I just came back from the IMAX viewing here in NY, and all I have to say is WOW. I now hang my head in shame for ever doubting James Cameron! This is a cinematic achievement and simply one of the greatest films ever made.
James Cameron promised to take the audience to a new world and did just that. As a matter of fact I'm going to take another trip to Pandora this Sunday, I think it's worth it ^_^.
By the way if this movie isn't up for best director, best film, best visual effects, and best sound design then I'm never watching the Oscars again. It's totally deserving of every award that will hopefully come it's way.
Movie of the year. I LOVED IT. People who want to rag on this movie need to get in touch with their inner child. This movie made me feel like a kid again. I left the theater wishing I could live in that world, I havent felt that way in a long time.
The Cg was PERFECT. I was completely immersed in the performances of the CG Actors. It was so good that when it was real actors, I wanted it to go back to the CG stuff as soon as possible. Fantastic Beautiful Movie.
yes, great movie. When I first saw it I got a ferngully / dancing with wolves feel to it. Great job of pacing since i never once checked the time. I was actually shocked when I got out since it didn't feel that long.
I think giving the aliens a native american type culture was great. It really took alot of their spiritual beliefs and made them more visual. Connecting to the mother planet / animals and all that stuff. Effects/art/animation was great. I really hope we could see more 3d films of this quality, but with the pricetag I'm not sure how well it'll catch on.
Seeing what they did with their environments just gave me a sick depressing feeling compared to what we do in games. lol.
It worked really well for me and i'm a bit afraid of watching it without the 3D-effect. Although, the glasses were tinted and i think that affected the visuals a bit colorwise. Not sure though .
I saw it in 3D IMAX, man those glasses are painful to wear for 3 hours.
I give Avatar a B-; the special effects and production value were top notch, the story was horrible. The movie felt long to me simply because the plot was so predictable and cliche. If I was 10 years younger I probably would have thought this was the greatest movie ever, but I have become too jaded in taste to go into a movie feeling like a kid anymore. Simply having flashy CG doesn't do it for me anymore, there needs to be a gripping narrative and Avatar's simply had no subtlety nor complexity. I think Avatar took itself too seriously, especially the second half when it got all preachy (okay, we get it Mr. Cameron, humans are evil, the military and corporations are evil, we should stop destroying our planet...). It's a great 3 hour long demo reel.
Some of the shots of Pandora were truly awe inspiring and I love the vehicle designs. I think the first half of the movie was far stronger than the second half; surprised at how little exposition there was; I still don't like the blue space smurfs. I was hoping James Horner would produce another one of his epic film scores, only to be disappointed in a forgettable soundtrack as well. However, I'll probably go so it again as it was an entertaining film, and there so too much visual candy to absorb on a single viewing.
District 9 still rules as the best movie of the year for me.
It worked really well for me and i'm a bit afraid of watching it without the 3D-effect. Although, the glasses were tinted and i think that affected the visuals a bit colorwise. Not sure though .
watched it in Real 3D.
imax has bigger screen, but always less refresh rate than Real 3D.
id rather watch in smaller screen, unless imax fix their refresh rate ..
also The Real-D theaters use Circular Polarizers in their glasses. This
allows a wider degree of head motion before ghosting occurs. The
traditional 3-D polarizers are linear.
saw it in 3d last night, loved it. Sure, the story didn't completely change my world view on the historical impact of human nature in terms of war and strife, nor did it enlighten me into realizing the true aspect of our glorious mother Gaia.... but goddamn was it fun to watch. James Cameron has not let me down.
"I started working on Avatar 3 years ago and was working with Zbrush 2 ( that means no subtools!!) I had to work on a fairly slow laptop so that I could work directly with Jim Cameron on the mocap stage.
I was really green as a 3D artist but jumped in with both feet,"
SICK! Full of art that will make you cry your pants off.
"I started working on Avatar 3 years ago and was working with Zbrush 2 ( that means no subtools!!) I had to work on a fairly slow laptop so that I could work directly with Jim Cameron on the mocap stage.
I was really green as a 3D artist but jumped in with both feet,"
SICK! Full of art that will make you cry your pants off.
Cool link, that came in handy as reference for something I was doing at the time.
just saw it in IMAX 3d and if you can get past the annoying DOF and motion blur at times then it is amazing. I think the 3d wasn't that great of an addition.
can I be excused too? The effects look like they are cool, maybe groundbreaking but it ends there imo. On that note maybe they should have put Will Smith in it, told him to be as loud and annoying as he likes then the special effects will look like lots of photoshop lens flares over predictably bad acting therefore not breaking the mould that we are used to
gah this movie was insane! easily the most immersive movie i have ever watched, having seen in 3D, I personally liked it better than the 2D, but I dont get headaches or any of that stuff from it so, I'm a little biased, but there were definitely scenes in the movie where i felt vertigo, it was nuts.
I would love to know how long each frame took to render on average.
I don't understand the complaints about the 3D. Especially the headaches. I sat through the entire affair and didn't even feel a twinge. I wonder if anyone complaining of headaches was sitting a bit too close to the screen. I was about half-way up the stadium seating at the theater. I think that is probably the optimal distance for viewing a 3D film. At that distance, you can just take in the entire screen without turning your head.
The plot was a bit simplistic for such a long movie. Whether that is a positive or negative is up to the individual viewer. It means that the plot definitely takes a back seat. At the same time, it allows for greater exploration of the crafted world the viewer is presented with. The acting wasn't as bad as some people have complained. The main character can be a bit wooden at times, we could have done with greater emotional range from him. My greatest complaint in that area would be that most of the characterizations are quite static. Having a few more dynamic characters would have helped considerably.
I think it is unfair to criticize a movie for having a simple story. A simple story done well makes for a great movie. Movies, even long ones, don't need intricate back-plots or intrigue to keep the audience engaged. Avatar's real failings were in its extremely shallow characterizations, and its heavy-handed political / environmental message.
Also, it is going to take years for Cameron to live down calling the movie's impetus "unobtanium." Almost any nonsense science fiction name would have been better. Hell, they could have avoided a specific name entirely and even THAT would have been better.
As has already been voiced, the movie is jaw-dropingly gorgeous, and is worth seeing for the visuals alone. The real star here is the world of Pandora, and James Cameron and company delivered handsomely.
Avatar is not Citizen Kane, The Godfather, or even Aliens. However, it is also not any of the Star Wars prequels, it's not a Transformers movie, and it is not Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
gah this movie was insane! easily the most immersive movie i have ever watched, having seen in 3D, I personally liked it better than the 2D, but I dont get headaches or any of that stuff from it so, I'm a little biased, but there were definitely scenes in the movie where i felt vertigo, it was nuts.
I would love to know how long each frame took to render on average.
I have a magazine here that says 100 hours a frame.
I don't understand the complaints about the 3D. Especially the headaches. I sat through the entire affair and didn't even feel a twinge. I wonder if anyone complaining of headaches was sitting a bit too close to the screen. I was about half-way up the stadium seating at the theater. I think that is probably the optimal distance for viewing a 3D film. At that distance, you can just take in the entire screen without turning your head.
The plot was a bit simplistic for such a long movie. Whether that is a positive or negative is up to the individual viewer. It means that the plot definitely takes a back seat. At the same time, it allows for greater exploration of the crafted world the viewer is presented with. The acting wasn't as bad as some people have complained. The main character can be a bit wooden at times, we could have done with greater emotional range from him. My greatest complaint in that area would be that most of the characterizations are quite static. Having a few more dynamic characters would have helped considerably.
I think it is unfair to criticize a movie for having a simple story. A simple story done well makes for a great movie. Movies, even long ones, don't need intricate back-plots or intrigue to keep the audience engaged. Avatar's real failings were in its extremely shallow characterizations, and its heavy-handed political / environmental message.
Also, it is going to take years for Cameron to live down calling the movie's impetus "unobtanium." Almost any nonsense science fiction name would have been better. Hell, they could have avoided a specific name entirely and even THAT would have been better.
As has already been voiced, the movie is jaw-dropingly gorgeous, and is worth seeing for the visuals alone. The real star here is the world of Pandora, and James Cameron and company delivered handsomely.
Avatar is not Citizen Kane, The Godfather, or even Aliens. However, it is also not any of the Star Wars prequels, it's not a Transformers movie, and it is not Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
I can deal fine with simple stories but cliche and predictable ones not so much. Nothing happens in the film that you dont expect from a hundred other films that have come before. And if you take the film at face value it makes no sense, but because its been done before is the only reason you ignore/forget the flaws.
I could even deal with that but if for the characters, but none of them stand out in any meaningfull way. Their motivations are glossed over, there are no real moments where you can glimpse a bit more about them except in the most superficial of manners. The dialogue they do have is awful.
I think alot of the fiction smells of an afterthought, even though he says it was over ten years in the making. Unobtanium, the Navi USB ports etc.
Personally the film frustrates me a little bit.
All this proclaimed epicness from everywhere for the past two years. I go to see it and it *almost* gets there save for the fact that the story makes NO deviation from the 'outsider/nobel savage' story that can be found in a hundred other movies. Even The Last Samurai mixed it up a bit by having Tom Cruise's character be an alcoholic asshole. The story is very safe. A little twist or sidetrack from the standard and I would have been sold on the story.
Now, he pretty well has a blank check with Hollywood...
I guess we'll be seeing that Battle Angel movie after all... :S
Saw it in 3D, front row. Amazing experience. Can't get the reviewers' gripe with the story, they say it makes no sense, it made complete sense to me, it was an age old formula, perfected.
I have a magazine here that says 100 hours a frame.
That's the most extreme case as far as I know. It depended heavily on complexity, and as you can guess the final battle was the most complicated.
Curiously, they've rendered almost no passes and got the near final results from the renderer itself.
Also, they've used spherical harmonics for the lighting - finally a case where game development results are not ignored in the movie VFX branch of the industry.
I think the story can take a back seat to the visuals if it means JC can be guaranteed sequels.
Just look at a movie like Star Wars the first one was great visually but the story was pretty much the typical hero story. It was done well but done before. Then Empire strike came out and presented a much more engaging story. So give it time and a sequel and we can expect to see a great story to go with our cheese.
Saw it in true Blurry3D! Had the glasses off something like 40% of the time. I dunno why but somehow the glasses made it look flatter to me? Like a pop up book. I didn't feel the volumes 'wrapping' around each other as opposed to what my brain somehow imagines when I see a 2D movie. And thought it was pretty blurry too, weird stuff.
Story was non-existent but!! I really liked alien alter-ego of the nerdy lab guy. His face is so unique IRL, it made his avatar look really cool. It didn't work too well on the main Jake guy I thought. I somehow had to keep reminding myself it was him.
The african-based aliens worked well, especially the facial shots. However the full body shots seemed to suffer from the usual mocap syndromes, what did you guys think of that? As if the hips were shifting the wrong way or something.
Michelle Rodriguez looked hot. Cut that tanktop DOWN!!
Saw it in Real-D this afternoon. like everyone says the story was suuper predictable and cookie cutter. visually it was pretty good, Ill admit most of the colorful stuff worked well. The air vehicles and interiors looked pretty cool scifi, a bit generic/borrowed from aliens but overall pretty wicked. the mechs I still think look clumsy and lame, especially when compared to the one in D9.
My main gripe is still that the aliens look like a furry's wet dream. every time i see them i expect them to bust out the wolf howl and just start tag teaming each others asses. the scale of them in comparison to humans was pretty neat though. the facial acting was pretty good but when they smiled it creeped the hell outta me. the cheek bones didnt seem to shift and the eyes just didnt convey a smile, so it was like the mouth just moved which = uncanny valley. also, sigourney weaver's avatar was just weird looking.
In terms of this being the revolutionary way of film making, I dont think so. it was cool to see 3d stuff but its nothing that really hasnt been done before, albiet they were more restrained and there was no stupid POP outta the screen shots. it added some nice depth but it was blurry as hell, will be nice to see it in crisp 2d on Blu-ray though!
I definitely enjoyed star trek and District 9 more but this was an enjoyable romp of CG. the soundtrack was also pretty good.
The guy is talented but his monster designs are all over the place now and getting a bit old I think ... I like his mechanical stuff tho. So that's good for Tron :P
however, it's totally a hippie wet dream. this is a rehashing of an old fantasy that basically states that the indigenous people had some sort of wisdom that we've lost. it's absolutely false and doesn't hold up for a minute under any sort of reasonable scrutinization. this was never the case, and is a modern distortion on olde times.
still, it's a beautiful fantasy. I kept thinking of the mirror that harry potter found, that showed him his deepest desires. I so wish that the world could be like that.. where everyone has a fucking gorgeous body, super powers, loved each other, and all life was in harmony. that people understood a connection between us all, and we could all just live fearless lives, in love with each other for ever in eutopia. there are lots of people who think we just need to make a paradigm shift into a more loving worldview, where we appreciate our differences and can let each other be, in harmony with the planet.
it is, however, a fantasy.... So I won't waste my life gazing into that mirror.. even though i soooo want to.
In terms of this being the revolutionary way of film making, I dont think so.
I'd suggest reading a bit more about all the tech they've invented for the movie...
- proper 3D camera
- high quality facial capture (though I still have some doubts about this one)
- virtual studio: ability to use a 'camera' in the mocap volume and preview the entire scene and character animation in real time using Motionbuilder
edit: this means he has a portable LCD screen with mocap markers on it, that acts like a camera's viewfinder
- simulcam: combining the above preview system with the real camera and compositing live plates and the Motionbuilder preview together, again in real time
These allow the director to work with CG as if he was shooting live action. He can instantly see all live action and CG elements as a realtime hw rendered preview and actually grab a 'camera' and move next to the actors to shoot them. This has to be compared to months of preproduction that were required before, just to finally view the scene.
They can also play the captured stuff back at any scale, so you can become the camera's crane and shoot large scale events as well.
So Cameron basically put together an exact 5-hour cut of the movie before he handed it over to Weta and other studios. It was not an animatic, it was the final movie, just with preview quality CG elements. I kinda have to agree that it's a big big step in movie making.
sorry i worded it wrong. I meant in terms of the end user experience they were hyping up to be revolutionary. the making aspect is super cool for sure and cameron has always been a poineer at creating new ways to do things, I just dont feel the end result is going to change the way people watch movies. I still think film is beautiful as a 2d medium.
Saw it tonight, CG was definitely the best I've seen in any movie to date. Seamless and natural 100% of the time, to my vaguely untrained eye anyway.
The creatures were very cool, and the Na'vi looked excellent.
Plot was very obvious, telegraphed and heavy-handed, but it worked. The script was a bit crappy in places but nothing too terrible.
In general a fun experience, I thought the 3D was great and the visuals were stunning. Absolutely beautiful at times.
- virtual studio: ability to use a 'camera' in the mocap volume and preview the entire scene and character animation in real time using Motionbuilder
edit: this means he has a portable LCD screen with mocap markers on it, that acts like a camera's viewfinder
- simulcam: combining the above preview system with the real camera and compositing live plates and the Motionbuilder preview together, again in real time
Didn't they also do this in Uncharted 2?
I fucking loved the movie. Very pretty.
My only gripe: names of things "Unobtaium" "HomeTree" "SoulTree." I can agree that in a world so complex and crazy, to have named those things "Urk'ara'trak" would have the viewer quickly forget or empathize with them (what was that lead chicks name again... something with a T and funny sounding). Was still cringe worthy "WE WANT TO OBTAIN UNOBTAIUM! YAAAAAY"
It was very pretty although only the bottom 3rd of the screen seemed to be in 3d. After a while I never questioned that it was all CG characters and just accepted them for real actors (or alien actors). Very enjoyable. Plot could be described as weak but I didn't go in expecting Shindler's list. Everything a blockbuster should be. Unlike 2012 which was utter shite.
I don't get it. Why are so many people saying the story is shit? It follows the classic sci-fi / fantasy story telling motif. Ya there may have been a few ruff spots (unattanium? lol) but for the most part I thought it was very well done, and very clear. Characters were believable and enjoyable.
I don't get it. Why are so many people saying the story is shit? It follows the classic sci-fi / fantasy story telling motif. Ya there may have been a few ruff spots (unattanium? lol) but for the most part I thought it was very well done, and very clear. Characters were believable and enjoyable.
For me, it's because there is NO deviation.
As great and detailed and phenomenal as everything else in the movie is, to have such a generic story that doesn't even attempt to stray off a well worn path was an anti-climax.
Replies
James Cameron promised to take the audience to a new world and did just that. As a matter of fact I'm going to take another trip to Pandora this Sunday, I think it's worth it ^_^.
By the way if this movie isn't up for best director, best film, best visual effects, and best sound design then I'm never watching the Oscars again. It's totally deserving of every award that will hopefully come it's way.
The Cg was PERFECT. I was completely immersed in the performances of the CG Actors. It was so good that when it was real actors, I wanted it to go back to the CG stuff as soon as possible. Fantastic Beautiful Movie.
I think giving the aliens a native american type culture was great. It really took alot of their spiritual beliefs and made them more visual. Connecting to the mother planet / animals and all that stuff. Effects/art/animation was great. I really hope we could see more 3d films of this quality, but with the pricetag I'm not sure how well it'll catch on.
Seeing what they did with their environments just gave me a sick depressing feeling compared to what we do in games. lol.
Although I personally still refuse to believe that it's CG, there must be some blue people living in NZ that they've filmed...
looked amazing, as long as your eyes were focusing exactly where they wanted you to
but what i want is : like cinematic love and action version of alien planet discovery channel.
and yes it delivers
will watch it for second time for sure
It worked really well for me and i'm a bit afraid of watching it without the 3D-effect. Although, the glasses were tinted and i think that affected the visuals a bit colorwise. Not sure though .
I give Avatar a B-; the special effects and production value were top notch, the story was horrible. The movie felt long to me simply because the plot was so predictable and cliche. If I was 10 years younger I probably would have thought this was the greatest movie ever, but I have become too jaded in taste to go into a movie feeling like a kid anymore. Simply having flashy CG doesn't do it for me anymore, there needs to be a gripping narrative and Avatar's simply had no subtlety nor complexity. I think Avatar took itself too seriously, especially the second half when it got all preachy (okay, we get it Mr. Cameron, humans are evil, the military and corporations are evil, we should stop destroying our planet...). It's a great 3 hour long demo reel.
Some of the shots of Pandora were truly awe inspiring and I love the vehicle designs. I think the first half of the movie was far stronger than the second half; surprised at how little exposition there was; I still don't like the blue space smurfs. I was hoping James Horner would produce another one of his epic film scores, only to be disappointed in a forgettable soundtrack as well. However, I'll probably go so it again as it was an entertaining film, and there so too much visual candy to absorb on a single viewing.
District 9 still rules as the best movie of the year for me.
watched it in Real 3D.
imax has bigger screen, but always less refresh rate than Real 3D.
id rather watch in smaller screen, unless imax fix their refresh rate ..
also The Real-D theaters use Circular Polarizers in their glasses. This
allows a wider degree of head motion before ghosting occurs. The
traditional 3-D polarizers are linear.
"I started working on Avatar 3 years ago and was working with Zbrush 2 ( that means no subtools!!) I had to work on a fairly slow laptop so that I could work directly with Jim Cameron on the mocap stage.
I was really green as a 3D artist but jumped in with both feet,"
SICK! Full of art that will make you cry your pants off.
Cool link, that came in handy as reference for something I was doing at the time.
Hope it wasn't masturbating, although it's understandable if you were.
just saw it in IMAX 3d and if you can get past the annoying DOF and motion blur at times then it is amazing. I think the 3d wasn't that great of an addition.
and beautiful women
Perna's excused because he hates everything.
btw the idea looks very similar to this classic cult film (which is great) if you haven't seen this see it!!
[ame]
I would love to know how long each frame took to render on average.
I don't understand the complaints about the 3D. Especially the headaches. I sat through the entire affair and didn't even feel a twinge. I wonder if anyone complaining of headaches was sitting a bit too close to the screen. I was about half-way up the stadium seating at the theater. I think that is probably the optimal distance for viewing a 3D film. At that distance, you can just take in the entire screen without turning your head.
The plot was a bit simplistic for such a long movie. Whether that is a positive or negative is up to the individual viewer. It means that the plot definitely takes a back seat. At the same time, it allows for greater exploration of the crafted world the viewer is presented with. The acting wasn't as bad as some people have complained. The main character can be a bit wooden at times, we could have done with greater emotional range from him. My greatest complaint in that area would be that most of the characterizations are quite static. Having a few more dynamic characters would have helped considerably.
I think it is unfair to criticize a movie for having a simple story. A simple story done well makes for a great movie. Movies, even long ones, don't need intricate back-plots or intrigue to keep the audience engaged. Avatar's real failings were in its extremely shallow characterizations, and its heavy-handed political / environmental message.
Also, it is going to take years for Cameron to live down calling the movie's impetus "unobtanium." Almost any nonsense science fiction name would have been better. Hell, they could have avoided a specific name entirely and even THAT would have been better.
As has already been voiced, the movie is jaw-dropingly gorgeous, and is worth seeing for the visuals alone. The real star here is the world of Pandora, and James Cameron and company delivered handsomely.
Avatar is not Citizen Kane, The Godfather, or even Aliens. However, it is also not any of the Star Wars prequels, it's not a Transformers movie, and it is not Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
I have a magazine here that says 100 hours a frame.
I can deal fine with simple stories but cliche and predictable ones not so much. Nothing happens in the film that you dont expect from a hundred other films that have come before. And if you take the film at face value it makes no sense, but because its been done before is the only reason you ignore/forget the flaws.
I could even deal with that but if for the characters, but none of them stand out in any meaningfull way. Their motivations are glossed over, there are no real moments where you can glimpse a bit more about them except in the most superficial of manners. The dialogue they do have is awful.
I think alot of the fiction smells of an afterthought, even though he says it was over ten years in the making. Unobtanium, the Navi USB ports etc.
But still, it was a good superficial film.
All this proclaimed epicness from everywhere for the past two years. I go to see it and it *almost* gets there save for the fact that the story makes NO deviation from the 'outsider/nobel savage' story that can be found in a hundred other movies. Even The Last Samurai mixed it up a bit by having Tom Cruise's character be an alcoholic asshole. The story is very safe. A little twist or sidetrack from the standard and I would have been sold on the story.
Now, he pretty well has a blank check with Hollywood...
I guess we'll be seeing that Battle Angel movie after all... :S
Fave of 2009.
That's the most extreme case as far as I know. It depended heavily on complexity, and as you can guess the final battle was the most complicated.
Curiously, they've rendered almost no passes and got the near final results from the renderer itself.
Also, they've used spherical harmonics for the lighting - finally a case where game development results are not ignored in the movie VFX branch of the industry.
Just look at a movie like Star Wars the first one was great visually but the story was pretty much the typical hero story. It was done well but done before. Then Empire strike came out and presented a much more engaging story. So give it time and a sequel and we can expect to see a great story to go with our cheese.
Story was non-existent but!! I really liked alien alter-ego of the nerdy lab guy. His face is so unique IRL, it made his avatar look really cool. It didn't work too well on the main Jake guy I thought. I somehow had to keep reminding myself it was him.
The african-based aliens worked well, especially the facial shots. However the full body shots seemed to suffer from the usual mocap syndromes, what did you guys think of that? As if the hips were shifting the wrong way or something.
Michelle Rodriguez looked hot. Cut that tanktop DOWN!!
My main gripe is still that the aliens look like a furry's wet dream. every time i see them i expect them to bust out the wolf howl and just start tag teaming each others asses. the scale of them in comparison to humans was pretty neat though. the facial acting was pretty good but when they smiled it creeped the hell outta me. the cheek bones didnt seem to shift and the eyes just didnt convey a smile, so it was like the mouth just moved which = uncanny valley. also, sigourney weaver's avatar was just weird looking.
In terms of this being the revolutionary way of film making, I dont think so. it was cool to see 3d stuff but its nothing that really hasnt been done before, albiet they were more restrained and there was no stupid POP outta the screen shots. it added some nice depth but it was blurry as hell, will be nice to see it in crisp 2d on Blu-ray though!
I definitely enjoyed star trek and District 9 more but this was an enjoyable romp of CG. the soundtrack was also pretty good.
http://www.nevillepage.com/portfolio-2/creatures/
The guy is talented but his monster designs are all over the place now and getting a bit old I think ... I like his mechanical stuff tho. So that's good for Tron :P
FUCKING. AWESOME.
however, it's totally a hippie wet dream. this is a rehashing of an old fantasy that basically states that the indigenous people had some sort of wisdom that we've lost. it's absolutely false and doesn't hold up for a minute under any sort of reasonable scrutinization. this was never the case, and is a modern distortion on olde times.
still, it's a beautiful fantasy. I kept thinking of the mirror that harry potter found, that showed him his deepest desires. I so wish that the world could be like that.. where everyone has a fucking gorgeous body, super powers, loved each other, and all life was in harmony. that people understood a connection between us all, and we could all just live fearless lives, in love with each other for ever in eutopia. there are lots of people who think we just need to make a paradigm shift into a more loving worldview, where we appreciate our differences and can let each other be, in harmony with the planet.
it is, however, a fantasy.... So I won't waste my life gazing into that mirror.. even though i soooo want to.
I'd suggest reading a bit more about all the tech they've invented for the movie...
- proper 3D camera
- high quality facial capture (though I still have some doubts about this one)
- virtual studio: ability to use a 'camera' in the mocap volume and preview the entire scene and character animation in real time using Motionbuilder
edit: this means he has a portable LCD screen with mocap markers on it, that acts like a camera's viewfinder
- simulcam: combining the above preview system with the real camera and compositing live plates and the Motionbuilder preview together, again in real time
These allow the director to work with CG as if he was shooting live action. He can instantly see all live action and CG elements as a realtime hw rendered preview and actually grab a 'camera' and move next to the actors to shoot them. This has to be compared to months of preproduction that were required before, just to finally view the scene.
They can also play the captured stuff back at any scale, so you can become the camera's crane and shoot large scale events as well.
So Cameron basically put together an exact 5-hour cut of the movie before he handed it over to Weta and other studios. It was not an animatic, it was the final movie, just with preview quality CG elements. I kinda have to agree that it's a big big step in movie making.
@Eraserhead: Could you atleast watch the movie before making a joke out of it? They did an awsome work!
The creatures were very cool, and the Na'vi looked excellent.
Plot was very obvious, telegraphed and heavy-handed, but it worked. The script was a bit crappy in places but nothing too terrible.
In general a fun experience, I thought the 3D was great and the visuals were stunning. Absolutely beautiful at times.
Didn't they also do this in Uncharted 2?
I fucking loved the movie. Very pretty.
My only gripe: names of things "Unobtaium" "HomeTree" "SoulTree." I can agree that in a world so complex and crazy, to have named those things "Urk'ara'trak" would have the viewer quickly forget or empathize with them (what was that lead chicks name again... something with a T and funny sounding). Was still cringe worthy "WE WANT TO OBTAIN UNOBTAIUM! YAAAAAY"
I have! But your post was bothering me enough to force me to reply to it.
Stunning movie.
Imperials and space marines versus orks and chaos next!
For me, it's because there is NO deviation.
As great and detailed and phenomenal as everything else in the movie is, to have such a generic story that doesn't even attempt to stray off a well worn path was an anti-climax.