Avatar (2009 film)

[Fireand'chutes77]

I'm surprised this thread hasn't been started yet, because Jeriddian, myself, and a few others on the board seem to be pretty ardent "Avatar" fans, but... I guess this is as good a time as any to start.

It's on my mind particularly strongly at the moment because I just finished, and posted to YouTube, an "Avatar" AMV set to Skillet's "Rebirthing." I heard the song on the radio shortly after seeing the film and knew I had to put the two together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFbW7YaS4CE

Let me know if you can't see it. I'm currently disputing a pull from WMG because of the song.


PS - I plan to go through the GD section to dig up and repost the "Avatar review" posts, so they can all be in one spot.

[jeriddian]

Nicely done, 'Chutes. You managed to develop a fine editing style which is very smooth. I was noticing that the Fanfic community has over 600 stories now. Five of them are greater than 100,000 words. So it appears they are developing a fairly active fan base, though I don't know that it will be as great a fan base as KP's.

[Villainheadache]

Coolio! Very good quality of video and sound, I like the song, gives a more epic atmosphere (I think), it's not like other videos I seen before, all pixelated and with bad sound. I love it, I'll download it (can I?)

[Fireand'chutes77]

It's not like I can stop you, can it?

It's fine. Go right ahead. Are you an "Avatar" fan yourself?

If you explore my YT profile, you'll find I've done a bunch of other, KP-related videos. Hope you enjoy!

[Fireand'chutes77]

Reposting of earlier "Avatar" discussion:


I saw Avatar last weekend, and I've got mixed feelings on it. I think I'll need to see again, this time in 3D, to fully sort out my opinion on the movie. (Cameron: Hooray! Another $15!) The plot is thin and predictable*, and several lines are almost destined to become popular memes on the Internet, but the emotional setpieces and the realization/graphics of the world of Pandora are in-effin-credible. On a 2D screen, I'd say it *just* breaks even when weighed against the price of the ticket and concessions. I have heard *many* people say that this film is *meant* for 3D, *meant* for IMAX, so I'll see it in that format before rendering a completely final verdict.

*Of course, one must remember that Tropes Are Not Bad, just as they are not Good. The movie is predictable - and well on its way to a billion - for a reason.

Overall, I think it teeters on the knife-edge between an A- and a B+; if forced to chose, I'd say it just scrapes an A-. I also encourage people to see it. This is a *theater* movie. I'd say you don't have to purposely lower your expectations, but don't bite the hype. Come in neutral and prepare for a good time. Be open-minded. If you sit down with your arms crossed and sneer at the very idea of "these stupid blue cat people," all the mind-blowing graphics in the world will never change your mind.

Anyway, my impressions of the movie itself. (Minor plot-points ahead, but nothing that couldn't be seen in the trailers.)


I had too much brain-chatter during the first viewing. (Very first scene: "Oooooh, he included heat radiators on the Venture Star! Nobody else seems to do that properly!" And in another scene, I noted that [/SIZE]the loader rolling past with arrows sunk into the tire rims is a great cinematic introduction to the Na'vi.) If I watch the movie a second time, I might be able to justify Jake's moronic behavior (Don't touch the plants, they said! Yet what's the first thing he does once he gets off the chopper....?) as extreme sleep deprivation.... Hopefully. At least he looked good in his military vest... And Cameron got the Avatars' "Oh #?&@!" expressions nailed.

Points are taken off for his error of "telling, not showing." As I state below, two wordless smiles in [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]one of the trailers communicate more more elegantly than most of the exposition-dumps in the movie. The use of Jake's video-logs to provide exposition was fumbled, and I would have appreciated footage of Earth to better communicate the abhorrent conditions and our desperate need for unobtanium. (Perhaps that shows up in the director's cut.)

(Aside: The use of the MacGuffin "unobtanium" was another thing that bugged me. They never tell us what's important about it, besides its $20-million-per-kilo price and that it floats. Word of God and The Manuals go more in-depth (powers carbon-free maglevs in a global transportation network, allows for cheaper processing of antimatter for space travel), but even a sentence or two in the movie would have been nice. As would've a wink at the name, "unobtanium." It's been used as a joking term in engineering for a material with impossible/financially unattainable properties for at least 50 years. Cameron must know the word's backstory yet uses the term painfully straight; "The Core," for all its faults, at least winked at the name.)

Another facet of the "tell, not show" shtick that bothered me was the tendency for characters to proclaim to Jake what room he was entering. "And now we have.... The Avatar Room!" Thanks, genius. We can see the big tanks. We do have eyes.
[SIZE=2][COLOR=black]
I was disappointed by the actual movie setup of the helicopter "drop-off" scene in the trailers*. From the trailers, it appears he is being dropped off solo for a bad*ss recon mission, like he might've been in one of his jungle ops on Earth, and simply tangos with too big a critter. It turns out he's supposed to be babysitting scientists and instead starts poking plants. *Sigh.*

Still, for all of Cameron's thin plot and Thud-tastic (TM) dialogue, damn can he put a scene together. Most of the first third of the movie is (inartful) exposition; once it gets in gear for the other two-thirds... Holy snykies. Really. Oh. My. God. You realize the gut and jaw that are the targets of this movie; the brain is just that annoying know-it-all that has to come along too. Jake's wild dash through the training facility after first entering his Avatar might be far-fetched and trite, but the pure joy of feeling dirt squish underfoot after more than a decade of numbness is undeniable. (To Cameron's credit, the original transition was a lot slower and more realistic. It got sped up for time.) I might berate Jake's plant-popping behavior, but, really, haven't we all been guilty of similar childish glee with bubble wrap? (Love that stuff! XD) And while the military is ham-fistedly portrayed, the destruction of A Very Important Object showcased all of the terrible power & awe inherent in our modern weaponry... It's not often we're on the *receiving* ends of rocket barrages. There's a similar "terrible awe" scene at the end of "Ghost in the Shell"'s second season.... We may celebrate the advance of technology, but when the technology of weapons is allowed to showcase its full power, the display is not pretty. At all.

And the back-and-forth tension during the final fight nearly gave me a heart attack. Brad Bird, in the director's commentary of The Incredibles, lamented that they used the actual opening scene instead of one where Syndrome attacks the Parr's house, because the latter communicated invasion, violation, and helplessness far more effectively. Cameron gets Bird's lost chance in the final fight, and he takes it.

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* The two "official" (and high-def!) Apple trailers: http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/avatar/hd/

The two-minute "teaser" is by far my favorite. The main trailer has more info and more traditionally "epic" background music, but the teaser is elegantly minimalistic, which gives your brain more leash to ponder, wander, and hype it up. In fact, Jake's two smiles at 0:58 and 1:18 communicate more than most of the exposition-dumps in the movie, really. Plus the techno background music is frickin' awesome. The beat itself seems to vibrate, and the increasing tempo/electronic charge-up sound really gets your energy and tension up.

As with any/many movies, there is something of a let-down between the glorious movie constructed in your head from bits of trailer footage and the actual thing. While Avatar was indeed good and a movie I'd watch again/recommend, I rewatch the trailers afterward and think, Ooohhhhh, but what could have been....

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EDIT: GoTeamGirl, your signature seems amazingly appropriate for Jake Sully's sitch.

"You dreamt of another sky. New sun, new air, new life. A whole universe teeming with life. Why stand still when there’s all that life out there?"



========================================

Originally Posted by jeriddian
...Western films where the rival cultures were the white man and the Indians, probably best represented by Dances with Wolves...

One interesting twist that I noted (I don't know if anyone else found it important) was that all the Avatars were basically the same color. Usually "mighty whitey" stands out like a sore thumb, but in pull-back crowd shots, Jake almost vanished. The Na'Vi were hating him "not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character"!

Granted, to the Na'Vi, the five fingers and smaller eyes of the "Dreamwalkers" would've stuck out almost as prominently as skin color does to us.... And it probably shouldn't be too surprising to me, since white people have been hating on white people for some time, sometimes over something as silly as the color of their hair....

Another thing I noticed: near the end, when Quaritch is giving his "terror with terror" speech, it's a black guy who goes "Yeaaaaah!" as he gets all hyped up to kill the natives, and the white guy standing next to him gives him a small sideways look, as if to say, "Dude..."

I think, though, that the absolutely incredible splendor of the visual graphics and the technical spectacle that bombards you... will completely make you forget those faults...

Ah. So it's just like "Obama: The Movie"?

In seriousness, most everyone has had about the same reaction I noted in my review: "You realize the gut and jaw that are the targets of this movie; the brain is just that annoying know-it-all that has to come along too."

I've been reading "On Basilisk Station" by David Weber, the first book in the Honor Harrington series (and loving it! ), and I have to wonder if Mr. Cameron ever read it....

...That was impressive engineering for a muscle-powered civilization, even in this gravity [.82 of Earth's... Pandora's was .9-something.]. And especially for something as stalky and ungainly looking as a Stilty......

...What passed for mammals on Medusa (there were no birds) were hexapedal.... Medusans were tall and slender and bilaterally symmetrical, to boot. The natives were undeniably warm blooded and bore live young, but they reminded Honor far more of a holo she'd seen of an Old Earth insect called a praying mantis than anything she would have called a mammal....

Here's something interesting - Cameron's original scriptment for his movie has been floating around the internet for a while, and I finally got around to reading it.

WOW. If Cameron had cut most of the "Avatar" movie before Jake's and the science team's heli-insertion into the forest and replaced it with most of the scriptment up to page 45, that would've been a movie. Besides filling in a major number of plot holes and background information, the script takes the happy-dreamtime forest of "Avatar" and turns it into a dark hellish mirror of itself, cranking up the "Holy %$#&" quotient several notches. The forest is portrayed similarly to the ones of Vietnam - dark, a "wall," bristling with threats - but unlike some of the more blatant 'Nam imagery in the movie, this is more subtle and more effective because it's backed up by grunts who were over there. To them, the jungle itself was the enemy, was actually out to kill them, and their fear goes a long way toward validating Selfridge's and Quaritch's paranoia. Heck, halfway through the scriptment I was getting scared of the forest.
This state of siege and fear makes for a much more organic, natural shock when it's revealed that the entire forest is not out to kill them. If all we had seen of the forest in "Avatar" was a dark, angry mass of impenetrable foliage, the bioluminescent scene would have been even more incredible.

Other differences and/or improvements:

Earth and its environmental problems are explored (Sully has never even seen a forest, so Grace has to practically hold his hand when they go into the woods).
We see Josh (Jake) Sully's Avatar being born — Sully actually "births" himself.
His reaction to walking again is also quite different: it takes him a while to gain any sort of strength, and then he cries.
It's revealed the Avatar program exists to train Na'vi to be an indigenous workforce for the Corporation, since it's so expensive to send human workers.
There are more humans, including a bioethics officer on the take, a video journalist, a head of the Avatar program and a second military d*ckwad; also, Sully and Quaritch have an instant dislike of each other.
There is an Avatar controller who is burnt out because his Avatar died with him in it. His Avatar is dead because he committed "suicide" after a Na'vi girl he loved was killed by the military in a misunderstanding.
Pandora is a living entity and it sees the humans as a virus; it has been mobilizing the plants and animals to attack all along because it wanted to force the humans out; also it's been actively curing human diseases (because those diseases really *are* viruses, and the planet has been making antiviruses). These cures are also making the Corporation rich - not that that's going stop them from wanting to wipe out its Death World jungle.
There is no unobtainium beneath Hometree. The military just wants to wipe out the local Na'vi to send a message to all the tribes that they must be obeyed.
Some of the humans and the Avatar controllers rise up in the final big battle, which includes busting out some captured Na'Vi from Hell's Gate.


One thing I *did* really like about "Avatar" Jake was the deliberate speed with which he hacked out his spear after escaping the cat-thingy... It seemed as though that's exactly how a Marine with jungle training should behave - quietly, efficiently getting his sh*t back together.


=======================

Originally Posted by Fireand'chutes77
I can't decide if I "liked" what happened to Grace. The movie had hit on so many tropes that I was counting down the seconds until she popped up and said "Hiya!" and I could mentally groan and roll my eyes at the predictable unimaginativeness of it all. Then the seconds rolled out, and everyone else moved on - for what else could they do? - and I felt a small "oh" inside. The cold, analytical part of me put a check mark on the side of approval for Cameron - he'd subverted a trope I was sure he'd use - but another part of me felt a little hollow inside and sad, let down, even, at the outcome.

Jeriddian:

But there is something else that shows the attention to detail that Cameron puts into the movie. This has always been somewhat of a pet peeve of mine in movies because there is no way to fake it on film, but at the moment a human being dies, all muscle activity ceases, which includes the iris of the eyes. The person's eyes (provided they haven't been surgically altered in some way such as with cataract replacement) will immediately dilate maximally as the iris relaxes completely. The blackness of the pupil will occupy almost the entire cornea, leaving only a very thin rim of iris visible around the outer edge. You can't fake this with real people obviously, but everytime you see a character 'die' on screen and you can see their eyes, they are never dilated. It was just an annoyance on my part since I pronounce a good number of deaths each year, and I see the eyes all the time as part of how one determines death has occured.

Well they finally got it right this time. Watch Grace's eyes when she succumbs to her wounds. It's the first time I've ever seen it done. It was CGI'd of course, but they got it right.


==================================

Me:


I got around to seeing "Avatar" in IMAX 3D yesterday afternoon.

If this was the first time I'd seen the movie, I'd say the value of the experience would've far exceeded the $14.75 I spent on the ticket. However, as this was the second time around, I'd say it broke exactly even. The 3D was excellent (though not without its flaws), but the "IMAX" didn't seem to add too much. I think I could've gone to a "plain" 3D showing and spent about $3 less with no loss. It was a "weaksauce" IMAX, not a dome, and the ability to see the screen's edges cut down on the immersion a little. I suppose if I'd sat lower and closer, it would've filled more of my vision, but then I would've been craning my neck upward for two and three-quarters hours.

A friend of mine who's seen it both in IMAX and plain 3D had more perspective:

I saw it once in "plain" 3D and once in "IMAX" 3D. The 3D effects were *so* well done, I can't imagine watching it without them. The main differences I noticed on the IMAX version were a) more bass and b) a wider vertical field of view; there was one scene with a bunch of blades of grass on the bottom of the screen which I thought benefitted in particular, especially with the 3D effect.

IMAX quibbles aside, the 3D was amazing. The "deep view" shots that I noticed in the 2D version proved to be as "oooooo"-inducing as I thought they would be. 3D's layering effect really makes some of the small details stand out, really makes them "pop," in a good way. The humans' HUD and info screens were particularly cool; they appeared to float just like they would in real life. They seemed to have actual presence. Other details included the jellyfish-seed things, bugs, fire, arrows, grass, helicopter backwash.... Tall cliffs suddenly went from "whoa, high" to "Holy %$#&!". In their parts, not particularly solid reasons to go spend $15 (Ohmigosh man, that helicopter backwash WAS SOOOOO COOL!!!1!q!!), but they really stand out from the 2D version.

I did note a problem, though: depth-of-field focus. Scenes where the entire screen was in focus were incredible.... But as soon as the focus narrowed to one character, my brain went "WTF?" because, in the 3D, it was compensating already for depth and the added "help" just threw it off. I would happen to glance at something in the foreground of a midground-focus scene and have a moment of puzzlement when the foreground didn't come into focus.

The effect was most notable in confined indoor scenes; once "outside," the focus depth had room to breathe. It also was distracting in the cat-thingy chase scene - trees sometimes didn't come into focus when my brain "wanted" them to. The overall effect in some spots was mildly disorienting, but at no time did I feel nauseous or dizzy. It is one of the challenges inherent in working with a completely new medium - the old film tricks don't work!

As for reports of people feeling despondent and depressed after watching "Avatar" because the real world doesn't match up, I have to sayour world did look a bit flat and washed out.... But that tends to happen after every movie you come out of, particularly action movies. I also had a very mild headache, but that was less from the 3D and more from staring raptly at a screen for nearly three hours. I think the added double weight of my glasses and the 3D glasses also tired out the bridge of my nose.

"Real life" doesn't pop nearly as vividly, but movie theater seats don't have toilets built into them yet... You win this time, reality!

As for the movie itself, the second time around:

- I still love the opening and closing. "I dreamed I was flying" at the beginning was good foreshadowing and packs a poignant punch (alliteration's always awesome! ) when we the viewers "wake up" and realize Jake's not going to be flying much of anywhere. And then there's just something really cool about the tight-zoom on Jake's face at the end, his "Whoa," and then the bass thud and cut to AVATAR.

- I didn't notice the bad dialogue nearly as much, because I was expecting it. They still could've done a much better job with Selfridge's exposition scenes, though.

O o
/¯___________________________
| IMMA FIRIN' MAH EXPOSITION!!!
\_¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
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- The understanding that the RDA was not trying to start a war with the Na'Vi felt stronger this time around. For a mining organization that is trying to get at a desperately needed element, they could've done a lot worse than taking the time and effort to (in their view) help out the Pandorans with schools, medicine, etc. And instead of just dropping a crapload of explosives on Hometree right off the bat, they tried to cajole the tribe off the land so there would be minimal loss of life on both sides. I wonder how many in the audience shared Selfridge's exasperation: "You throw a stick around here and you hit a... a... sacred pebble! Where does it end?!"

- I think I've figured out where the film really starts to get good for me: Jake's Na'Vi training experience. Yes, it's Troperiffic, but it's good despite - or else because - of it. By that point they'd gotten most of the exposition out of the way, which allowed the actors to act more naturally and effectively. We also cleared out of the depth-of-field mess of indoors.

Because of that, I picked up some more subtle aspects of the characters. Grace gets some depth when her ice-queen shell cracks and she displays some hidden motherly instincts when hoisting a sleeping Jake into his bunk.

(BTW, the original scriptment had a lot more of that strangely obsessive "mother" theme that Hollywood seems to have... See Alien, for example.)

Selfridge also had more guilt, doubt, and uncertainty radiating off him than I first noticed, particularly when the he and the AVATAR team are watching the destruction of Hometree back at base. His brutal comments then don't seem to materialize just because he's a corporate d*ck; he's trying to mask, bury, and and justify his self-doubt.

I finally managed to place why Neytiri's accent seems so familiar - she seems to be copying Tia Dalma's Jamaican vibe from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films.

I also liked her scenes of grief; they were highly effective. Some have called her wailing Narm, but I really was impressed. It's not often we see raw rage or fear or anguish - it's not often we staid, comfortable Western types have to experience something like the emotion coming out of the pictures from Haiti. If Neytiri had remained calm and understanding and conciliatory while Jake tried to explain how he was sent to be a traitor but "everything changed," the emotional flow of the entire section would've been wrecked.

- Something tells me that the Na'Vi were being smarter than they let on when they decided to try and train Jake "for the lulz." If the RDA can run their own subterfuge, why can't the Na'Vi? Jake was/is (Marine!) a warrior on the other side... If he begins to trust the Na'Vi, the thinking went, we can use his trust to pick his brain about human battle tactics and resources. Jake, of course, took the third option and did it himself.

- Something they never brought up that I thought would be a plot point: Grace mentions that Jake's "link coffin" in the mobile lab is the "least glitchy." (was that word substituted in for another? ) I expected that we'd have BIG DRAMATIC PROBLEMS when his or other units glitched or spazzed, but nope.

- Oh, drat! I forgot to look for Grace's medically-correct "dying eyes." I did, however, visually confirm that the Na'Vi have only four fingers (I counted!).

- The bass thuds of explosions this time around were impressive. I don't know if that's stems from "the IMAX experience" or the fact that it's a brand-new theater with surround sound. As for the boomies themselves, I noticed white-ringed shockwaves radiating out from the fireballs as the energy tore through Pandora's humid atmosphere. Nicely done. There was less of a feeling of "Oh.... my.... God" when the military opened fire this time around, due to the fact I'd seen it before, but it still freezes you solid. To Cameron's credit, he even turned eating cereal into a nailbiting experience. *Camera snaps between 'dozers crunching through forest and lab breakfast* Me: Chew! Swallow! Chew! Swallow! Get in the pod, mister! GO GO GO!"

- Was the gas that Quaritch launched poisonous, or just an area-denier like tear gas? If minimizing casualties was the goal, tear gas would work better because it would clear out the tree before it came down. I didn't see anybody falling down and dying from the gas itself, so I assume it's an area-denier.

- I'm not a military man, but it seemed Quaritch put up the best fight he could with his limitations. The shifting, unplottable "Hallelujah mountains," dense fog, and magnetic scrambling prevented the shuttle from coming in high and swooping down low to drop - they might've run into a mountain. Quaritch compensated by using the gunships as a shield, and it worked wonderfully against the enemy he had planned for.....

- While I was settling down in the theater, I happened to glance to my left.... And discovered a woman and a gaggle of about five young children (ages 3 to maybe 8) sitting only two or three seats away.

"Oh, God," I thought with an internal groan. "These kids are going to be howling and carrying on the entire movie.... And what moron of a mom (I'm assuming they were her kids) brings a toddler into a PG-13 movie? Did she see the trailers and somehow think, 'Oooh, CGI and blue cat people! Must be a kid's movie!' and somehow miss the explosions and near-nudity?"

So when the lights dimmed down and the 3D glasses went on, I cast a final glance to my left with some trepidation and prepared to grit my teeth...

The kids never made a peep. Not during the previews, not during the helicopter-flying bits, not during the intense explosions and fights. Generation X may be a lost cause (5-year-olds in a PG-13 movie?!) but at least I've got hope for the future.

Granted, the mom might've been quietly ferrying out the nascent-noisemakers and I didn't notice, but still... Dumb mom, good kids.

I did glance over when Jake and Neytiri started, um, frolicking beneath the Tree of Voices to check how the young'uns were handling... Mom had a hand cupped over the eyes of the three-year-old she was holding.

- In the parking lot after the movie, I happened to pass directly in front of the Explorer I'd driven to the theater... I stopped dead in front of the grill; I hadn't realized how much the front snout and side-mirrors of the car looked like a Thanator!

Anyway, though, seeing as Avatar has officially broken Titanic's all-time revenue record, Cameron now has enough money to raise the Titanic and fire it toward Pandora.





=====================================

Anyway, I went to see "

Avatar"......again.... Yes I know, but I simply cannot get enough of it. Also I am studying it very closely.

Bwaahaha. There's something amazing, yet strangely terrifying about the whole phenomenon.... And it is indeed a phenomenon. This movie somehow punched people's buttons just right and at just the right time, and it's taken on a life of its own. The forums, the fanart, the 10+ viewings, the language dictionaries, the people walking out with depression... Something like this hasn't been seen in a while. I can understand the obsessive-compulsive behavior of myself and the other engineers/geeks on campus... But this thing has magnetism up and down the scale. Every demographic polled gave this thing high marks. You wouldn't think a ham-handed Green Aesop action movie with blue cat people would have sparked this much of a reaction... The right wing has tried to brand it as a "pinko elitist Hollywood hippy leftist guilt-trip..." And I agree that it does have elements of that in there... But how do you argue with $2.1 billion? How do they refute "a theater full of people in Kentucky [who] stand and applaud the defeat of their country/species in war?"

What's going to be interesting is the reception of the second movie, the third movie, made with this 3D technology, be it Cameron's sequels or other unrelated movies... The "specialty" of the 3D will have worn off and people will be watching the story more closely.

[COLOR=black]But as for the "phenom," I found this hilarious picture when an Avatar-nut friend and I were browsing online:






The browsing with said friend revealed that my Avatar fanboy-ism is just pennies... Or rather, that his reaches and exceeds the level of my KP interest.... Which makes for some hilarious "Oooo-kaaayyy...." moments when the two obsessions rub up against each other. I'm giving him an arched eyebrow for learning the language, and he's giving me one for making KP videos....

I have to say, his fanboy-ism has rubbed off on me some. I'd already read the Pandorapedia and obsessively followed the $$$$ count, but once he showed me the Na'Vi forums and sites he was a part of, I started collecting the "best of" from a HILARIOUS screencap-captioning thread.




"That is one big damn ship."

OR

"These dumb b*stards aren't getting the message, switch to icebergs."










One thing that's amazed me is how many people around here have learned the language. The friend has learned it. A couple of his friends have learned it. Conan O'Brien from "The Tonight Show" has learned it. With $2.1 billion (and counting) worth of viewer momentum, it looks like it might be the "Klingon" of the 21st century.

Hmmm... Given the strong magnetic fields of Pandora and the superconducting properties of Unobtanium, the engineer in me has to wonder: if you put a chunk of Unobtanium in a corresponding Unobtanium bowl, would it begin to spin? And could the electric field generated by its spinning be used to power things?

Assuming that it does, would the tribe that discovered it gain a sudden advantage that could lead to tensions and set up a cascade of environmental destruction? To repel a second human counter-attack, the Pandorans would need some heftier weaponry than bows and arrows, but the measures necessary to take out an invasion force would run counter to their entire worldview. I can see Jake suddenly bubbling and frothing with fantastic ideas - "Oh, wow, now we can have lights to help with cooking! And spotlights to shoo away the viper-wolfs! And - and electric-arc welding if we get enough power! AND RAILGUNS! And and AND..." Only to trail into a mortified silence when he catches the incredulous, slightly fearful stares of his tribe. “Our chief?” the whispers would ripple, “Talking like one of the DreamWalkers? How well did we cure him, really?”

Or, unlike on Earth, would the USB-style bio-network allow the information to be shared immediately, so all Pandorans could have the technology at the same instant? It would nullify any potential technological gap/tensions immediately. An incredible thought, almost inconceivable for us humans. We’ve only had a similar construct, the Internet, for about 20 years, and we’re still trying to figure out what to do with it.

The running length of the movie is 166 minutes, an epic length. But I will bet you you that when Cameron completed his full cut of the movie before editing, it ran as much as an hour extra.

Indeed. In fact, if you look at the "official" trailer, you'll notice there's a sports bar scene near the beginning that never shows up in the film (I was disappointed that it didn't.) And in several of the shorter commercials there are new bits of dialogue, too. The DVD will be a bonanza.

...And on the closing note of trailers, it's interesting to see how they were tailored to different demographics. Some focus on the romance angle, others (a kid's one?) focus only on the flora and the "fun," others portray the humans as the enemy, others make the humans out to be heroes, others try to tell the story, and still others just overload your senses with a blitzkrieg of slow-motion and explosions.

[lunchmeat]

When I think of recycling, elderly internet posts usually aren't the first thing that comes to mind (too bad they turned Cameron down on the oil spill, Smurf's At Sea would have been entertaining....), the Colonel could have solved his problem just by bringing in Gargamel.....

[Villainheadache]

It's not like I can stop you, can it?

It's fine. Go right ahead. Are you an "Avatar" fan yourself?

If you explore my YT profile, you'll find I've done a bunch of other, KP-related videos. Hope you enjoy!

OK, downloading... I see your YT profile and wooa, you have a lot of interesting videos!

I watched Civil disobedience, It rocks, great job with the video, I'm planning to watch the other videos of your authoring and download them too. I don't see the other videos now, because I'm having trouble with my mobile Internet connection, it charges the videos too slowly..

the movie "Avatar". I don't seen the movie yet, but with your avatar's videos and your reviews, I think now it's the time to watch the movie, and maybe I'll become a fan.

[lunchmeat]

God news, the trailer for the sequel is out: http://www.smurfhappens.com/

[NinjaNaco]

A blogger whom I read recently started a poll on an Avatar vs. Avatar smackdown.

I voted for the Nick guys, but this quote in the comment section was just drop-dead hilarious (emphasis mine):

Beowulf said...
Snuffles, you forget of course that after Toph rips apart a mech, she will bend the remains around herself for protection and proceed to drop the ground out from under the Mining co. mechs.

Then watch in horror as Katara makes Quaritch's own coffee attack him!

[Fireand'chutes77]

A blogger whom I read recently started a poll on an Avatar vs. Avatar smackdown.

I voted for the Nick guys, but this quote in the comment section was just drop-dead hilarious (emphasis mine):

Beowulf said...
Snuffles, you forget of course that after Toph rips apart a mech, she will bend the remains around herself for protection and proceed to drop the ground out from under the Mining co. mechs.

Then watch in horror as Katara makes Quaritch's own coffee attack him!

That article was highly enjoyable. And delightfully sarcastic.

You've seen them individually, now witness their unstoppable power when they're teamed up! That's two mostly crazy super-violent hard-to-kill villains in one place! Working together! Picture Azula piloting a mech! Picture Quaritch just being himself! Think of the one-liners they'll spew! And Quaritch is so awesome, he'll probably still be sipping coffee through half the battle!