Avatar

[decaro]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

I see everybody's point - however, I must be able to detach more than others. I've seen Dances with Wolves and I've seen Pocahontas - and all I saw when I went to see Avatar was a great story, well told, great graphics, good cinematography and great casting ...

Of course, not everyone saw it that way:

"... 'Avatar' was indeed over-hyped, over-special effected, over-animated, and despite a lot of blue people zooming around on the backs of pimped-out pterodactyls, and despite a surfeit of lanky naked blue bodies, it still managed to be boring. I would say overwhelmingly boring, but the sheer number of brain-jarring explosions made outright sleep difficult.

"'... Avatar' lesson No. 1: No matter how many hundreds of millions are spent on special effects, if there is no story to support them, it's a loser. And the story under 'Avatar's special effects is thinner than Taylor Swift and as exhausted as a marathoner who forgot to carbo load. The 'bad government people try to exploit nature-loving, peace-loving indigenous people' is straight out of any number of high-themed cowboy and Indian movies. Think 'Dances With Wolves' set in a psychotically overgrown jungle.

"'Avatar' lesson No. 2: See lesson No. 1 ...

"As I was leaving the theater, exhausted from quadraphonic explosions and wondering if there really was such a thing as 'The Home Tree,' I bumped into a couple of friends. 'How'd you like it?' they asked.

"'Well,' I said, searching for a suitable non-response, 'it wasn't the worst movie I ever saw.' While evasive, this was true. I saw Titanic."

by Charles Walsh, Connecticut Post

There's more at:
http://m.connpost.com/connpost/db_12482 ... &full=true

[htuna]

I guess it's earnings tell how really Bad it is!!!...

[JWW]

I loved it.  That's all I'm concerned about.

[decaro]

ORIGINAL: cmurphy625

I guess it's earnings tell how really Bad it is!!!...

Whoever said, "No one ever lost money by underestimating the taste of the American public" can now include the rest of the civilized world.

"If further proof is needed of paucity of imagination in Cameron's idea factory, one only need hear what he named the precious mineral the bad guys need to save their 'dying planet.' It is called (are you ready?) Unobtainium. Get it? ..."

Unobtanium? OMG - was the script for "Avatar" written by someone still in High School?

And the only reason Cameron's "Titanic" was so financially successful was because teenage girls saw it in double-digits just to gaze at Leonardo.

[JudgeDredd]

Joe

I will give you that. I thought it was the single most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in a movie that I can recall. Almost like they needed to call it unobtanium because, well it's difficult to get because of the natives...so we better spell it out to our dumb audience...that way they'll "get it".

I thought it was ridiculous...but the film was awesome.

[JWW]

Oddly, the term appears to have a long history.

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

Maybe this was just a little Cameron inside joke.

The Avatar folks even give it a backstory.

http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Unobtanium

Obviously, I don't have enough to do today, which is a good thing, though I'm about to continue a game of GGWBTS.

[decaro]

ORIGINAL: JW

Oddly, the term appears to have a long history.

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

Maybe this was just a little Cameron inside joke ....

I trust someone thought it was funny.

"Unobtainium can also refer to any rare but desirable material used to motivate a conflict over its possession, making it a MacGuffin ... the particular use or properties of the material are not important to the plot. Examples are dilithium in Star Trek', or a mineral obliquely called 'unobtanium' (sp) in the film Avatar, valued at '20 million a kilo.'"

I can recall at least 2 original "Star Trek" episodes where "dilithium" was important to the plot.

In an interview, Alfred Hitchock once explained the "MacGuffin," but he never had the nerve to call it that in any of his films.