*** Official AVATAR Discussion Thread - Page 20

One could easily imagine that the trip to Pandora stretches human technology to the limit, at least financially.  There could simply be not the economic capability to do what you suggest.

Twice during the film, economic limitations are mentioned.  First, Jake's avatar (actually his brother's) is too expensive to just trash when the brother dies.  That presents Jake an opportunity he wouldn't otherwise have.  Two, Jake is a vet, entitled to medical care and the ability to restore Jake to full function is available.  But it's too expensive.

Nah, you're not the only one.  Of course I think Neytiri would find us puny humans disappointing, if you catch my drift.  If Jake had been stuck in his human body, they might have turned into the Bickersons in later years.

Haha! Dick, it's called "Scifi-Nerd Fantasy Love"... a lot of us geeks are affected the same way, you're definitely not alone!  Heck, if it wasn't for Neytiri, I wouldn't have gone to see Avatar 6 times in IMAX 3D...   Geek...Geek...Geek...!
And I would definitely marry Zoe Saldana in a heartbeat... just waiting for her to propose to me!

Or Boomer/Sharon (Grace Parks) from the new Battlestar Galactica, for that matter... *sigh*

You guys aren't alone in your admiration of Neytiri, I've watched this movie three times since getting it last week and more and more I'm finding myself just entranced by her, namely her face, it's so alive and elegant and yes quite attractive.

Cameron's facial capture team really nailed that one lol.

Sick? Maybe but IMO it's unreasonable to create something so lifelike and expect people not to find it beautiful, plus it's the greatest compliment we can pay to the animators.

Yeah, just keep tellin' yourself that, John.

That's OK John, I'm with you on that - you're not sick!  And you are absolutely right about the facial capture - that was probably the most awesome technique they came up with for this movie, it really took the animation leaps ahead of anything else that has been done before...

SO anyway, here's one for ya -- the other Na'vi chick I thought was pretty hot was the leader of the ocean clan, the one done up with the bright red body/face paint. You only get a couple quick shots of her in the movie, when Jake goes out to gather the clans, and later when they are diving off the cliff walls on their Ikran to attack the gun ships, but it was enough to tweak my interest more than a little!  I hope we get to see some more of her in the sequel...! 

Haha, now everyone is going to put the movie back on and scan to those scenes to check her out... c'mon, admit it! 

Speaking of Neytiri... Mmmm....

 

 

 

When I saw this 6-sheet poster, I just had to have it... lol. 

Nice!

Yea me to about got my a$$ handed to me by an AMP suit

lol yea i remember her

You guys want sick?  I finally watched this the other day.  You know the part where she's cradling Jake's human body as he recovers from almost suffocating?  You know what crossed my mind?  How she's probably thinking about the fact that he's really only 6 feet tall, and that the rest of him is proportional to that!

 

Dude, your mind went to a dark place when it wasn't supposed to lol.

Inga:

 

I don't think the film was anti-tech, lot's of technology was shown to be doing good in the film, one example being the using of gadgets to help the human scientists learn about the planet's plant life. The other slightly(!) more obvious application of tech. being the Avatar Program kit.

The film was trying to say (shout, scream even!) to those who would otherwise prefer not to listen, that ignorance is the greatest threat that exists. Ignorance had already killed the human's 'Eyrwa' some time ago according to Jake's testimony.

Sadly the reason why Ignorance is so powerful, is that it requires no energy to power it. It's 'fuel' is among other things the super-abundant elements of apathy, laziness, selfishness and complacency.

Throw in greed, and you have a very destructive situation. I get that message.

Having said that, I am very confident that if we ever had such an encounter with another world, having the knowledge and technology to deal with travelling 4 plus light years, I think we would have our energy issues pretty much nailed by then, so we would not need to steal someone else's.

Instead, we would be allowed to fully explore the wonders of an alien world and it's lifeforms, in peace and with the purpose of mutual enrichment.

I hope our descendants have that possibility. Maybe they will if we start killing ignorance now.

 

Roy,

 

Interesting points, but IIRC the humans weren't there because they *needed* energy; they were there because they *wanted* money!  An important distinction that IMO is a major flaw in the film (Cf. Battle for Terra for a better take on the same basic story).

Yeah, the flaw for me was the whole reason for going out there to Pandora in the movie. I read somewhere that the ore was for badly needed and highly valued energy so I assumed that was the case. Am I right?. I don't think that money would be an issue for us if we had interstellar capability. I think by the time a civilisation had reached this stage, we would have everybody working together for mutual benefit by then, so money IMO not required.

That's the message Mr. Roddenberry sends us. The old warp drive technology barrier thing. The  Vulcans suddenly becoming our mates the minute we Whizz into the big black at warp speed.

Put some thought into the resources required for such travel and you can build a picture of just what is required of the civilisation that attempts/ attains it. Effective energy harnessing, global co-operation, almost unbelievable understanding of EVERY material / element that exists and how to utilise them. We would by then, be a very special race and a peaceful, unified one.

If it was a case of rocketting off to the planet and not involving some weird warping tech or something, the energy required for such a mission would be astronomical, given the mass of the spacecraft and the speed it would have to travel at to traverse the 4. odd light years to the Alpha Centauri system in the six years the movie shows.

It would be a bit ambitious for a corporation to take on I think and I don't think planet Earth's government would release such an energy source for such a project when it would be so badly needed back here.

So yeah, a bit of a flaw there. Anyways I would be horrified to know that we blasted off to some distant world just to kick seven bells out of it and steal it's resources.

But my point is, if we could get there, we would only need to be there to experience the wonders that it offers and nothing else.

 

 

Return to Pandora in the theatres on august 27, 2010. link below.

 

Jacob

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=4846

Excellent!  I knew this extended version was releasing sometime in late summer, and now we finally have a set date!  Like I've said before, I saw the original version in IMAX 3D 6 times, and I will definitely make the hour's drive there again a few more times to see this version...

 

Lol, get ready for all the Avatar haters to come back into the Avatar threads with a vengence, whining about yet another way the studio is "milking" us for more money, and then releasing another version of the movie on BD and DVD for double and triple-dipping... and how awful the movie and the second-rate CGI is.... gotta love it!     

 

 

@Aaron:  yes, I have a copy of "Battle for Terra" on DVD, saw it a few months before Avatar was released - I thought it was fairly well done for a fully-animated movie, with a strangely familiar storyline, very similar to Avatar - oh, and 600 other movies, too, lol...

Edited by FreyTheater - 7/8/10 at 10:32am

I disagree.  I'm thinking of the moment where Jake asks Awah(sic)  for help.  He tells her that the humans have killed their mother, there's no green there.

 

This means to me that the Earth is in desperate need of new resources, mostly likely an energy source.  Now is there money to be made, you betcha!

I think Earth should be featured in the sequels, obviously not too much, so that we can still enjoy Pandora. But I think it would be a great inspiration to have the salvation of Earth, and the reawakening of the human race to an eco-consciousness, as a part of the plot.

 

That is why I started the Facebook campaign, "Dear James Cameron: Save Earth in the Avatar Sequels!"

 

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=103975559652195 

 

Oh yeah, that's just what the sequel needs -- to be even *more* eco-preachy than the first! :)

Hmmm... I think a small group of Na'vi should travel to earth (perhaps by hijacking the last earth ship to leave Pandora), bringing along some of those Seeds from the Sacred Tree, and plant them.  Then Ewah could sprout and grow on the Earth, make everything green again, and turn all the Earth animals against the humans there as well... just wipe 'em all out.  How's that for Eco-friendly? 

 

Better tell James Cameron that I've already copywrited this plot idea; I could use some nice royalties to help me get by in this currently barren Earth economy...  there's no green there, either... 

Edited by FreyTheater - 7/27/10 at 11:05am

I really love this movie. This is one of the best movies on my list.When I saw the trailer for this, I was so excited then. The movie didn't disappointment me. Cool. I will never forget this.  

 

Just got back from seeing the Special Edition of Avatar in 3D. This was my 3rd time to see this as I saw it only once in it's theatrical run and once on Blu-ray. This was by far my favorite viewing. By far. :) The added moments really do add something to the film. One scene in particular does, the rest are more scene extensions. Truthfully, there are some that I may have even missed.

 

Anyway, a glorious movie that appears to keep growing on me. I liked it the first time....but had some reservations. Loved it tonight and really should have won the Oscar for Best Picture. These kind of "Event" films that deliver that cinematic experience are very, very rare. It's one of the reasons we go to the movies and Avatar confirms why going to the Cinema and seeing something like this just must be seen in the theater. Most of us have pretty good home setups with front projectors, but hard to beat the theater experience.

 

Glad to see Avatar get released again in 3D. Glorious looking movie and an excellent experience.

I'm going the opposite of you Tim. I was blown away in the theater and then upon a couple home viewings have become more and more bored with it. Great film due to it's technical aspects but other then that, it's pretty empty. I may rent the EE someday but am in no hurry to do so.

Well, I enjoyed seeing the new footage integrated with the rest of the film, didn't think it needed to be trimmed from the original cut, unless they truly were worried about running time concerns (watching it in 3D, etc.)

Hey Ron. I never got bored with any element last night but will confess watching at home I did a few times. But last night was a WOW experience. 

 

Could be Pat. Maybe the upcoming SE Blu-ray with 19 minutes added might be seen as too long? But these 9 extra minutes were good. Like I said, I wasn't that familiar with it really and I'm sure I didn't notice some of the new stuff. Except for a few places. 

 

One more thing. The score. Most of you who've been around here awhile know how I love film scores; Avatar has an effective one albeit a somewhat understated one. I enjoyed it more last night and will be getting the CD. I think it could have been more sweeping and enveloping...more epic etc...but I'm thinking the main emphasis for Avatar was the visual experience? That kind of sounds like an excuse. :) But the visuals are so strong and that becomes the story and focus on it's own. A more in your face score might have taken away. Imagine Hans Zimmer. 

I was in Fry's today, and they had the final assault on Home Tree sequence playing on one of their 42" LCDs, and there was a small gathering of people engrossed in that part of the film.  I even stopped and watched that 10-15 minute segment, amazing movie-making.  A little girl cheered when Quaritch was finally put down for the count.  Everyone laughed.

It's pretty well-known that I not only love film music, but am the biggest James Horner fan around, so take this with a grain of salt, as this comes from a very biased opinion:

 

Having heard every note of this score (obviously through nefarious means, and there's no way around that...condemn me if you wish but I make no apologies for it) and when I say every note I mean nearly four hours of music, it's tainted how I hear the film now, especially the latter half and the final battle sequences.

 

Cameron and the editors made some seriously piss-poor choices musically, dumping the best pieces of Horner's score in favor of looped sections of "Shutting down Grace's lab", a cue that is full of that 'wailing woman' vocal sound and plastered it all over the slow-motion sequences of Na'vi dying left and right. Also parts of the cue "War" were chopped up and placed throughout making the sequence, from a musically narrative standpoint, very haphazard and randomized.

 

What Horner originally intended for those sequences was something of a throwback to the kind of balls-to-the-wall music that made him famous: Big, bold, brass-heavy (triplets and trilling horns in abundance) and most of it just gone from the film entirely.

 

I doubt there were any musical changes (for the better) with this special edition version but I plan on finding out eventually if I get to see it on the big screen one last time before November's Blu-ray release. 

 

 

About Zimmer:

 

I am by no means a fan of his music. I don't out-right despise it the way most people seem to with Horner's music, but for the life of me I cannot see Zimmer's appeal at all.  For me it's his approach from a performance standpoint more than anything - it's his trademark sound, and it's a popular one that's literally everywhere (thanks to the company he founded that created a whole series of emulators) is one I'm glad didn't find its way into "Avatar".

 

 

Regarding the sound I'm talking about, that's for another thread but I'm sure any fan of Zimmer will know what I'm referring to.

 

Wow Nicholas. That's awesome that you have access to the entire Avatar score!!!  That's an area I guess for another discussion but I would LOVE & covet that as an extra than ANY behind the scenes-how we did it documentary. Granted, there have some good docs over the years. But alot of us here (probably a small #) appreciate the music that goes into how to enhance given film sequence. I'm in my car alot and used to hear film scores all the time. For hours upon hours. 

 

Anyway, good info Nicholas. Yes, you should definately go see the SE then as you are more familiar with it and can spot new cues or changed ones. 

 

I loved the movie. Did I want a tad more from the score? Yes. Maybe they'll release the complete unaltered Horner score for Avatar? 

 

Doubt it though. :( 

I think it's doubtful based on the fact that when a 'deluxe edition' of the soundtrack was released as a digital download (Amazon and iTunes), all of the bonus tracks were actually synthesized demos, not the final orchestral recordings.

 

At the same time the tracks were not heavily orchestral anyway, except for the last track, titled "Fight To The Death".