It was mediocre. Not terrible, but just a bit 'meh'. The CG as generally fantastic, the world was well imagined. The first 30-45 minutes had nice pacing and began a build up to...
...nothing interesting.
I've seen that story a dozen times before, one of trailers was for 'Battle for Terra' which appears to be another rehash of the same old story.
None of the characters struck a chord, I didn't find anything overly emotional about it.
Flashy CG and 3D wasn't enough to elevate it above the average plot and characters. I think I'll dig out Red Scorpion on DVD instead.
Was anyone else bothered by the sound effects of the horses? They were like the exact sounds as the raptors from Jurassic Park, after I made the connection I couldn't shake the thought for the entire film. But yea amazing movie, cant wait to see it in 2D soon.
Haha, yes Tully said exactly this when we came out of the cinema the other day!
Lazy sound design...
It was mediocre. Not terrible, but just a bit 'meh'. The CG as generally fantastic, the world was well imagined. The first 30-45 minutes had nice pacing and began a build up to...
...nothing interesting.
I've seen that story a dozen times before, one of trailers was for 'Battle for Terra' which appears to be another rehash of the same old story.
None of the characters struck a chord, I didn't find anything overly emotional about it.
Flashy CG and 3D wasn't enough to elevate it above the average plot and characters. I think I'll dig out Red Scorpion on DVD instead.
Totally agree, see my post on the previous page.
For me, the only really interesting character was Sigourney Weavers character. The rest were just boring and cliched. As good as the CG was, that didn't distract from how I was able to see pretty much every scene coming a mile a way. No amount of flash or fancy CG can elevate a boring, lackluster script. And again, if it was just another summer action movie like GI Joe or the like I'd be able to look past that, but I expected more from Cameron. Even when he's told relatively simple stories (Titanic, Aliens, etc) he's done them in a way where you still cared more for the plot and story going on.
Take a look at another Cameron movie, T2. Every character there had growth and weight to them. Even a character like Miles Dysen, who had about 20 min of screen time. There was emotional impact and real feeling to that movie which Avatar didn't have
(imo).
Like Rick said, it wasn't terrible, but I think years from now it's not going to be looked at the same way it is now amidst all the hype.
Was anyone else bothered by the sound effects of the horses? They were like the exact sounds as the raptors from Jurassic Park, after I made the connection I couldn't shake the thought for the entire film. But yea amazing movie, cant wait to see it in 2D soon.
Haha I was wondering if I was the only one who noticed this!
Well, I think it would have been a lot more effective emotionally if it had been several hours longer; it was obviously cut (if you read the chud.com article) to be a simpler telling.
Earthlings come back to fuck some major shit up. Hands weapons over to the age old enemies of the smurfs and WHAM! Another movie and we'll be shoving popcorn into our faces until our asses explode.
cameron is a big fan of cutting his own stories for better pacing.
like pulling out the chip in terminator 2, along with the dream of kyle reese.
and so much from aliens.
not to mention the whole ending to the abyss :P
I'm betting quite alot that was cut was stuff to build the characters, like jake on earth that we see in the trailer, and hell's gate constantly being under attack by wildlife, since pandora as a single organism was treating it as an infection, which explains the ending.
cameron is a big fan of cutting his own stories for better pacing.
like pulling out the chip in terminator 2, along with the dream of kyle reese.
and so much from aliens.
not to mention the whole ending to the abyss :P
I'm betting quite alot that was cut was stuff to build the characters, like jake on earth that we see in the trailer, and hell's gate constantly being under attack by wildlife, since pandora as a single organism was treating it as an infection, which explains the ending.
And I prefer those cut versions to the extended editions.
I think he could have cut more out of Avatar the training montage for instance.
And I prefer those cut versions to the extended editions.
I think he could have cut more out of Avatar the training montage for instance.
I think they needed to address Jakes change of attitude to the Na'vi. It happened so fast and you hardly ever saw the conflict in him. That should've been the core of the movie.
I think they needed to address Jakes change of attitude to the Na'vi. It happened so fast and you hardly ever saw the conflict in him. That should've been the core of the movie.
Yeah, it was quick for me as well, but, it meant that there wasn't a prolonged period of time seeing Sulley change. From the first 10-15 minutes you now that its going to happen, so why prolong something that is bound to happen. I agree, not sure though if there was a better way to do it. There could have been an extra element, at one point I thought the Na`vi were going to fix his real legs, once he got found out.
Well, he loved every moment of it ever since he stepped into his avatar, which was shown pretty good, since he spent as much time as he could in it just to explore the navi world, while delaying his sidemission to infiltrate the navi and get information.
falling asleep at the log sessions, not shaving, skipping out on eating, he looked quite miserable in his real body, it was his dream and he didn't want to wake up.
falling asleep at the log sessions, not shaving, skipping out on eating, he looked quite miserable in his real body, it was his dream and he didn't want to wake up.
hehe I thought this was a nice reference to some mmo players
falling asleep at the log sessions, not shaving, skipping out on eating, he looked quite miserable in his real body, it was his dream and he didn't want to wake up.
True. I thought they would have played up the fact that he was miserable because in the real world he couldn't walk, and after getting a taste of being able to run and walk as an Avatar, he felt even more depressed about his condition. Maybe even see being in his Avatar body as a drug.
Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the movie, and maybe like with the last Transformers movie, I need to go back and see it again with the right mindset to enjoy it even more and not expect a story on par with the amazing visuals.
cameron is a big fan of cutting his own stories for better pacing.
like pulling out the chip in terminator 2, along with the dream of kyle reese.
and so much from aliens.
not to mention the whole ending to the abyss :P
I'm betting quite a lot that was cut was stuff to build the characters, like jake on earth that we see in the trailer, and hell's gate constantly being under attack by wildlife, since pandora as a single organism was treating it as an infection, which explains the ending.]
Actually that is not accurate. While it's true that he will cut anything that will improve the pacing and story, he was forced by the studios and cinema to make huge cuts to the Abyss because the movie at the time was considered to be way to long. In case of the Abyss what was seen in the movies wasn't Cameron's vision. You can see his comments on the matter if you watch the dvd. Ditto with Aliens, while in this movie it wasn't that big a deal, the scenes that were taken out did add more to the movie. Cameron doesn't seem to like to add useless crap to his films, it's not like some of the scenes in Star Wars extended edition.
2c. saw it last night in 2D*. environments were fucking wicked. not much a fan of the bioLuminescent stuff but on the whole they were hugely satisfying. the tech / mech stuff too felt real nice. except for the fact there was far too little of it ( by my count there's effectively only 4 hero craft examples ? shuttle. big drop ship thing. little choppers. and amp suit ( which was terribly bland in design i thought. dumpy cartoonesque silhouette and has about as much character as this 1.5 inch high kinder surprise toy mech i have on my desk))
and those blue people. i'm just gonna have to put plainly that i feel they were very poorly done. weightless blobby things with little to no apparent internal structure looking more like balloon subD models of the 90's. i'd rant on for a good while covering the specifics but man. i just don't have any feeling they're selling anything there that's an evolution of even gollum and what he achieved as a naked cg dude those many years ago ( which is not to discredit the work that was done then of course. monumental )
my impression overall is. yes. a massive work. but past the environments and integration of the mechanical stuff within it ( which i loved ) i reckon it's pretty weak
* i concede. as a friend pointed out. that there might be much that is missed in the 2D version. i'm not at all a fan of 3D films in general ( don't add anything of any benefit to films i've seen in the past ) so. although this is obviously new tech. i wasn't gonna take the punt on the first go
Just saw it with my family
Really amazing story and pacing, and I was blown away by what they did with the CG. The animation and modeling and lighting were just . . . magnificent
Visually it was a masterpiece, but everyone knows that already. Overall, the plot felt like it was stuck somewhere between an extremely expensive Ferngully, and a reflection upon the inherent racism and violence found within the human race when faced with something outside of their control.
On one hand we have the adventure and exploration of a huge, colorful, world, exotic and more or less kid friendly, while on the other hand there is so much near-nudity that a parent couldn't not be disgruntled. In direct contrast to that, though, with all the battle scenes, explosions, and general mayhem for the action-lovers, there doesn't seem to be a single drop of blood. It seems as if they were attempting to make a kid-friendly movie about genocide, and ended up stuck half-way from nowhere.
i saw blood, not sure which movie you saw. I enjoyed it in 3d as I thought I would purely for the effects, it's still ferngully, dances with wolves, last samurai, etc, etc we've seen before.. but he made it work for the movie.
I noticed the pictures he looks at of grace and the kids were also in 3d, mabye they have 3d cameras in 150 years or so..
Finally got around to seeing this in 3d last night.
Would like to see it in 2d too.
For me, the inertia on the eyebrow movement made the blue people totally un-believeable. The mech warrior style vehicles were also bland, with unbelievable movements. To be honest I feel lord of the rings and ironman are way ahead in this area.
But that's it. The rest of the film was staggeringly amazing. I loved so many aspects that it's hard to list them, I guess my favourite two were: 1. when the blue princess girl gets angry. Very human emotion in that scene. 2. our blue guy had 4 fingers, where everyone else had 3.
I'd have been happy if they left the hippy new age Enya style music out.
hawken, you mean 5 and 4 fingers , I also noticed and hope I remember right; the avatars were the only ones who actually had eyebrows while the navi were hairless above their eyes with only a dark stripe resembling eyebrows to keep them eyebrowed.
I'm really interested in how far they are going to push the next movie. Also it has to be a really pain in the butt making changes after a render goes out to the farm. You gotta think they have the technology now it must be a smoother pipeline to work with the 2nd time around
Rendering in passes really makes changes less of a pain unless it involves the camera.
But they had real time previews set up for almost everything in avatar.
Rendering in passes really makes changes less of a pain unless it involves the camera.
But they had real time previews set up for almost everything in avatar.
I dunno if there is any truth behind it but my friend was telling me that Cameron would draw a path with a tablet on screen and in real time he could make the creatures and ships fly etc etc
I know for sure though that the real time technology for head overlays is definitely there. I saw an example on science of the movies where they used an algorithm to calculate where to put the mesh without mocap dots or paint.
Saw it on the 26th in 3D. Apart from (surprise, surprise) being generally amazed and all, what i liked most was the detail of all the vegetation and the mood of the forest which was especially beautiful with lightning comming from below at many scenes. Pandora really was a total paradise and so very alive.
I also found the movements of pandoras creatures very well done, especially the flying ones.
It was my first 3D movie and afterwards i had a terrible headache and my eyes hurt, but it was very much worth it ^^;
Rendering in passes really makes changes less of a pain unless it involves the camera.
They did not really render in passes... I know, it sounds more then crazy, but I had two buddies as lighters on the movie. They only broke up overly complex scenes into several layers so that the farm could render it.
Edit: consider that stereo 3D means you can't use stock footage smoke/fire/stuff, 2D shadow trickery, manually rotoscoped mattes and such cheats, so most of the reasons for outputting passes and layers are obsolete anyway.
The rest was to ensure visual consistency, this being an almost entirely animated movie anyway - so all the looks for characters etc. had to be defined in the shaders and not in comp. They also did not have to match CG elements to live plates usually.
I dunno if there is any truth behind it but my friend was telling me that Cameron would draw a path with a tablet on screen and in real time he could make the creatures and ships fly etc etc
I know for sure though that the real time technology for head overlays is definitely there. I saw an example on science of the movies where they used an algorithm to calculate where to put the mesh without mocap dots or paint.
Huh? I think you've misunderstood something... This is how they did everything:
Using this data they were able to preview everything in realtime in Motionbuilder with as much detail as it allows in a viewport.
They also had a realtime keying system linked up with the real movie camera and comped together live action greenscreen plates with pre-recorded mocap stuff playing back, and maybe even with realtime mocap as well. They've been motion capturing the live camera on the greenscreen stage to do this, using active IR markers.
Then Cameron basically cut the movie together using these live plates and motion builder stuff, placing every character and set element where he wanted it to be. These template fbx files were then used as exact references by Weta ILM and so on.
The first edit is said to be about 4 hours long, so almost 80 minutes had to be cut...
@Vargatom Hey thanks for the clarification that is really interesting how many cameras went into making that one shot. I had no idea that they actually used the actors themselves as if it were a traditional shoot.
They did not really render in passes... I know, it sounds more then crazy, but I had two buddies as lighters on the movie. They only broke up overly complex scenes into several layers so that the farm could render it.
Edit: consider that stereo 3D means you can't use stock footage smoke/fire/stuff, 2D shadow trickery, manually rotoscoped mattes and such cheats, so most of the reasons for outputting passes and layers are obsolete anyway.
The rest was to ensure visual consistency, this being an almost entirely animated movie anyway - so all the looks for characters etc. had to be defined in the shaders and not in comp. They also did not have to match CG elements to live plates usually.
Still doesn't make complete sense to me, if there was some flickering error, a hue was off, or the spec of background item was too strong, it just makes sense to use them District 9 completely took advantage of layers and it looked photo real (just as good or better than avatar IMO) on a small budget but wasn't in 3D.
You guys have any idea if they had to double render every 'frame' of film for the 3d effect? Or did they have some magic behind them on this one..
I would imagine that it is merged from 2 cameras in one scene - theres a lot of documentation about this online, have a look at 3d games like the little big planet demo for example.
Still doesn't make complete sense to me, if there was some flickering error, a hue was off, or the spec of background item was too strong, it just makes sense to use them District 9 completely took advantage of layers and it looked photo real (just as good or better than avatar IMO) on a small budget but wasn't in 3D.
The two movies are worlds apart, Weta had about 800! people working full time and more on Avatar, for more then a year. Making sure that shots are consistent is easier if you don't have all your lighters doing stuff their own way in their shots.
Also, my pal said Letteri could look at a render and say the exact values for specular that should be set to make a shader look right...
More after I can finally have a beer with the guy, as he's been on a well deserved vacation...
I thought I've mentioned this before... Then again, my opinion about the movie wasn't really effected by this issue. I've just trusted Cameron and the band to deliver something outstanding.
Amazing film. It's impressive to reach this point in CG technology where I'm not able to pick out the flaws in each scene of animation. The crew really captured the personality and soul of the actors so that you get 100% of their performance. Each frame of the film was beautiful to look at. This movie belongs in the collection right beside the LOTR trilogy, and others.
One funny thing that stuck in my mind during the film. There is plenty of violence, explosions, and language in this film. The language actually caught me off guard, for being a colorful CG film. Despite all that, they made a strong effort to keep blue nipples hidden with selective physics. XD
Me and a buddy were discussing this earlier lots of reviews are saying "avatar breaks the uncanny valley" but the uncanny valley doesn't exist for non-human characters. Right? I mean, it's an alien so there's no reference to base the uncanny valley on, the characters were amazing don't get me wrong but I'd like to see this in the proper context of the cinema where you are comparing apples to apples. Comparing a blue alien that looks somewhat human doesn't get into the uncanny valley simply because you've already suspended belief long enough to accept the fact it's a blue alien. When it's based on a human to human scale is where the uncanny valley comparison should only be used.
Replies
It was mediocre. Not terrible, but just a bit 'meh'. The CG as generally fantastic, the world was well imagined. The first 30-45 minutes had nice pacing and began a build up to...
...nothing interesting.
I've seen that story a dozen times before, one of trailers was for 'Battle for Terra' which appears to be another rehash of the same old story.
None of the characters struck a chord, I didn't find anything overly emotional about it.
Flashy CG and 3D wasn't enough to elevate it above the average plot and characters. I think I'll dig out Red Scorpion on DVD instead.
Haha, yes Tully said exactly this when we came out of the cinema the other day!
Lazy sound design...
Totally agree, see my post on the previous page.
For me, the only really interesting character was Sigourney Weavers character. The rest were just boring and cliched. As good as the CG was, that didn't distract from how I was able to see pretty much every scene coming a mile a way. No amount of flash or fancy CG can elevate a boring, lackluster script. And again, if it was just another summer action movie like GI Joe or the like I'd be able to look past that, but I expected more from Cameron. Even when he's told relatively simple stories (Titanic, Aliens, etc) he's done them in a way where you still cared more for the plot and story going on.
Take a look at another Cameron movie, T2. Every character there had growth and weight to them. Even a character like Miles Dysen, who had about 20 min of screen time. There was emotional impact and real feeling to that movie which Avatar didn't have
(imo).
Like Rick said, it wasn't terrible, but I think years from now it's not going to be looked at the same way it is now amidst all the hype.
Haha I was wondering if I was the only one who noticed this!
like pulling out the chip in terminator 2, along with the dream of kyle reese.
and so much from aliens.
not to mention the whole ending to the abyss :P
I'm betting quite alot that was cut was stuff to build the characters, like jake on earth that we see in the trailer, and hell's gate constantly being under attack by wildlife, since pandora as a single organism was treating it as an infection, which explains the ending.
And I prefer those cut versions to the extended editions.
I think he could have cut more out of Avatar the training montage for instance.
I think they needed to address Jakes change of attitude to the Na'vi. It happened so fast and you hardly ever saw the conflict in him. That should've been the core of the movie.
Yeah, it was quick for me as well, but, it meant that there wasn't a prolonged period of time seeing Sulley change. From the first 10-15 minutes you now that its going to happen, so why prolong something that is bound to happen. I agree, not sure though if there was a better way to do it. There could have been an extra element, at one point I thought the Na`vi were going to fix his real legs, once he got found out.
falling asleep at the log sessions, not shaving, skipping out on eating, he looked quite miserable in his real body, it was his dream and he didn't want to wake up.
hehe I thought this was a nice reference to some mmo players
True. I thought they would have played up the fact that he was miserable because in the real world he couldn't walk, and after getting a taste of being able to run and walk as an Avatar, he felt even more depressed about his condition. Maybe even see being in his Avatar body as a drug.
Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the movie, and maybe like with the last Transformers movie, I need to go back and see it again with the right mindset to enjoy it even more and not expect a story on par with the amazing visuals.
[ame]
Actually that is not accurate. While it's true that he will cut anything that will improve the pacing and story, he was forced by the studios and cinema to make huge cuts to the Abyss because the movie at the time was considered to be way to long. In case of the Abyss what was seen in the movies wasn't Cameron's vision. You can see his comments on the matter if you watch the dvd. Ditto with Aliens, while in this movie it wasn't that big a deal, the scenes that were taken out did add more to the movie. Cameron doesn't seem to like to add useless crap to his films, it's not like some of the scenes in Star Wars extended edition.
and those blue people. i'm just gonna have to put plainly that i feel they were very poorly done. weightless blobby things with little to no apparent internal structure looking more like balloon subD models of the 90's. i'd rant on for a good while covering the specifics but man. i just don't have any feeling they're selling anything there that's an evolution of even gollum and what he achieved as a naked cg dude those many years ago ( which is not to discredit the work that was done then of course. monumental )
my impression overall is. yes. a massive work. but past the environments and integration of the mechanical stuff within it ( which i loved ) i reckon it's pretty weak
* i concede. as a friend pointed out. that there might be much that is missed in the 2D version. i'm not at all a fan of 3D films in general ( don't add anything of any benefit to films i've seen in the past ) so. although this is obviously new tech. i wasn't gonna take the punt on the first go
impressive as fuck. still have no idea how they do those effects. bravo.
story did the job, whatever. I can't imagine watching it again for any other reason but to show it off to people.
Really amazing story and pacing, and I was blown away by what they did with the CG. The animation and modeling and lighting were just . . . magnificent
On one hand we have the adventure and exploration of a huge, colorful, world, exotic and more or less kid friendly, while on the other hand there is so much near-nudity that a parent couldn't not be disgruntled. In direct contrast to that, though, with all the battle scenes, explosions, and general mayhem for the action-lovers, there doesn't seem to be a single drop of blood. It seems as if they were attempting to make a kid-friendly movie about genocide, and ended up stuck half-way from nowhere.
I did enjoy it despite of all that, though.
I noticed the pictures he looks at of grace and the kids were also in 3d, mabye they have 3d cameras in 150 years or so..
http://www.fujifilm.com/products/3d/camera/finepix_real3dw1/features/page_02.html
fujis lil handheld camera that takes kinda 3d images and displays them back.
[ame]
Would like to see it in 2d too.
For me, the inertia on the eyebrow movement made the blue people totally un-believeable. The mech warrior style vehicles were also bland, with unbelievable movements. To be honest I feel lord of the rings and ironman are way ahead in this area.
But that's it. The rest of the film was staggeringly amazing. I loved so many aspects that it's hard to list them, I guess my favourite two were: 1. when the blue princess girl gets angry. Very human emotion in that scene. 2. our blue guy had 4 fingers, where everyone else had 3.
I'd have been happy if they left the hippy new age Enya style music out.
also hawken:
[ame]
that scene?
But they had real time previews set up for almost everything in avatar.
I dunno if there is any truth behind it but my friend was telling me that Cameron would draw a path with a tablet on screen and in real time he could make the creatures and ships fly etc etc
I know for sure though that the real time technology for head overlays is definitely there. I saw an example on science of the movies where they used an algorithm to calculate where to put the mesh without mocap dots or paint.
I also found the movements of pandoras creatures very well done, especially the flying ones.
It was my first 3D movie and afterwards i had a terrible headache and my eyes hurt, but it was very much worth it ^^;
They did not really render in passes... I know, it sounds more then crazy, but I had two buddies as lighters on the movie. They only broke up overly complex scenes into several layers so that the farm could render it.
Edit: consider that stereo 3D means you can't use stock footage smoke/fire/stuff, 2D shadow trickery, manually rotoscoped mattes and such cheats, so most of the reasons for outputting passes and layers are obsolete anyway.
The rest was to ensure visual consistency, this being an almost entirely animated movie anyway - so all the looks for characters etc. had to be defined in the shaders and not in comp. They also did not have to match CG elements to live plates usually.
They did render everything twice, although I'm not entirely sure if only after it was finaled in 2D or before that.
Huh? I think you've misunderstood something... This is how they did everything:
[ame="
Using this data they were able to preview everything in realtime in Motionbuilder with as much detail as it allows in a viewport.
They also had a realtime keying system linked up with the real movie camera and comped together live action greenscreen plates with pre-recorded mocap stuff playing back, and maybe even with realtime mocap as well. They've been motion capturing the live camera on the greenscreen stage to do this, using active IR markers.
Then Cameron basically cut the movie together using these live plates and motion builder stuff, placing every character and set element where he wanted it to be. These template fbx files were then used as exact references by Weta ILM and so on.
The first edit is said to be about 4 hours long, so almost 80 minutes had to be cut...
Still doesn't make complete sense to me, if there was some flickering error, a hue was off, or the spec of background item was too strong, it just makes sense to use them District 9 completely took advantage of layers and it looked photo real (just as good or better than avatar IMO) on a small budget but wasn't in 3D.
I would imagine that it is merged from 2 cameras in one scene - theres a lot of documentation about this online, have a look at 3d games like the little big planet demo for example.
The two movies are worlds apart, Weta had about 800! people working full time and more on Avatar, for more then a year. Making sure that shots are consistent is easier if you don't have all your lighters doing stuff their own way in their shots.
Also, my pal said Letteri could look at a render and say the exact values for specular that should be set to make a shader look right...
More after I can finally have a beer with the guy, as he's been on a well deserved vacation...
Many times as well as ferngully3d.. read the thread.
Well at least we 'now' know why you had such a boner for the movie you know some folks that worked on it.
One funny thing that stuck in my mind during the film. There is plenty of violence, explosions, and language in this film. The language actually caught me off guard, for being a colorful CG film. Despite all that, they made a strong effort to keep blue nipples hidden with selective physics. XD