saw it in 3D and the film was long but great. The blue ppl remind me of native americans. This is one of the better movies where they mix real actors and CG together.

 

Agree, a must-see in 3D. In fact, I think a game-changer for the format. I think this will be the movie against which all future 3D movies are measured.

 

Well, the whole idea of interstellar travel is what I found more implausible than even the rotor craft. I think that the craft looked the way they did because the film was trying to portray a Vietnam-era look to it...a war in which a superior Western-style power is defeated by an insurgency. Of course the war theme was somewhat secondary to the whole Gaia motif.

 

[QUOTE=triman54,Jan 4 2010, 09:08 PM] Well, the whole idea of interstellar travel is what I found more implausible than even the rotor craft.

 

Unfortunately, Halo came out well after this movie was conceived. I found the spaceship thing to be particularly well done, and amazingly timely considering there was an article talking about how we might get to Mars in a third of the time using solar energy (converted into something, I forget).

Again, if anyone's going to criticize it for copying Dances with Wolves, they might want to consider that there have been dozens of books and movies about imperialism (earliest of which might be Heart of Darkness). The techniques used to tell the well known story/message were pretty unique in my opinion.

Oh, by the way, it became the second best selling movie of all time last week, and revenue increased this week if Sunday estimates are correct. It's pretty much a lock in for highest grossing movie of all time.

Edit: For the Mars article, it was ion propulsion that uses electricity that's been converted from solar energy.

 

That whole, "Dances with Wolves" argument is SO short sighted, and everyone says it like they came up with it.

Anyone see this in the NY Times?

The Messiah Complex

By DAVID BROOKS
Every age produces its own sort of fables, and our age seems to have produced The White Messiah fable.

This is the oft-repeated story about a manly young adventurer who goes into the wilderness in search of thrills and profit. But, once there, he meets the native people and finds that they are noble and spiritual and pure. And so he emerges as their Messiah, leading them on a righteous crusade against his own rotten civilization.

Avid moviegoers will remember “A Man Called Horse,” which began to establish the pattern, and “At Play in the Fields of the Lord.” More people will have seen “Dances With Wolves” or “The Last Samurai.”

Kids have been given their own pure versions of the fable, like “Pocahontas” and “FernGully.”

It’s a pretty serviceable formula. Once a director selects the White Messiah fable, he or she doesn’t have to waste time explaining the plot because everybody knows roughly what’s going to happen.

The formula also gives movies a little socially conscious allure. Audiences like it because it is so environmentally sensitive. Academy Award voters like it because it is so multiculturally aware. Critics like it because the formula inevitably involves the loincloth-clad good guys sticking it to the military-industrial complex.

Yet of all the directors who have used versions of the White Messiah formula over the years, no one has done so with as much exuberance as James Cameron in “Avatar.”

“Avatar” is a racial fantasy par excellence. The hero is a white former Marine who is adrift in his civilization. He ends up working with a giant corporation and flies through space to help plunder the environment of a pristine planet and displace its peace-loving natives.

The peace-loving natives — compiled from a mélange of Native American, African, Vietnamese, Iraqi and other cultural fragments — are like the peace-loving natives you’ve seen in a hundred other movies. They’re tall, muscular and admirably slender. They walk around nearly naked. They are phenomenal athletes and pretty good singers and dancers.

The white guy notices that the peace-loving natives are much cooler than the greedy corporate tools and the bloodthirsty U.S. military types he came over with. He goes to live with the natives, and, in short order, he’s the most awesome member of their tribe. He has sex with their hottest babe. He learns to jump through the jungle and ride horses. It turns out that he’s even got more guts and athletic prowess than they do. He flies the big red bird that no one in generations has been able to master.

Along the way, he has his consciousness raised. The peace-loving natives are at one with nature, and even have a fiber-optic cable sticking out of their bodies that they can plug into horses and trees, which is like Horse Whispering without the wireless technology. Because they are not corrupted by things like literacy, cellphones and blockbuster movies, they have deep and tranquil souls.

The natives help the white guy discover that he, too, has a deep and tranquil soul.

The natives have hot bodies and perfect ecological sensibilities, but they are natural creatures, not history-making ones. When the military-industrial complex comes in to strip mine their homes, they need a White Messiah to lead and inspire the defense.

Our hero leaps in, with the help of a pack of dinosaurs summoned by Mother Earth. As he and his fellow freedom fighters kill wave after wave of Marines or former Marines or whatever they are, he achieves the ultimate prize: He is accepted by the natives and can spend the rest of his life in their excellent culture.

Cameron’s handling of the White Messiah fable is not the reason “Avatar” is such a huge global hit. As John Podhoretz wrote in The Weekly Standard, “Cameron has simply used these familiar bromides as shorthand to give his special-effects spectacular some resonance.” The plotline gives global audiences a chance to see American troops get killed. It offers useful hooks on which McDonald’s and other corporations can hang their tie-in campaigns.

Still, would it be totally annoying to point out that the whole White Messiah fable, especially as Cameron applies it, is kind of offensive?

It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.

It’s just escapism, obviously, but benevolent romanticism can be just as condescending as the malevolent kind — even when you surround it with pop-up ferns and floating mountains.

 

Ignoring the issue with the overall concept of the "white messiah" story - how's the writing in detail? Does the dialog make you roll your eyes? Or is it clever and engaging? How are the minutia of the plot handled - is they just incoherent handwavings, meant to be filler until the next sfx installment? Or are they thought provoking and intriguing?

 

I just saw it over the weekend in 3D I it I cant wait for the sequel

 

Im normally pretty quick to jump onto big budget movies suck bandwagon etc.... But i really liked this movied, and the dialog was better than decent. I didnt roll my eyes once, and i normally do.

 

Aside from one character, I found the dialogue really well done. The focus is definitely on the telling of the story and the creation of the world instead of action.

The white messiah thing is used frequently (although the author is hardly accurate in calling it something that's cropped up in our generation), but it doesn't work for Avatar.

Consider this: the white man gives up his white, human body for the body of the native species. Implicit in this decision is the idea that the being a white human isn't as good. That was one of the unique parts that made the way Avatar told the colonialism story so impressive for me.