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January 20, 2010
Avatar/Pocahantas
I wasn't crazy about Avatar. I was hoping the movie would be better than the trailer. It wasn't... for a lot of reasons. The bad design, the garish colors, the dull characters, and the ludicrous "indians are so heavenly and pure" theme, which is summed up beautifully in the above paragraph (click to enlarge).
Worst bit of design?... I can't decide. Was it the six legged horse that looked like a blend between a sea horse and a horse (with scales)? Or was it the hammer-head rhino thing?January 20, 2010 | Permalink
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Comments
I can swear I saw some Rivenese glowing fungi in the forest scenes!
Posted by: tor | Jan 20, 2010 1:22:58 PM
You didn't just see the occasional glowing fungi, you saw a shitload of anything and everything glowing all over the place. What wasn't glowing? The bugs, the trees, the leaves, the great wise tree... even the people. It was a no holds bar glow-fest-orgy... on acid. This was the mentality... "if a little glowing looks cool, then a lot will look incredible". Also known as bigger is always better.
Posted by: robyn | Jan 20, 2010 3:49:16 PM
I went and saw it twice. The story was lame, but the eye candy was worth watching it twice. It was a 3D animation feast.
Kori
Posted by: Kori | Jan 20, 2010 6:00:21 PM
it was one of those frivolous, fun movies to see in a theater. it was what i expected.
but what bothered me about the movie was the apparent lack of thought put into the world. what happens to pandora when it is on the dark side of its parent planet? shouldn't pandora be very volcanic with the other sibling moons and it's parent planet tugging on it? what's with all the bio-luminance (could be related to the first question)? oh, and what's the atmosphere made from? and those are just a few questions about pandora, never mind what unobtainium is used for that allows the market to support the high price that would be required to go to another planet to get it, how the avatar system works (the most interesting question that wasn't explored in the movie), when the avatar pilots sleep, etc.
i understand it wouldn't make sense for the movie to just spell all this out for me, but i shouldn't walk away the with the impression that it was never thought about. they made a language for the navi though, that's something.
Posted by: david pasquinelli | Jan 20, 2010 7:46:50 PM
I saw the 3d version too... I think there's this huge problem with trying to apply the conventions of 2d film making on 3d films. I don't know why no one is talking about this. You CAN'T just take your average hollywood blockbuster filming style and slap a third dimension on to it, because this is what happens:
In 2d films, you're working with a SURFACE, but in 3d films you're working with a SPACE. Adding the third dimension really makes it very problematic to do simple things like zooming. In some of the scenes of Avatar, everything looked tiny, like little toy soldiers. And in other scenes, like close ups and dialogue, they instead looked like 30 feet giants. Most viewers probably don't reflect on this, but their subconscious definitely does, and it's telling them that something is very wrong indeed.
It's simply because when you zoom in 2d, you're actually cropping and enlarging an area of the picture. When you're doing it with only the X and Y axle, it's not really that strange. But when you add Z, zooming in and out is literally the same thing as changing the SIZE of the 3d world. The effect was very obvious in the scenes where you could see the zoom level shift.
We have the same problem in the audience being at different distances from the screen. For someone who is right up close to the screen, things will look a lot "bigger" than for someone who is far away. To be completely realistic, the 3d technology has to know exactly where the viewer is, how far away from the screen etc, and the image has to cover close to a 100% of the viewing angle.
Oh yeah, all the glowing stuff were kind of overdone... I think it would have been a lot more impressive if they have been content with doing it in a few places.
Posted by: tor | Jan 21, 2010 12:52:32 AM
Cameron was probably so busy in the last 15 years with getting the visuals right that he didn't have time to review his first draft of the script...
Posted by: Micha | Jan 21, 2010 7:19:41 AM
I agree, the movie sucked. It was only good for showing off graphics.
Posted by: Mogwaii [Slump Virus] | Jun 26, 2010 6:26:26 PM
Wow, this post is some 8 months old but I am glad I came across probably the few people who feel the same way I feel.
Avatar s#c*ed.
Posted by: jason | Aug 5, 2010 1:33:29 PM
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