be the movie that finally brings the sensibilities and themes of the FF series mainstream.
Cameron makes an explicit(totally “in-your-face”) attack on the Iraq War. Here’s the setup: An American/Earth corporation needs a rare mineral found in giant quantities in Pandora. This mineral provides energy, and Earth desperately needs it, since we are running out of energy by that point in the future. Unfortunately, the Naavi race live on top of the largest node of the mineral; for years, America has been trying to “Americanize” them through education and the introduction of “blue jeans and beer”, but it hasn’t worked. Thus, the mineral corporation, working with the U.S. military, makes plans to destroy the Naavi.
At one point, the military comes up with a strategy to use a “shock and awe”(and yes, they use that exact phrase!) attack to psychologically traumatize the Naavi into abandoning their village which lies on the mineral node. The general who comes up with the strategy says “we will answer terror with terror” or something to that effect
Anyway, kudos to James Cameron for having the balls to criticize the Iraq War so explicitly.
Going along the same vein, Cameron is not afraid to villainize the military.(He doesn’t say that soldiers are automatically bad; but at the same time, he clearly symbolically shows how the U.S. military can be used to do bad things_. The Earth military in the movie all wear uniforms pretty much identical what the U.S. military now uses, they fly helicopters very similar to current helicopters, and use modern machine guns. The military in the movie pretty much looks the same as our military. Yet they are the villains, and Cameron isn’t afraid to show them doing bad things, as well as dying in gruesome manners.
A few people in the theater I saw it in started clapping at the end, I wouldn’t be surprised if its a huge hit.
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Oh yeah, and you only need the 3-d glasses if you see it in IMAX. But I guess most of you already knew that
Now hurry up and see it so you can comment on what I said.
I’m not interested in seeing a half-Pocahontas, half-dirty hippie, half-intense action movie rolled up into one incredibly long film. I’m sure for people that like impossible romance, explosions, and recycling, Avatar will be a good film. I just don’t really care.
That’s one half too many, SG. (Yeah, I know, it was intentional. :hahaha;)
But seriously, I’m not too interested either, because it sounds like there’s too much symbolism for the story’s own good (and didn’t we have a CGI film about humans abusing aliens this year already?) (Battle For Terra.) I might watch this, but only on DVD.
What I want to know is, when does the real Avatar movie come out? (As in THE LAST AIRBENDER.) Though given its director, I’m worried about it…
I saw it earlier this afternoon and liked it. However, it’s kinda weird to have the last “epic battle” be won by a blue huminoid alien over a warmech using only a bow and a dagger.
Saw it tonight with some friends. I went in expecting it to suck horribly. I was surprisingly entertained. The movie was around 2.5 hours or so, and I didn’t seem to notice.
I saw it last night and had the same experience Crotanks had. Like it was mentioned before, the real star of this movie is the CG. It was seamless. The details were so fine the animated characters looked as real as the flesh and blood actors.
