Avatar - James Cameron Returns! (Spoilers in thread, obviously!)

[Sad Max]

But I'll reserve judgement until I've actually seen the film.

Boy howdy, would that ever be nice.

 

[Sad Max]

You must not have read my posts.

Sure I have. They weathervane between not-going-to-see-it and -going-to-see-it-eventually (why you believe this information is useful to anyone but yourself is a minor mystery to me, but then again the world is filled with mysteries). Or maybe I'm succumbing to wishful thinking: at this point I rather wish you don't bother seeing it. I can only imagine what a discussion with you would be like, revolving around a film that you actually have seen...

I said I am going to see it, but I refuse to support it (and for me supporting a movie is seeing it opening night and then purchasing the Bluray/DVD).

I'm likewise baffled by the importance - self-importance, really - that you seem to attach to exactly when and where you see it. I mean, do you *really* believe that your "support" (wish we had bigger quotation marks, for emphasis) makes a detectable difference anywhere outside the confines of your own head? No one would even know when or where you choose to see (or not see) a given film, unless you choose to make an issue of it - and it appears that as an issue it's of zero interest to anyone but you.

Okay, there is a particular director whose work I will never buy a ticket to see, and whom I recently had the pleasure of turning down, when offered a position on his current project. I have personal reasons for doing so, but I hardly think that my lack of 'support' is of the slightest importance to anyone but me. And so - until this conversation - I have had no reason to blabber on about it.

So I think it's perfectly fine and does provide practical value to discuss expectations and marketing ploys prior to actually seeing the film.

I expect that the membership of a board devoted to the study and promotion of marketing might agree. Last I checked, we're not all primarily marketing types. And in any case, if you are obsessing over the marketing of the product rather than the product itself, you are missing the point of the discussion. Your expectations are highly personal and frankly not something anyone else can productively address. I mean, really, when considering which car to buy, do you begin by evaluating the qualities of the advertising campaign with which it's promoted? Or are you interested in the qualities of the car, itself?

And, honestly, judging by the overall reviews from people here, my expectations regarding the film appear to be right on the nose: Wonderful CGI, decent script.

Yeah. No wonder you seem so tied up in knots, about it.

The mere fact that even thinking to speak of Avatar in any other terms but praise would be considered "bellyaching" just proves my earlier point about the grotesque aggressiveness of this movie's campaigning.

Well, neither praise nor criticism coming from you at this point would be meaningful, since you have not seen the film we're discussing. The 'bellyaching' I'm noting revolves around an apparent distaste for the application of CGI (about which you don't know much, having not seen the full application in the show) and complaints about the marketing campaign (which so far as I can see is neither as ubiquitous nor frankly as obnoxious as the campaign for Phantom Menace which was &^$#! inescapable when that film was in release...) and in any case is a completely separate area for discussion, from any of the qualities of the film itself.

If you had actually seen the film at hand, and disliked it, and wanted to fill us in on your reasons for disliking it, I don't think anyone would jump on you for sharing your personal and subjective response to the film - but objections to your insistence upon pontificating about something which you haven't even seen aren't a matter of grotesquely aggressive marketing: it's a discourse-from-ignorance and I don't think it takes brainwashing to recognize that it's fundamentally worthless.

Again, I supported Final Fantasy because of its progression of CGI animation. I was there opening night and I own the DVD.

Yeah, your precious support doesn't seem to have made much of an impact on the success of that project, either...

But BECAUSE of the animation people and critics rejected that movie out-of-hand whereas with this movie it's like they've all been brainwashed to bow down and give thanks.

Over-generalize, much? There is a segment of the audience that was blown away by the visual work in Final Fantasy; they didn't have problems with the animation but rather had difficulty understanding the story. I think that anyone with some minor exposure to Shinto or similar philosophy wouldn't have that difficulty, but that's probably not a huge segment of the American audience.

I think that all these claims of "brainwashing" and people being made to "bow down and give thanks" are something for which you should either provide some evidence, or quit harping upon. We're all as free to dislike this movie as we were to dislike anything that Jim - or any other director - has offered an audience.

Bottom line, if the movie was really a miraculous achievement of storytelling they wouldn't have to use such aggressive marketing ploys. They would use traditional marketing and the people would speak out.

Doubtless this assertion is rooted in your expertise in the marketing field. Are your qualifications in marketing at the undergraduate or graduate level, or did you enter that profession without recourse to formal training?

In the end we'll see what the weekend box office says.

While of course we would like to see Avatar set box-office records, box-office take is not the ultimate arbiter of the quality of a film. I'm pretty sure we can all identify a film that we feel should have been recycled into fire-lighters, that still did fantastic box-office business. I'm sure that we can all mention films that we found extraordinary, that sank at the box office. So what?

Either people are feeling put-upon the way I've been feeling or they're all falling in line to see it.

Or maybe there's a happy medium where people can shrug off advertising for what it is, and decide for themselves whether what they've seen promotionally interests them enough to go buy a ticket, or not. As a member of the not-you general population, I'd sure appreciate not being categorized according to your personal binary-type analysis.

And, for the record, this movie cannot be compared to Titanic because Titanic's audience was completely different than Avatar's. Titanic got the soap-opera gals and tweens filing in who then saw it again and again and again. They saw it again and again because of the catharsis, not for the (spoiler!!!!) Titanic's sinking.

This is probably correct. The only commonalities I can see between Avatar and Titanic are the record-large budgets and of course the directing/producing team. Avatar may offer something to the soap opera/tween crowd (the romance, the visual beauty of the setting) that they'll come back for. Or not; we'll see.

From the reviews coming back, Avatar doesn't seem to have that element of catharsis like Titanic or The Dark Knight. So the only second-time viewers that it will get are the people interested in CGI animation.

I found the experience cathartic. So will some number of other viewers. Your mileage may vary.

So again, the movie needs AT LEAST The Dark Knight or Spiderman or Pirates of the Carribean or Twilight numbers in the opening weekend in order to be considered (by our most common Hollywood standards), a financial success.

Since I'm not a studio accountant, I have to admit that I am agnostic regarding this angle. Although I don't find that box-office take is the ultimate - or even a particularly important - metric of how good I find a given film, to be.

 

[Jason Ramsey]

titanic made something like 24 million dollars opening weekend, yet no film has come close to it in total box office (plus an additional billion in dvd sales).

Complete prediction on my part, but I think Avatar will have staying power like Titanic did (though not as much as Titanic did), and opening weekend numbers won't be a very accurate predictor of the films long term box office success... Now, I don't necessarily think it will have the staying power that titanic did in its run in theaters, but then Avatar already made more money in one day than Titanic did in its entire opening weekend.

I also see, like Titanic, that b/c of all of the marketing and the large budget, etc, there is a lot of commentary (pre-release) floating around that's kinda downing on it which may limit initial opening weekend draw, but word of mouth will likely quickly trump that.

All the marketing this, and that, and how much the movie costs, etc... It just really doesn't matter once the lights go down and the movie starts. You are watching the movie, not the marketing. As artists, and as an audience member that's kind the first thing you do in my opinion. you forget about everything else while the curtain is open and you watch the movie and react to the movie, not to the hype, etc. It's a common courtesy that I think we (as so-called artists and filmmakers) should afford the creator of said "artwork", at the very least.

 

[Chamber005]

Who's right? Exactly what will be proven right by the box office? That has no bearing on the quality of the movie. Paul Blart: Mall Cop made 33 million opening weekend. Titanic only made 25 million its opening weekend. It's clear you have an aversion to the way the film is being marketed and feel people have been "brainwashed" into liking it but I'm sorry, you can't fool that many people, especially critics. It's around 84 percent last time I checked Rottentomatoes. Everytime I go on Facebook I see another person raving about it, and these aren't all film people. Of my friends and family, I'm probably the one that liked it the least because I'm pretty discerning, and I still liked it.

I'm saying it has a bearing on the quality of the marketing (which, sorry to say, is an aspect of the movie regardless of what you might want to believe). If the marketing is successful it should, based solely on numbers and budget, break weekend box office records.

However, as Barry aptly put, most of the people who have an aversion to this movie haven't even seen the movie yet. That is the fault of the movie as it pertains to its marketing.

To me, in the business of the film, the marketing in a movie matters just as much as its Celebrity and execution. If I thought the main actor gave a horrible performance, that is going to affect how I see the movie as a complete entity. If I feel its marketing ploys were aggressive and had undertones of mob action that insighted both critics and audiences into defensive stances, that pertains directly to the overall package of the film to the point where it starts to feel like the story itself is uplifting or about distinctly positive, tried and true themes and methods simply to counter balance the seedy money grubbing happenings underneath it all.

Unfortunately while Aliens, the Terminator movies, Abyss and Titanic all came from places of either story or technological discovery (or both), the tactics used in the marketing of this film, and the fact that nothing was actually invented over the course of making it, scream to me that there is something distinctly Hollywood and shady about this entire film and that Cameron is at the heart of it all.

Something about Avatar says to me that James Cameron used his influence to get a lot of money to make something that anyone else with the same budget could have made. Avatar APPEARS to be about one thing: making money, which appears to be in direct contrast with the movie's entire message. And that matters -- that is an ASPECT of the film: what was the REASON for doing it, what is the REASON for it existing.

Unlike every other film he's ever made, the way he spoke about this film made me feel like he was lying. I remember him talking about T2 and Titanic and Abyss. I remember his INTENTIONS being about the craft moreso than about the money. None of that came through with his talking about Avatar.

I feel like the INTENTION of this film is indeed similar to Lucas's INTENTION with regards Phantom Menace. There's just something grimey here, and I think other people (who have not been lured into see the movie yet) have the objective position to examine the intentions and marketing strategies of the movie -- which are absolutely just as much an aspect of the film as are the performances and its art direction.

If you make a movie using positive, well-intended themes just to make a sale, I hope your movie suffers and burns (and other people will as well). Like Lucas and Spielberg (see: Minority Report and AI), Cameron now too has let the good intentions and real innovation leave his reasoning and has allowed basic greed and Celebrity to become his primary concern. And, honestly, I'm surprised he's lasted this long.

I'm not saying he can't come back from it. Heck, maybe if Avatar isn't a mind-numbing success he'll be in a position to reconsider his trajectory as a filmmaker. But as I stand on this side of the red rope, having not seen the movie (which at this point is now nothing more than an aside to the entire package of the film), Cameron is looking into the eyes of his faithful followers and is lying to them. He's lying when he says this project means anything more to him than an enormous payday and more accolades from all the people the marketing and/or special effects could persuade.

 

[Jason Ramsey]

If the marketing is successful it should, based solely on numbers and budget, break weekend box office records.

I don't think that is an entirely accurate conclusion. With massive marketing campaigns and budget numbers, there is also a lot of initial skepticism that is created along with it. From folks who aren't too fond of "hype". And, that permeates discussions and gives people pre-conceived notions as well.

Again, we're talking about a 2:40 minute movie as well. I don't think initial opening weekend box office is *necessarily* going to be a predictor of this movies final, global box office numbers. I also get the impression that this movie is finding large audiences around the world, so lets not forget that the states are not the only place where people go tot he movies. And, while in the past it may have been more true in the past that most of a "typical" hollywood movies box office is in America. More and more often (particularly with the bigger budget flicks lately) I am seeing examples of movies global box office take far outweighing their domestic takes. When, a movie finds mass global appeal, thats when dollars really start to roll in. Movies like Titanic did, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Harry Potter, etc, etc.

I don't see this movie dropping upwards of 50% or more on its second weekend like many of the huge box office first weekend openers that you suggest it must perform like in its opening weekend in order to be considered a financial success.

Later,
jason

 

[Sad Max]

Unfortunately while Aliens, the Terminator movies, Abyss and Titanic all came from places of either story or technological discovery (or both), the tactics used in the marketing of this film, and the fact that nothing was actually invented over the course of making it, scream to me that there is something distinctly Hollywood and shady about this entire film and that Cameron is at the heart of it all.

Bolding added for emphasis. Making patently false statements regarding your subject is not the best way to sway readers to your perspective. I mean, can we at least keep it truthful? No one's under any obligation to agree with anyone else, but injecting actual falsehoods into the conversation seems a bit much.

And, while there are certainly other people who - given the same budget - could make something really great, whatever they made would not be Avatar. There's a lot in that film that's personal to James Cameron. Someone else might do something competitive, might do something as subjectively good, but it wouldn't be the same.

As for it being 'about the craft -' as a craftsman I'm willing to assure you that advancing the craft of film making was on the minds of every member of the crew, literally to the guys who swept the stage at night.

I understand that you are sharing subjective perceptions, but there seems to be a degree of certitude about people's motivations and priorites that's really out of congruity with the observed events.

 

[Kholi]

I have been silent abot this up until Battuta got to my spoof thread, and I don't even want to engage in this conversation because it's obvious th impact that it is having on the cinema universe.

I will say these few things: if you think the na'vi were not both real enough or photrealistic enough, you were not the audience and have completely missed the point, more than likely by thinking too hard and trying to figure out how YOU would have done it. Step back a moment, return to the point in your life when you were an audience member and not a professor.

If yo have not seen this movie, and seen it on the best screen that you possibly can, as a filmmaker you are cheating yourself out of one of the biggest, most important cinematic lessons of our lifetime. Cameron rips you back to pure simple storytelling and shows you how technology will redefine the movie goig experience. How much passion and struggle it takes to craft a beast of this magnitude. If you miss this with a big audience over pride or anything more than genuine disinterest you've shot yourself in the foot.

And lastly...

Cameron did exactly what he set out to do and he may have single handedly saved the big budget cinema experince.

 

[Kholi]

Bolding added for emphasis. Making patently false statements regarding your subject is not the best way to sway readers to your perspective. I mean, can we at least keep it truthful? No one's under any obligation to agree with anyone else, but injecting actual falsehoods into the conversation seems a bit much.

And, while there are certainly other people who - given the same budget - could make something really great, whatever they made would not be Avatar. There's a lot in that film that's personal to James Cameron. Someone else might do something competitive, might do something as subjectively good, but it wouldn't be the same.

As for it being 'about the craft -' as a craftsman I'm willing to assure you that advancing the craft of film making was on the minds of every member of the crew, literally to the guys who swept the stage at night.

I understand that you are sharing subjective perceptions, but there seems to be a degree of certitude about people's motivations and priorites that's really out of congruity with the observed events.

In no way am I trying to gang up on anyone by quoting and agreeing with this statement but it is truly disheartening (yet not discouraging) that you gave to spell out what I saw as infallably obvious.

I've been incredibly, yet silently, interestenon what was being culivated here for years and although the tech is still obviously not as flawless as the creators may hav wanted it is absolutley goin to change how a lot of people shoot or want to shoot.

I've always imagined walking beside a speedIng vehiclle and gettin the handheld aesthetic. It happens to a degree in Avatar and I almost shed a tear.

 

[Neal Buconjic]

Cameron did exactly what he set out to do and he may have single handedly saved the big budget cinema experince.

Agreed. Nicely put Kholi.

 

[Stephen Mick]

Cameron…may have single handedly saved the big budget cinema experince.

I wasn't aware it needed to be "saved." From the "Iron Man" and "Harry Potter" films to "Transformers" the big-budget cinema experience seems to be alive and well.

Am I missing something?

 

[Chamber005]

Again, we're all free to have different perspectives. Mine is that this movie was made to make money, that's it, and that critics and audiences have allowed the film itself to cloud that obvious intention.

To me, intention matters in all things, but it is absolutely essential in art.

I feel that Cameron's personal intentions on previous films, while not purely altrustic, had their base in something human, something progressive. Judging by interviews with him as well as cast memembers and the overall tone of the masses regarding this film (because the tone of your audience usually spells out the art's actual intentions, regardless of however well hidden they might be), I feel like his intentions on Avatar are born from a place of greed and self-importance.

And that INTENTION being so far removed from the hacked themes and plot devices of the piece (as described by audience members) make it that much more dispicable in nature.

It's like pretending to be friends with someone just so that you can sell them on your product.

Of course I wish more people were on the same page as me on these boards with regards the intentions behind this movie, but I've met several people face to face that have specifically said, "I want to not like this movie." Not because they hope to be different than other people, but because they feel as I do, that there is something distinctly immoral about the entire piece as it pertains to the film and its identity.

 

[Sad Max]

There is one thing about the whole photorealism business that has actually been on my mind since production-time. Of course the photoreal image - for practical purposes, indistinguishable from a captured image of a physical three-dimensional object - is a grail for image-creators. We've been after that particular gold ring, since Praxiteles.

But reproduction of reality is only one aspect of photography and film making. It's said that the arrival of photography freed painters from the constraints of replicating reality and spurred the development of modern painting. And painting fed back in turn to cinema, with the pursuit of the 'painterly' image a la Sokurov or Renoir: the avowed goal wasn't the most faithful reproduction of reality possible but rather an image consciously controlled to produce a desired effect. And their films aren't merely 'photoreal;' they were genuinely photographic.

And really, the created image isn't reality anyway. What you aim for when pursuing the photo-real target is a convincing and compelling filmic image which - like any kind of filmic image - arrives at your corneas after passing through real or virtual air, optics, filters, electronic or chemical reaction, optics, and the air, again.

So it seems to me that a film like Avatar can perhaps be approached not solely from the perspective of strictly accurate photo-reproduction, but like any traditionally-originated film that makes use of controlled lighting, filtration, etc from the perspective of the filmic visual effects achieved with the tools employed.

Is Avatar an absolutely 'convincing' replication of physical reality? Seems reasonably sure that some number of people will find that it isn't. Is Avatar an immersive and compelling filmic experience? The uniform response so far seems to be along the lines of you damn betcha.

 

[Sad Max]

I wasn't aware it needed to be "saved." From the "Iron Man" and "Harry Potter" films to "Transformers" the big-budget cinema experience seems to be alive and well.

Am I missing something?

I took that to mean experience in the sense that in their turns sound, color, widescreen, three-d, IMAX have been the 'cinema experiences' as distinct from simply being the contemporary widespread state-of-the-art.

In terms of presentation, where's eleven when ten is something like IMAX? Well, something like Avatar is kind of eleven.

YMMV.

 

[Captain Pierce]

Avatar is un-poopooing-believable

Avatar is un-poopooing-believable

Chamber005: as some who liked (and still like) the Final Fantasy movie a lot, let me say this: Avatar's CGI characters blow it away. Avatar is as far beyond FF as FF was beyond whatever the best CGI characters were before that.

Avatar is in no way comparable to Phantom Menace. As a matter of fact, my wife, the friend we saw it with, and I all agreed that the way we felt after seeing Avatar was exactly the way we wanted to feel after seeing any of the Star Wars prequels, the way we had felt after the "original" Star Wars movies: Holy crap, I just saw the best movie ever made! (And that's funny because the friend and I both watched the 70-minute video review of Phantom Menace that was posted in General Discussion last night.) (And I'm not necessarily saying that this was the best movie ever made, but that's what I thought when I walked out of it. I may change my mind about that later, I sometimes do... )

I can't speak to your complaints about the movie's marketing, because I haven't seen any. I would, however, say this. When you say:

Bottom line, if the movie was really a miraculous achievement of storytelling they wouldn't have to use such aggressive marketing ploys. They would use traditional marketing and the people would speak out.

Do you really think any studio that has spent anywhere from 250 million, to 350 million, to whatever number people on the Internet can make up, on a movie is capable of not using agressivie marketing? And let's be clear: marketing is a STUDIO decision. The director of the movie has nothing to do with it, and IMHO that's where your insistence on using marketing as a way to slam the filmmaking just as much as you would an actors performance breaks down.

It takes a lot to get me out to the theater these days, because as much as I love to see a good movie on a big screen, it seems that a lot of movies aren't good enough to make up for the idiots you have to watch them with. Here's how good Avatar was: nobody was talking on their cell phone, or texting, or even talking much to each other (except about the movie.) For two hours and forty-three minutes, that theater almost full of people was totally involved in that movie, and I can't remember the last time that happened. Not even for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, although that experience was at least close. (There is also the possibility that I was just so involved in the movie that I didn't notice any distractions , but that also doesn't happen often.)

I also want to say this: if Cameron can make a movie like this only for the money, and not to inspire emotion, then we all should be thankful that he went into filmmaking and not politics. Because this movie goddamn well does inspire emotion, and if he can do that while only trying to make money, then he probably could get himself elected "King of the World" if he wanted to.

Finally... look, you don't know me, I'm just some guy on an Internet forum whose opinion doesn't matter to you, and I totally realize that. But I'm going to say this anyway: I have not been "brainwashed" by any marketing, I do not work for 20th Century Fox or any other company with a financial interest in this movie doing well; in short, I have no reason to say that this movie kicks ass other than the fact that I truly liked it...

...and this movie kicks ass. This movie kicks ass and takes initials, because it doesn't have time to take full names. This movie has come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and it's all out of bubblegum. Have I made my point yet?

 

[Kholi]

I took that to mean experience in the sense that in their turns sound, color, widescreen, three-d, IMAX have been the 'cinema experiences' as distinct from simply being the contemporary widespread state-of-the-art.

In terms of presentation, where's eleven when ten is something like IMAX? Well, something like Avatar is kind of eleven.

YMMV.

exactly. Experience was the keyword. It's one thing to go to the movies, it's another to get geared up for a cinematic event.

 

[Chamber005]

There is one thing about the whole photorealism business that has actually been on my mind since production-time. Of course the photoreal image - for practical purposes, indistinguishable from a captured image of a physical three-dimensional object - is a grail for image-creators. We've been after that particular gold ring, since Praxiteles.

But reproduction of reality is only one aspect of photography and film making. It's said that the arrival of photography freed painters from the constraints of replicating reality and spurred the development of modern painting. And painting fed back in turn to cinema, with the pursuit of the 'painterly' image a la Sokurov or Renoir: the avowed goal wasn't the most faithful reproduction of reality possible but rather an image consciously controlled to produce a desired effect. And their films aren't merely 'photoreal;' they were genuinely photographic.

And really, the created image isn't reality anyway. What you aim for when pursuing the photo-real target is a convincing and compelling filmic image which - like any kind of filmic image - arrives at your corneas after passing through real or virtual air, optics, filters, electronic or chemical reaction, optics, and the air, again.

So it seems to me that a film like Avatar can perhaps be approached not solely from the perspective of strictly accurate photo-reproduction, but like any traditionally-originated film that makes use of controlled lighting, filtration, etc from the perspective of the filmic visual effects achieved with the tools employed.

Is Avatar an absolutely 'convincing' replication of physical reality? Seems reasonably sure that some number of people will find that it isn't. Is Avatar an immersive and compelling filmic experience? The uniform response so far seems to be along the lines of you damn betcha.

We already have a name for that, it's called Animated Film.

If you think about it Avatar is actually just a really, really, really, really (really) expensive version of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

Now THAT was a classic.

 

[Rodney V. Smith]

We already have a name for that, it's called Animated Film.

If you think about it Avatar is actually just a really, really, really, really (really) expensive version of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

Now THAT was a classic.

You haven't even seen the movie yet! Watch it first and then have an opinion on what is a classic.

 

[Barry_Green]

Mine is that this movie was made to make money

Are you saying there's something wrong with that? A $300 million budget film has absolutely positively GOT to have making money as its #1 goal.

And the best way, the far and away best way, to get a film to make money is to make a good film that audiences love.

So that's what he did.

Purity of artistic intent is all fine and dandy if you're doing something as a labor of love. But when you come to the studio and say "give me $300,000,000.00 to make this work of art", you'd better have as close as it comes to a guarantee to get them their money back.

Avatar doesn't break new ground in storytelling. Nor does it have to. It is what it is, it does what it does very well, and audiences love it, and it will have no trouble at all making its money back.

I feel that Cameron's personal intentions on previous films, while not purely altrustic, had their base in something human, something progressive.

I think you really, really, really, really, really should just go see it then, because Avatar is more of a "message" film than anything else he's done, times a thousand.

I feel like his intentions on Avatar are born from a place of greed and self-importance.

As others have tried to say, you simply cannot have an informed opinion on it until you see it. So I say, go see it, then come back and revisit this statement and see if you truly again think that "greed" is what motivated him.

 

[Sad Max]

Purity of artistic intent is all fine and dandy if you're doing something as a labor of love.

Frankly I have noted that frequently the loudest mumbling about artistic intent comes from people who actually aren't doing much of anything, at all.

 

[diego1235467]

Like others have said, go SEE IT first, and ***** about it later.