ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

______________________________________

From Sci Fi Scoop comes the following news --



Something like 6000 San Diego Comic-Con fans were treated to 25 minutes of footage from James Cameron's Avatar today, but the real news happened towards the end of the Avatar Comic-Con panel.

James Cameron made the announcement that Fox will be showing fifteen minutes of Avatar footage in digital 3D in as many cinemas as they can on August 21st — and it will all be completely free to anyone who can get in to see it.

In the US it seems the screening will occur primarily in Imax 3D and Imax digital 3D. Internationally it looks like happening in both Imax and any other cinema that can host 3D.

Here's James Cameron's complete announcement:
________________________________________________

We're going to do something unprecedented. It's a social marketing experiment. We're going to take over as many IMAX 3D theaters and other select 3D theaters worldwide on August 21 and we're going to let an international global audience come see 15 minutes of Avatar for free. It's going to be Avatar day.
________________________________________________


____A scene captured from a special screening of 'Avatar'_____

[Steve Joyce]

I thought that Avatar was the 1st movie that I ever watched in 3D where the 3D wasn't just an entertaining gimmick

The world that they built just wouldn't the same without it imho.
_________________
"There is a planet in the Solar System where the people are so stupid they didn't catch on for a million years that there was another half to their planet." - Kilgore Trout.

[Bongopete]

To paraphrase Steve, I thought that Avatar was the 1st (mostly) live action movie that I ever watched in 3D where the 3D seemed to actually work really well.
Without 3d, the movie is literally flat flat flat.

Nothing really is new in this bad technological humans ravage noble redskins movie.

The starship and it's shuttles are cool as are any of the human tech...but the Indians are well...there is a scene in which I literally expected the Navi to break into a rendition of kumbaya.

Logically I think the only thing that would have come out of this story is that the RDA would return and either nuke areas of the planet or hit it with chemical weapons from orbit. If the resources there are THAT valuable, the RDA wouldn't simply abandon it.

There are some rather large logic holes in the film as well.

Also, Sam Worthington as an avatar always looked like Brendan Fraser to me!

[Bud Brewster]

__________________________________

I must respectfully disagree with the people who state that Avatar's story lacked originality. Sure, the basic story is a version of the tragic tale about how white people always steal the land from indigenous tribes.

But consider the many other intriguing concepts the movie presents. And even if these concepts weren't all brand new, they have never been on display more beautifully than they were in this dazzling movie.

Here's my list of science fiction gold in Avatar.

1. The avatar's themselves: The way the concept was presented is stunning. A human lies down inside a hi-tech device and establishes a two-way connection with a genetically engineered version of the aliens' bodies. Impressive!





2. The design of the aliens: Nine feet tall, blue in color, humanoid for the most part, but with striking differences. They possess biological input/output nerve endings in their hair braids which allow them to plug their nervous systems into those of the animals they domesticate.



3. The interaction of the aliens with the animals they rode: It's one thing to ride on a horse — and it's something else entirely to have a mental connection with your trusty steed, guiding it with your mind and sharing its sensations. But when you translate that experience to a mounted animal which flies . . . well, that's every person's oldest dream.





I included scenes with humans riding on giant birds in my own novel, Sail the Sea of Stars, written in 1982. And the planet in those scenes was very much like Pandora — although I didn't think of those great floating rocks . . .



4. The Tree of Life: It wasn't my favorite aspect of Avatar, because quasi-religious concepts like this can get pretty hokey in science fiction movies, and in Avatar the spiritual elements of the story are strongly connected to the biological concepts concerning Pandora's unique global ecology.



And James Cameron has plans for those concepts. We'll find out what they are the sequel.

5. The amazing ecology of Pandora: Never in the history of cinematic science fiction have we seen an alien planet so rich with stunning plants and animals, not to mention the breathtaking landscapes.

I'm an artist and a writer, and Avatar is a banquet of brilliant artwork and exciting concepts, presented in IMAX and 3D!



So, as a 76-year-old science fiction enthusiast, I think Avatar stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Forbidden Planet, which I saw when I was just an 8-year-old and had it change my life forever.

__________________________________

___________________ Avatar | Official Trailer


_________ [b]
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

I give up. How DO you tell an avatar from a native Pandorian? (I mean, other that the number of fingers.)

* I fixed #2. Thanks.
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

I watched Avatar tonight with Gord Green in our chat room, and it occurred to me that (a) this movie deserves a lot of discussion from our members, and (b) where the hell are the twenty other replies this thread should have had in the last five years?

Due to the demise of the old board, this thread had to be created in 2013 by me, but it sure hasn't had the kind of activity it deserves.

Gord and I are going to find some interesting aspects of this movie to discuss and debate, and we sincerely hope the other members will join us and share their own ideas.

I'll throw this question out there just to get things started.

If the Na'vi connect their braids during sex and share each others thoughts, does that mean the men have to be careful not to fantasize about other women while making love?

Scary thought, eh?
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

I have to admit that I haven't been able to sit through "Dances With Smurfs". I thought it was a gorgeous looking film, but I only got as far as the hero's induction into the blue monkey, hippy tree cult, when I realized that the only person I liked in the film was the helicopter pilot. And that could be, because she wasn't in the movie that much.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

Maybe you should tough it out and see if a few other scenes after the point at which you stopped might prove more interesting.

What you described sounds a little like a guy I heard about who decided to remain a virgin because he got bored during the foreplay!

Next time, stay for the climax, David.
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

If I had to pick one thing about this movie to praise, it would be the fact that, like Forbidden Planet, it fully immersed the audience in an alien world which was both strange and beautiful.

It really pulled out all the stops when it gave us a landscape that floated in the air — and we got to fly around in it!





_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bogmeister]

____________
This was James Cameron's follow-up to his super-hit, non-sci-fi Titanic (97) — but it was a long dozen years in coming.

Cameron got sidetracked after his sinking ship film, first caught up in its monumental success, then reevaluating his life by immersing himself in more scientific pursuits in the deep oceans, resulting in 2 or 3 documentaries.

He also dabbled in TV sci-fi: the result there was the short-lived series, Dark Angel (2000-2002). The other component of all these delays (expectations of many was that Cameron was going to direct his next film within 5 years after Titanic) was technology — the development of a 3D Fusion Camera and more advanced performance capture techniques.

The budget for Avatar was immense (like many of Cameron's films), at about $300 million. As with Titanic, it looked as if Cameron's latest film needed to really work at recouping its cost, but history repeated itself and Avatar became the highest-grossing film of all (not adjusted for inflation), winning each successive weekend for almost 2 months as attendance reduced very minimally week-to-week (the writing was on the wall when its 2nd weekend nearly matched its 1st).

______

The story is fairly simple and not unusual — in some future, about 150 years from now, mankind had expanded its pursuits to outer space and resources on Earth have been depleted. But, there is a crucial mining operation on the moon of Pandora, in the Alpha Centauri system (only about 4 light years from Earth), where exists the rare mineral Unobtanium (see also The Core in2003, which also brings up this material).

Eventually, things become very volatile, as the security force assigned to this locale sets out to conquer or eliminate the native population, 10-foot-tall blue-skinned humanoids which are the aboriginal stand-ins for the usual Indians or Africans in westerns or historical adventure films.

The objective of the humans is to destroy what's known as the giant "Hometree," which happens to sit on the largest deposit of Unobtanium. Thrown into this mix is main character Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a former marine and paraplegic sent there to replace his dead twin brother. It seems mankind has also developed the technology to transfer human consciousness into replicant bodies which mimick Pandora's natives; Jake is able to walk again in this new alien body, and he infiltrates the natives. However, he soon falls in love with a native (Zoe Saldana) and has second thoughts about his assignment.

_____

Avatar was Cameron's homage to and version of all those old pulp sci-fi tales that he read as a kid, from the Golden Age of science fiction, which usually featured rockets, spacemen and trippy alien terrain.

This last feature is where Cameron really outdoes himself — the creation of an alien jungle world that truly was an immersing experience on the big screen, what with the new 3D technology. Using this tech, Cameron was able to accurately imitate the wild scenarios on other planets which we read about in old sci-fi stories.

But, like the simple tales of yesteryear, the themes and unsubtle political messages presented here are simplicity itself — humans and their tech stuff, especially the weapons, are bad. The primitive natives, at one with the natural world, are good.

As has been pointed out by many, this is a sci-fi remake of Dances With Wolves (1990), the story of one culture — the more advanced, more arrogant one — encroaching on another one, the more pure, more clean one. There aren't any grey areas.

I was still a bit confused about the message — it seems to be the stale one about greed and corporations, represented by the main company man (Giovanni Ribisi), but then again, aren't Earth people behaving out of desperation to save their planet? Their methods are shortsighted, crude and brutal, yes (another trope), but it doesn't seem to be about just greed. Cameron's films have always been about the basics in their stories, but they rang true. Here, he just piles on the cliches.

___________________
___

That said, there are a couple of standouts among the actors — Stephen Lang is excellent as the ruthless commander of the quasi-military force; scarred, muscled-up, he strikes an imposing figure. Likewise, Michelle Rodriguez is very good as another soldier, one who shifts alliances late in the game.

Sigourney Weaver reunites with Cameron (after their gig on Aliens in 1986) as the local head scientist. As for all the actors portraying the alien natives — here's the other sad part of all this: despite the revolutionary FX, which present these alien forms as realistically as possible, none of the alien characters are given anything interesting to do. They're all cliches, the noble proud natives.

Even the various fauna on this planet, though wide in its variety, never really sticks in the mind — it's all surprisingly forgettable. The flora, however, the painterly vistas, are very attractive to behold, I admit.

BoG's Score: 7 out of 10

Avatar Trivia: The film grossed about $750 million domestically — the first & only film to break $700 million at the box office — and about $2 billion in the rest of the world, handily beating Titanic's record of $1.2 billion overseas.

It rapidly put to rest the fears of the movie studio, which figured that the film needed to gross $600 million to break even. What's also impressive about this is that the other biggest-grossing films of the past decade never quite get to one billion overseas, let alone 2 billion. Domestically, the closest that other big films got to Avatar's gross in 2009-2010 were Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen at $402 million and Toy Story 3 at $415 million.



BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Gord Green]

Originaly I saw this movie in IMAX 3-D and was totally blown away by it! In 3-D it was a total immersion in a truly alien environment with the lush vegetation and exotic fauna, not to mention the superb action and flawless special effects.

Unfortunately the sequals promised have been too long in coming.
_________________
There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[The Spike]

It's cinema Jim, but not as we know it.

So here it is then, what has been in gestation in James Cameron's mind for over 12 years finally hit the silver screen towards the back end of 2009. Made for gazillions amount of cash, Avatar went on to make a billion trillion in Worldwide receipts-and this before the rush rush release of DVD/BLU RAY sales are factored into the equation. The film, and all its technical wizardry, is quite simply a gargantuan piece of cinematic history. Released in 2d and 3d, and probably some other format that I'm forgetting, every advanced tool of the trade has been utilised by Cameron and his team to create what is now the ultimate popcorn blockbuster. Shame then, that away from the visual extravaganza the film is as shallow as this review will ultimately end up being.

No doubt about it, this is a joy for the eyes and ears, the minuscule details are wonderful and the colour positively pings from every frame. But in the eagerness to create such splendour they forgot to put any substance into the writing. This is plot simplicity. And even its messages, as Cameron smugly preaches his sermon from the pulpit, now seem old hat. Do we really need another boink over the head about eco invasion? Or a curt reminder of American infiltration into some land where motives are suspicious at best? No we don't really do we? Worse still is some of the dialogue, which quite frankly could have come from some playground encounter as the kiddies play kiss chase or bang bang your dead army. There's also a sense of familiarity with other better scripted film's, Dances *cough* With *cough* Wolves *cough* It's as if Cameron just knew that narrative structure wasn't as important as having the expensive gimmicks. He's like a modern day William Castle-only with considerably more readies at his disposal.

The cast are OK, Zoe Saldana puts a sexy feistiness to her blue alien Neytiri, Sam Worthington keeps the humanistic elements just about above water, while Sigourney Weaver is as ever the consummate professional. But ironically, in a film shimmering bright in 2d & 3d, the characters are all one dimensional. None more so than Stephen "The Party Crasher" Lang's Colonel. A man so gruff and gung-ho menacing he really ought to be in Sly Stallone's upcoming testo movie The Expendables. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, it won three, for Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, and Best Art Direction. Those were richly deserved. They also tell us all we need to now about Cameron's Behemoth. 5/10
_________________
The quality of mercy is not strnen.

[Bud Brewster]