Many people criticize "Avatar" for being "unoriginal" or "derivative".

[johnaries]

Personally, I love Avatar because it reminds us of lessons we never seemed to have learned, no matter how many times it was presented to us. Things that bear repeating.

For instance: the Na'vi phrase "I see you" basically means "I GROK you."

Whether or not Cameron ever read Heinlein and has any clue what GROK means - he summed it up perfectly in the scene where the female lead went past the Avatar Physical Charismatics of the "jakesully" she knew and saved the "real" jake, saying "Jake, MY Jake?" And the first words out of her mouth, despite the fact that her True Love is physically repugnant to her, "I see you". I "grok" you.

And don't even get me started on the "consecutiveness" of the Universe!

Although I feel I have to comment on the "cup" statement that is straight out of Daoism and so many people choose to ignore.

"You cannot fill a cup that is already full."

That is straight out of Daoism, and other Earth-based religions. You must approach everything with an open mind, and you cannot do that if your mind is already full with preconceptions. As Yoda said "You must UN-learn everything you have learned."

Daoism emphasis's "emptiness", so that each of us can learn new things without pre-conceptions. So that we can see everything with "new eyes". Many other Earth-based religions do the same. Including the religion of the Na'vi.

No, Cameron doesn't present us with anything "new". He reminds us of what was lost.

[ddeclue]

1. Few stories are ever really new.

[Writer]

2. My problem with the plot is that it thematically offered me nothing NEW.

And it was extremely predictable.

[BrklynLiberal]

26. Made me think of this..

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/image/essay/1

[flying rabbit]

64. OMFG!

:rofl:

[spinbaby]

31. Too funny!

And so true.

[johnaries]

43. agreed. But it presented it in a different way that many had not

experienced before. It's a wonderful message. One that deserves to be told again, and again. I respect anyone that can tell the same story in a way that other's can appreciate that didn't like the way the story was told, before.

As long as the story is passed on.

[johnaries]

51. Which is why you will never learn.

"you cannot fill a cup that is already full"

You will never learn, because you already think you know everything.

[Writer]

59. All right, I'll take the flame bait. It's like low-hanging fruit with a neon sign reading 'take me!

But I think what you're suggesting is that I think I know everything simply because I don't see any value in the movie's theme. However, the opposite is true: I SEEK new themes from which I can learn something about myself and the world around me. Because Avatar offered nothing new, I learned nothing new. Therefore, I can't be someone who knows "everything," because I am someone who always seeks to learn something new, but unfortunately, learned nothing from Avatar.

[Quixote1818]

62. Avatar took a lot from the book "Call Me Joe" by Poul Anderson

http://io9.com/5390226/did-james-cameron-rip-off-poul-andersons-novella

[Fumesucker]

80. Poul Anderson also had a novel called Avatar..

http://www.sfreviews.net/avatar.html

[Dorian Gray]

74. The predictability

didn't bug me. It was more the cliche ridden screenplay.

[mainer]

91. So tell me how YOU would make it thematically new.

I'd love to hear your concrete suggestions for changes in plot and character. And whether an audience would actually want to see it.

[Writer]

100. Well... I'd first lodge it out of the culture wars narrative that it is so lazily set in.

I'd actually add some dimensions to the Colonel, to the female Na'vi protagonist, heck even to the rituals of Pandora. It's much too developed within the notion that what is indigenous is righteous and good. The Na'vi don't have habits or rituals that are destructive? That needs to be made into a far more nuanced and interesting setting. The "noble" Na'vi should not be so noble. And neither should the Colonel and the military be so bad. Why are they drilling for an energy source? What's the condition on earth that would press them to do this? Is it desperate? Are people dying on earth? What would compel this type of brutal activity? Therefore, a backstory needs some development.

Our modern eyes are looking for the real and the honest, and there is none of that in this story. The tragic hero is very popular in current movie narratives, from the Dark Knight, to Children of Men, to Fight Club, and so on. It's even easier to believe the latest 007 movies more than the previous because Daniel Craig actually looks like he can kick ass. This is what was so vacuous and nauseating to my eyes, and I think (despite the gorgeous CGI) quite difficult for many viewing the movie.

As a televised example: take the recent reboot of Battlestar Gallactica. What made that show work is that it focused on the vulgarity and unreliability of human decision making. It focused on gritty material activities in order to carry it forward, not on the much overplayed (and single-minded) battle between liberal and conservative ideals as demonstrated in Avatar. Forgive me if you're a Boomer, but the storyline was much too reflective of the "Boomer" culture wars, and that's why it came across as so simplistic. The story is much too politically-deterministic.

So in a nutshell: Darker, more nuanced characters, and a more honest depiction of what a situation like this might actually be like. Instead of presenting the Na'vi and human interactions as a battle between abstract desires, instead it should be presented as one complicated group of beings reconciling both themselves and their relations with another complicated group of beings, while reflecting the historical backdrop of our actual world, one that would enable the audience to build empathy with the characters.

[mainer]

106. What you are describing is a 12-hour movie

Perhaps, if this were done as a Lord of the Rings-type trilogy, it might be possible. But more nuanced characters, a more complicated social setting, the back-story of life on earth, the colonel's backstory, more well-realized rituals of Pandora, more complex relationships, all require far more lines on a page and many, many more minutes of film time. If, as a writer, you are given 300 pages to write War and Peace, you must know it's almost impossible to do. And Avatar already has far longer screen time than is usually accepted as profitable for a theater showing.

As for 007 -- yes, Daniel Craig did a great job. But that film didn't have to orient its audience to a new world, a new concept (avatars) and also a complex inter-planetary political situation. A small-setting film like "Juno" can give us 100 minutes of pure character development, and it's praised for that.

But filling as much complexity as Avatar did in a 2 1/2 hour movie is a great achievement too. I think you are asking Avatar to accomplish far more than is possible in that short a screen time.

[Writer]

107. Please... if I may...

as someone with a BS in Radio-TV-Film, an MA in Media Studies, and who is working on her PhD in Media Studies, I'm fairly sure that one can achieve this level of complexity in a regular length film.

There are countless films that already achieve this level of complexity in new worlds, whether they be future worlds, past worlds, space worlds, and so forth. If you enjoyed Pandora as such, and found something in it, then that's great for you. However, I, my husband, and folks I know who have seen it did not find it a very fulfilling movie.

[Teaser]

3. my problem is that I hate the color blue

.

[miyazaki]

29. lmao. have to take some nausea pills maybe. n/t

[johnaries]

45. Colorist! LOL!

It doesn't matter. As long as you GROK the message.

[Lilith Velkor]

4. It would be fine if those very same people weren't gushing about District 9

This weekend, I saw a poster for D9 that said in huge letters: FIGHT ALIEN NATION. Gah! x(

(For those of you who are under 30, Alien Nation was basically D9 in Los Angeles...20 years before D9.)

[proteus_lives]

10. I loved Alien Nation.

:thumbsup:

[OnyxCollie]

5. Avatar is Princess Mononoke with less nuance.

Not that I didn't find both movies enjoyable.

[johnaries]

52. I never saw Princess Mononke,

but as long as the message gets through...

[OnyxCollie]

54. It copies most of Princess Mononoke

right down to the little tree spirits.

The competing factions in Princess Mononoke are more balanced than the simplistic nature good/corporations bad in Avatar.

[Hekate]

99. Avatar has special effects that bring to life SF concepts imagined in lit. for over 50 years...

... but unable to be brought to life on the screen. I was pleasantly surprised at how well they did the "planet as integrated organism" idea. It's by no means new, but this is the first time I've ever seen it on-screen, and I think they did it well.

I have Princess Mononoke in my CD library and like it very much, but these are two entirely different films.

Hekate

[azurnoir]

101. I loved Princess Mononoke n/t

[Codeine]

6. Derivative is fine.

Unoriginal is unavoidable.

This movie, however, was sophomoric shit; "deep and meaningful" for the semi-literate and cretinous. James Cameron dropped trou and jizzed a bunch of computer graphics across the screen and now the fanboys can't lick it off fast enough.

Art for the fucking artless. Philosophy for a generation that never cracks a book. Cinema for the Jackass age.

[bridgit]

7. That's the cozy old bathrobe part about fully transferable storylines...

But I liked Avatar for it's scope & visuals

[proteus_lives]

8. I don't have a problem not new, I have a problem with.....

Wooden acting, one-dimensional characters and not even giving the tired old story a decent spin.

"He reminds us of what was lost."

So you're a believer in "Noble Savage" trope?

[Codeine]

13. DU loves some Noble Savage mythology.

Bits of it keep popping up in the Haiti threads. These fuckers don't even see subtext when they are the ones typing it.

[proteus_lives]

19. I don't get that.

I put down as historical ignorance and good old fashioned "grass is always greener/rosed-colored glasses" thinking.

There's some bigotry in there too, people need to understand while cultures are different, we're all humans and have the same universal flaws.

[REP]

22. Nail. Hit.

Also loves/hates Healing White Goodness.

[Lorien]

34. Cameron himself said that the "message" is about the environment

and what our corporations are doing all across our planet. Ask indigenous tribes in the Amazon how they feel about being displaced by corporate interests. Same as it ever was.

FWIW, my cousin, a Chippewa born and raised on a Reservation and now a Native American activist and Commissioner, loves Avatar". Her reasons are, she says, summed up in this article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/11/mawkish-maybe-avatar-profound-important

[sudopod]

84. Daoists are savages? O_o

[GMA]

9. My problem is that the characters are all completely one dimensional.

It's one of the most stunning movies ever, visually. But, as with "Titanic", Cameron really should turn the screenplay over to someone else, almost anyone else. Except George Lucas, of course.

[johnaries]

41. Think of a Morality Play. The characters represent a "mindset"

not fully developed individuals.

The movie wanted to talk to a broader range. I applaud movies that explore individual motivations, but this movie explored a much broader range than that. Something that each of us such address before we make individual distinctions.

[anonymous171]

11. Colonel Quaritch was the only interesting character in the movie.

I wish they had developed him more.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

14. I thought he was pretty much the classic "Military Badass" that shows up in every movie of this type

[proteus_lives]

17. Screams for a prequel novel or comic.

About how he got that scar being on the first exploration team.

BTW, he was the most interesting character.

[Marr]

21. I thought he was the most 1-dimensional of the lot, personally.

I liked Avatar a lot, but I do think Cameron should let someone else take a second pass on his scripts and just swap the stereotypes around a bit. Quaritch would've been interesting if there'd been some conflict in his character. He *was* his job (as a soldier and a plot device), and that's a little snoozey.

[anonymous171]

24. He certainly needed more development

Why does he hate the Navi so much? How exactly did he get his scar? It would be cool if he was made into a sci-fi Ahab or something like that.

[Marr]

28. Hey pal, there's only room for one sci-fi Ahab in this universe.

:P

[stray cat]

23. ??????He was the one I wish they had made into a "real" personality

he was a complete one dimensional character in my opinion

[Lorien]

32. I thought he was the flattest and most comical.

though that's no fault of the actor, who is well respected on Broadway.

[Alexander]

55. Agreed. He's in a giant robot, and he pulls a KNIFE?

Seems too many people are willing to swallow Cameron's bullshit, with an extra side of nonsense.

[Ghost of Tom Joad]

66. he reminded me of Clutch Cargo

[ddeclue]

12. Acually I felt a lot of it rips of Return of the Jedi

with Ewoks taking on the high tech empire, the Force being in everything, etc. Cameron owes Lucas a royalty check.

[johnaries]

50. They both borrowed from "eternal themes".

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

You could just as easily say that Lucas owes Asimov a royalty check for the Foundation Trilogy.

But Asimov readily said his work was based on the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.

RIP, Issac.

[theoldman]

15. My friends said that the big screen effects were very good.

I don't think you would fall asleep in the middle of the movie.

[azurnoir]

16. For Yes fans (mostly old folks) here I've read that the

that the visuals may well been inspired by Roger Dean

http://io9.com/5426120/did-prog-rocks-greatest-artist-inspire-avatar-all-signs-point-to-yes/gallery/

[NICO9000]

27. I'm glad somebody else noticed this

My buddy saw it the first week it was out. He was nicely baked for it and told me that after about an hour into it, he thought, "I'm in the middle of a Roger Dean album cover!" I saw it a couple of weeks ago (sadly, not baked), and it took me a while to remember his observation while I was watching it but once I did, I had to agree.

I really liked the movie. The story was a lot better than what I was expecting, (I thought for sure it was going to be non-existent), and the poster here who compares it to "Jedi" is right on the money. Simplistic and obvious, but let's face it - the whole thing is eye candy so anything resembling a story is gravy in a movie like this. I watch a lot of documentaries from Netflix, so it was nice to just go to a "popcorn" movie that required very little mental activity and just dive into the whole thing. I actually want to see it again while it's still in theaters - this time with some herbal refreshment to go with the 3D glasses.

[azurnoir]

102. I hope you get to it's worth it n/t

[Ms. Toad]

33. Most of the visuals had to have been done

or inspired by a diver.

[conscious evolution]

37. I knew those floating

rocks reminded me of something I had seen before.
Thanks.

[muriel_volestrangler]

38. Or art for Anne McCaffrey books

http://a330.g.akamai.net.nyud.net:8080/7/330/2540/20091016153928/

http://www.publishersweekly.com/blog/400000640/post/320049832.html

What with the people riding dragons and everything (though I know that was drawn after Dean's Yes work)

[Lorien]

97. Michael Whelan and Todd Lockwood?

(great guys, btw-and staunch progressives). Nah, though Todd has mentioned that a lot of artists who did work for "Magic, the gathering" think that Cameron ripped off some of their ideas along the way. I kind of doubt it. I know the lead character designer on the film (former coworker) and he tends to work from his own imagination-though I don't know about the background elements. Those DO look like Dean's work-especially the arches.

[johnaries]

53. I wasn't going to go there, but

Yeah, the Hellulujah Mountains did look a lot like Dean's illustrations. And YES was one of the greatest, most imaginative bands ever!

A testimony to Imagination!

[Lorien]

93. Roger has been having a laugh over that, though he's a bit concerned

he's been working on a film project of his own for years and now he's afraid that people will think that he's ripped off 'Avatar"!

[BrklynLiberal]

18. Thanks for this post. Very happy to read it. I was anxious to see Avatar

for the technology..but now I can look forward to the messages in it as well.

[Orrex]

20. I was disappointed that no Air-Benders were featured.

I call that false advertising.

[Xithras]

36. That movie will be out July 2

And yes, there was a very brief lawyer battle over the name Avatar. Fox got the movie copyright app filed first, so they got the name Avatar. Ang's movie will simply be called The Last Airbender.

Kinda sucks imho.

[BrklynLiberal]

73. More info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Airbender

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0938283/

[CBGLuthier]

76. trademark, not copyright

You can't copyright titles. I assume they trademarked the name in the area of movies and related merchandising.

[autorank]

25. Thanks, excellente!!! k*r #5 here

This is original commentary. I GROK you on both points.

Here's what gets me about AVATAR - the audience is pulling for an alien species and human
collaborators who oppose an all human force that just happens to look like the symbol for
US/UK approaches to third world countries AND then continues to support the human collaborators
when they become ANOTHER SPECIES who oppose the human invaders.

Now that's totally revolutionary and subversive. Strange that's not in the popular media. They've
let the movie get away from their little control thing. It will have an enduring effect and it
reflects changes that are already being made in public perceptions.

[Lorien]

30. A family member of mine is a Native American activist and she loves "Avatar" for

the HISTORY lessons we seem to have forgotten. My cousin is an elder in her Tribe, is VP of a prominent Native American advocacy group, is an elected Democrat in office, and, oddly enough, is business partners with one of James Cameron's ex-wives. She recently sent me this article to explain her feelings about "Avatar":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/11/mawkish-maybe-avatar-profound-important


Mawkish, maybe. But Avatar is a profound, insightful, important film

Cameron's blockbuster offers a chilling metaphor for European butchery of the Americas. No wonder the US right hates it


Avatar, James ­Cameron's blockbusting 3D film, is both profoundly silly and profound. It's ­profound because, like most films about aliens, it is a metaphor for contact between different human cultures. But in this case the metaphor is conscious and precise: this is the story of European engagement with the native peoples of the Americas. It's profoundly silly because engineering a happy ending demands a plot so stupid and predictable that it rips the heart out of the film. The fate of the native ­Americans is much closer to the story told in another new film, The Road, in which a remnant population flees in ­terror as it is hunted to extinction.

But this is a story no one wants to hear, because of the challenge it presents to the way we choose to see ourselves. Europe was massively enriched by the genocides in the Americas; the American nations were founded on them. This is a history we cannot accept.

In his book American Holocaust, the US scholar David Stannard ­documents the greatest acts of genocide the world has ever experienced. In 1492, some 100 million native people lived in the Americas. By the end of the 19th century almost all of them had been exterminated. Many died as a result of disease, but the mass extinction was also engineered.

When the Spanish arrived in the Americas, they described a world which could scarcely have been more different to their own. Europe was ravaged by war, oppression, slavery, fanaticism, disease and starvation. The populations they encountered were healthy, well-nourished and mostly (with exceptions like the Aztecs and Incas) peaceable, democratic and egalitarian. Throughout the Americas the earliest explorers, including Columbus, remarked on the natives' extraordinary hospitality. The conquistadores marvelled at the ­amazing roads, canals, buildings and art they found, which in some cases outstripped anything they had seen at home. None of this stopped them destroying everything and everyone they encountered.

The butchery began with ­Columbus. He slaughtered the native people of ­Hispaniola (now Haiti and the ­Dominican Republic) by unimaginably brutal means. His soldiers tore babies from their mothers and dashed their heads against rocks. They fed their dogs on ­living children. On one occasion they hung 13 Indians in honour of Christ and the 12 disciples, on a gibbet just low enough for their toes to touch the ground, then disembowelled them and burnt them alive. ­Columbus ordered all the native people to deliver a ­certain amount of gold every three months; anyone who failed had his hands cut off. By 1535 the native ­population of Hispaniola had fallen from eight ­million to zero: partly as a result of disease, partly due to murder, overwork and starvation.

The conquistadores spread this civilising mission across central and south America. When they failed to reveal where their mythical treasures were hidden, the indigenous people were flogged, hanged, drowned, dismembered, ripped apart by dogs, buried alive or burnt. The soldiers cut off women's breasts, sent people back to their villages with their severed hands and noses hung round their necks and hunted them with dogs for sport. But most were killed by enslavement and disease. The Spanish discovered that it was cheaper to work the native Americans to death and replace them than to keep them alive: the life expectancy in their mines and plantations was three to four months. Within a century of their arrival, about 95% of the population of South and Central America were dead.

In California during the 18th century the Spanish systematised this extermination. A Franciscan missionary called Junípero Serra set up a series of "missions": in reality concentration camps using slave labour. The native people were herded in under force of arms and made to work in the fields on one fifth of the calories fed to African American slaves in the 19th century. They died from overwork, starvation and disease at astonishing rates, and were continually replaced, wiping out the indigenous populations. Junípero Serra, the Eichmann of California, was beatified by the Vatican in 1988. He now requires one more miracle to be pronounced a saint.

While the Spanish were mostly driven by the lust for gold, the British who colonised North America wanted land. In New England they surrounded the villages of the native Americans and murdered them as they slept. As genocide spread westwards, it was endorsed at the highest levels. George Washington ordered the total destruction of the homes and land of the Iroquois. Thomas Jefferson declared that his nation's wars with the Indians should be pursued until each tribe "is exterminated or is driven beyond the Mississippi". During the Sand Creek massacre of 1864, troops in Colorado slaughtered unarmed ­people gathered under a flag of peace, killing children and babies, mutilating all the corpses and keeping their ­victims' genitals to use as tobacco pouches or to wear on their hats. ­Theodore Roosevelt called this event "as rightful and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier".

The butchery hasn't yet ended: last month the Guardian reported that ­Brazilian ranchers in the western ­Amazon, having slaughtered all the rest, tried to kill the last surviving member of a forest tribe. Yet the greatest acts of genocide in history scarcely ruffle our collective conscience. Perhaps this is what would have happened had the Nazis won the second world war: the Holocaust would have been denied, excused or minimised in the same way, even as it continued. The people of the nations responsible – Spain, Britain, the US and others – will tolerate no comparisons, but the final solutions pursued in the Americas were far more successful. Those who commissioned or endorsed them remain national or religious heroes. Those who seek to prompt our memories are ignored or condemned.

This is why the right hates Avatar. In the neocon Weekly Standard, John Podhoretz complains that the film resembles a "revisionist western" in which "the Indians became the good guys and the Americans the bad guys". He says it asks the audience "to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency". Insurgency is an interesting word for an attempt to resist invasion: insurgent, like savage, is what you call someone who has something you want. L'Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, condemned the film as "just an anti-imperialistic, anti-militaristic parable".

But at least the right knows what it is attacking. In the New York Times the liberal critic Adam Cohen praises Avatar for championing the need to see clearly. It reveals, he says, "a well-known ­principle of totalitarianism and genocide – that it is easiest to oppress those we cannot see". But in a marvellous unconscious irony, he bypasses the crashingly obvious metaphor and talks instead about the light it casts on Nazi and Soviet atrocities. We have all become skilled in the art of not seeing.

I agree with its rightwing critics that Avatar is crass, mawkish and cliched. But it speaks of a truth more important – and more dangerous – than those contained in a thousand arthouse movies.

[Caretha]

42. Now that is one hell of a review...

wonder how many will bypass this piece. It makes you feel sorta squeamish, huh?

[lunatica]

67. Even when you tell people about this they just shrug it off

It's the same with slavery and the systematic disenfranchisement of blacks after the Civil War. It shouldn't be necessary to tell people that all this crap is alive and well today.

Willful denial

[BrklynLiberal]

72. They sure as hell are not going to be teaching any of those facts in the American History classes..

[Hekate]

104. That is what I saw, only said in greater depth. The plot-line seemed aimed at a younger audience...

... not terribly sophisticated, but one that could have its eyes opened to the rank injustice of genocide by corporatist/military might. I thought the film was a worthy effort.

At 60+ I'm older than the demographic they aimed for, and with my literary/mythological background it would be easy for me to pick apart the movie for the ways in which it does not break new thematic ground etc etc, even though I was wowed by the special effects.

My movie-buddy is one of my myth colleagues, and as we left the theater she said: "Cowboys and Indians." I agreed with, "The Indians won this time." She said, "I thought Jake would *never* grow up!" I said, "Maybe the target audience needs to identify with him."

So it's not perfect. But it's very good, and it won't hurt younger people to have some of these thoughts rattling around in their heads.

After all, if both the Chinese government and the Vatican think it's threatening, it certainly deserves a second look from us.

Thanks, Lorien, for sharing your cousin's viewpoint and Monbiot's article.

Hekate

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. No need to go to made-up language for that, just Indo-European

Proto-Indo-European Roots Root/Stem: *weid-

Meaning: to know, to see

Cognates:
...
Latin videó (I see); >
Sardinian videre (to see), Aromunian vedu, Romanian vedea, Ladin vair, Italian vedere, Catalan veurer, Spanish & Portuguese ver, Occitan veire, French voir
...
Common Germanic *wit- (to know); >
Gothic & Old Swedish & Old English witan (to know), Old Norse vita, Old High German wizzan, Old Frankish wita; Gothic weitan (to see);
English wise, German wissen (to know), Icelandic & Faroese vita, Norwegian vite, Swedish veta, Danish vide, Frisian witten, Dutch weten, Afrikaans weet
...
http://de1.mediaglyphs.org/

That's just taking the 2 Indo-European branches that most influence English. Just about all Indo-European lanuages have basic words derived from that stem for one or both of the meanings. No need to rely on Heinlein or Cameron to make something up for us.

[MrMickeysMom]

39. The more I read, the more I want to see it... the iMax was sold out the other night...

Gonna have to see this one, I'm sure I'll have some time, as it QUITE catching on...

[johnaries]

46. I highly reccomend iMAX for the "full' experience, But it's still worth

watching, regardless.

[ZombieHorde]

40. Avatar was advertised as being visually awesome and the movie delivered.

If you want a great story go read a book.

[johnaries]

49. I agree, go read a book. I'm currently re-reading the

Sword of Truth novels. The first time I read them, I felt that they were a little "slanted" toward Libertarian values and a little anti-Liberal. But the series was so good I had to continue reading it. On second reading, it seems more "anti-Evangelistic".

Regardless, it's a great story. And the places are so detailed and yet so abstract that I can use my imagination to see the "Keep" and the D'Haran Palace as no cinematograher could imagine.

Nor can I imagine any actors bringing Zedd, Adie, Richard, Kahlan, Cara, and Nicci to life.

I know, there is a TV show - it fails. I've seen the show, and I can't imagine any of those in the place of the people I have come to love.

[CBGLuthier]

77. or watch a movie with a better story.

I don't see why we have to drag books into it when there are many, many, many better written movies than avatar.

[lib2DaBone]

44. The story line is very predictable... but the visuals...ahhh

Sort of reminded me of an old fashioned Western only set in the year 2054.

[cherokeeprogressive]

47. Almost daily, I thank my lucky stars that I'm not near as smart at the average DU'er...

That way, I can go to movies and lose myself in them without seeking out some kind of message about how bad I am, or how bad my countrymen were/are, or how bad my ancestors might have been.

Give it a fucking rest already, it's a God damn movie for goodness' sake.

[DainBramaged]

56. You speak truth

I am so tired of DUers analyzing the piss out of not only a movie but individual scenes that I will begin NOT clicking on movie threads unless I start them. movies are the cheapest form of escapism I know. And if you can't go to the movies to escape for 90 minutes (or more) than maybe you need drugs.

[cherokeeprogressive]

58. You and I escape, while others try to prove they're smarter than people like us by

analyzing and re-analyzing that dead horse until it doesn't even look like a horse any longer.

[Fumesucker]

81. It's possible to do both..

Escape while watching, analyze later..

[Fumesucker]

78. Books are cheaper than movies.. If you pick 'em up used..

And a lot more bang for the buck given how long it takes to read a good novel.

Not to mention that they are almost always better and more detailed than a movie of the same story with usually a great deal more depth.

I've spent the last couple of weeks in a series that has possibly my favorite character in all of fiction, to get the level of immersion I've had in those books from movies would basically be impossible.

[DainBramaged]

85. Not trying to make excuses, but my blindness makes reading books difficult

I have a 23" monitor here on 1024X768 resolution with the text on large. Reading books is virtually impossible for me now.

[Fumesucker]

103. Lots of books available as PDF, LIT or other files..

I do the majority of my reading on the computer nowadays and I save my paper books for when I have to wait somewhere, like at the doctor's office or something.

I wasn't aware of your disability, that must truly suck.

[DainBramaged]

108. One eye gone the other diminished since my last brain tumor

shit happens. Watching the Super Bowl for car freaks (Barrett-jackson).

[hyphenate]

48. IMHO

Cameron's never been a "great" director, but an adequate one.

No, I haven't seen Avatar, nor so I want to, but if it is like many of his other films(which I HAVE seen), it's huge on SFX, but short on story. Again this is my opinion and might not reflect any one else's.

In this day and time, SFX are state-of-the-art phenomena, and almost any film with a sizable budget can be brilliant with them. It's only when there is a determination on the part of both the director and screenwriter--to make the story just as good as it can possibly be, with or without SFX--that a story/film rises above the rest.

I look for great characters nowadays when I go to see a movie, and I find I skip a lot more than I see. I usually find that mainstream films, which don't rely very much at all on SFX, satisfy me more than action or adventure films nowadays.

In the SF/action/adventure genre, I think Star Trek was one of the few films this past year which had fantastic SFX, but also had a story and great characterizations. While some might venture to say that we are already familiar with the characters, I say that is not true in this case. The names might be the same, but from the very beginning of the film, we are fully aware that these are not going to be the James Kirk, Mr. Spock or Uhura (or any of the other "regulars") we grew up with. They are different, though the same, individually created and allowed to sink into our subconscious. There were some issues I had going in to the film and still have (mostly tech), but I will live with them.

I apologize for being negative about a film I am unlikely ever going to see, but since I haven't got a lot of money to go to too many films, I want to make the movies I do see just that much more special.

[slampoet]

57. For instance: the Na'vi phrase "I see you" basically means "I GROK you."

You explain EXACTLY why it is derivative in your second paragraph.

[krawhitham]

60. It was boring

[Quixote1818]

61. I was moved by that scene too. When she said "Jake, My Jake!"

That was a very powerful scene in the movie! Her acting was powerful too in that scene.

[AllenVanAllen]

63. I liked Avatar and forgive much of it's flaws

because I have a deep appreciation for the artistry that went into a visual achievement as great as this.
Furthermore, the message of this film really resonates with me, no matter how cliched. The message above all is environmental
and I believe is very relevant to our future...

[Ghost of Tom Joad]

65. he repeated the hero myth (Joseph Campbell) again

and he repeated it poorly

[Fly by night]

68. Good thread about a great movie. I don't think "many people" are criticizing this film.

I think some (very precious) people are critical of the movie and I think many corporatists, anti-environmentalists and Christianists are opposed to the film.

But I think many people are seeing the film, and some of them are seeing it over and over. (I've seen it twice and will see it again when I am in a city with Imax.) Over 80% of the published reviews of the film have given it high praise. In particular, I liked Roger Ebert's review. He called the film "extraordinary", and he was right.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091211/REVIEWS/912119998

[ShamelessHussy]

69. Most people don't like to be reminded of their peoples sins.

that's my take on the 'critics' of this film, but i am heartened that it is apparently being very well received around the world.

i knew when i saw this film that it was a landmark film, just in it's CG alone, but the ability to get us to feel empathy with alien blue creatures was also very remarkable as well, and it's success warms my heart that one of our most basic and critical human traits still abounds in most hearts, EMPATHY!

peace

[Odin2005]

70. "Originality" is an overrated obsession of snobs.

In reality there are few stories that are truly original, nearly all are based on some archetypal plot template or similar, as argued by famous mythologist Joseph Campbell.

[CBGLuthier]

71. I am going to have to start keeping a vomit bag next to the computer

I am just too god damn cynical to see the value of this glurge fest.

[Codeine]

82. +1 nt

[KamaAina]

75. One of my FB friends just described it as "racist" and "ablist"!

(she has a disability)

I'm one of the two dozen or so people who hasn't seen it, so I have no opinion.

[Hekate]

83. So did your friend actually go to see it herself? I did, and imo it is neither of those.

If this movie is "ableist" then so is every other movie ever made. Movies are fantasy. Has your friend ever had dreams (the uncensored part of us that wakes when we sleep) of walking, running, flying -- or is she forever bound by gravity and disability? I really am sorry she feels that way, if so. If dreams are wish-fulfillment, then Jake literally has a dream come true.

As for the purported racism, in case she hasn't seen Avatar, please tell her the Blue People win.

Hekate

[KamaAina]

86. She did indeed see it herself

first major non-work activity since she fractured her femur over the holidays (fractures come along with her disability). :(

As a disability activist, I don't think she'd be too happy with "bound by gravity and disability". :shrug:

[Political Heretic]

89. Why not?

Our of curiosity, what does the world "disability" mean?


This would be like something being a "cancer activist." Characterizing cancer as a great thing, and criticizing anyone who speaks of cancer as something bad that happened too a person and that we would hope to fix or cure as some sort of bigot.

For what its worth, the one character with a disability in the movie, travels to another planet, is never treated like a "less than" - does for himself, is picked for a top mission, is treated like a "specialist" and shows nothing but 100% self-sufficiency around colleagues that completely respect him.

Anyone trying to pull something else out of the movie has a chip on their shoulder that they need to get the fuck over.

[KamaAina]

90. Um, no, it wouldn't.

This would be like something being a "cancer activist." Characterizing cancer as a great thing, and criticizing anyone who speaks of cancer as something bad that happened too (sic) a person and that we would hope to fix or cure as some sort of bigot.

Cancer can kill you. Disability per se does not. It is exactly this kind of thinking that we refer to as the "medical model", that people with disabilities are sick and need to be cured, that we are trying to eliminate -- with a whole lot of success so far, I might add.

[Political Heretic]

96. Um, yes it would.

I'm pretty familiar with what you call the "medical" model, since I'm a master degreed social worker. I don't agree with your use of it, in this case.

What percentage of people who can't walk wish to walk again? What would be your guess? If you say anything less than 9 out of every 10 people, I'll know your not even interested in a truthful conversation.

My point is not that attitudes of pity or seeing persons with disabilities as "other" don't need to be addressed. My point is that in doing so, some people on one extreme wing of the activist scale start making some pretty ludicrous arguments. They turn make an issue out of even the most benign things, and it becomes pretty transparently obvious to anyone with even a little bit of training, that there is a massive amount of projection going on.

What we should be seeking, I would argue as a social worker, is a blended balance. One in which we don't trivialize or pretend away the realities of disabilities (such as partial paralysis in this case) by glorifying them or pretending that nearly everyone who is kept from the use of their full body by paralysis wouldn't trade their paralysis for the ability to use their full body in freedom. While on the other hand, we don't treat persons with various unique needs or conditions as somehow second class citizens, or as objects of pity, or as "less than."

People with disabilities are not "sick" - and they don't "need" to do anything that they don't want to do - that includes changing anything about themselves, even if they had the opportunity. They have the right to choose, in freedom, their path.

But I hope for a day when people with disabilities are given a choice - a choice to live with disability or live free from it. And you and I both know that 9 out of 10 people would joyfully choose to be free from it. That is why glorifying something like paralysis itself is to me like glorifying any other condition that limits the full functioning of the human body. And that's what I oppose. We should be allowed to talk about conditions that interfere with the normal operation of the human body truthfully for what they are - they are conditions that interfere with the normal operation of the human body.

I would suggest that the glorification of adverse conditions is simply a coping mechanism that some people chose to embrace. But reality for the rest of us is a lot more complex than that.

[Hekate]

98. In sci-fi terms, we are all at the bottom of a gravity well. It weighs heavier on some than others.

I've been reading F&SF my whole life -- it's a wide-ranging genre that explores many aspects of what it means to be human. That's one thing.

Another thing is this: There are things in this life that I cannot do, and would give much to be able to do. But I would not stop those who can, from doing so.

And last but not least: Reading was always my escape from realities I could not change, from my earliest years. Movies fill that need for others.

I am very sorry about your friend; her life must be very hard indeed. I hope she finds other movies more to her liking, ones that give her a few hours pleasure and escape. (And KamaAina, if you imagine she would want to klonk me over the head for even thinking that, all I can say is been there, done that with the last 15 disabled and extremely angry years of my mother's life. May my mother rest in peace, because I certainly have more peace.)

Hekate

edited for clarity

[mainer]

79. I would like to hear someone's idea of "original"

Those who are criticizing Cameron, let's hear it. How would you make Avatar "original"?

Have Jake die at the end? (yawn. Been done.)

Have Neytiri marry her original intended and spurn Jake? And Jake, in a fit of heartache, goes back to his home planet, still paraplegic? (major downer. But maybe that's what literary types consider "original.")

Have Jake go bad and wipe out the Na'vi? (Real downer. Good luck finding an audience.)

Have the Na'vi actually be Satan's spawn, and the humans be god's warriors? (Would play well to the Mel Gibson audience. But hardly original)

Come on. I want concrete story suggestions.

[GreenMetalFlake]

87. "most people" are well meaning morons whose reality consists of what corps tell them to think

[Political Heretic]

88. Some people just have to be contrarian about things that are popular

Don't let it get to you.

The movie has gotten mass critical acclaim, and millions of people have loved it without needing to be a sourpuss and take things too seriously.

But there are people out there who truly do get off on simply being adversarial and contrarian about anything that a large number of people enjoy.

Don't worry about it. :)

[Lorien]

92. Yeah, tell me about it. The unrecc fairies hit this one hard:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7507367

I'm betting that NONE of them actually read it or even had the slightest understanding of what the article was really about. People are just way too damn shallow.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

95. I read that, and I unrecced it.

There's a million of these goofy threads out there, and none of them deserve greatest status.

What's shallow is the stupid "message" of that movie.

[mainer]

94. And NO ONE has yet offered an "original" suggestion to change it

I'm still waiting.

[LanternWaste]

105. With all the right people on this thread stating with an emphatic absoluteness

With all the right people on this thread stating with an emphatic absoluteness how awful the movie is, I now feel compelled to see it. Much like Passion of the Christ and The Last Temptation of Christ, it was the critics themselves who turned me onto a few good films.

"One dimensional characters" much like their posts. Re-hashing old plot lines. Ditto. "The noble savage"-- mere inference.

I wasn't really planning on seeing it, but since it's received the same tired critiques from the same tired people that Passion of the... did, it must not be all that bad. :P