Avatar and the Avatar Cadence (James Cameron, 2009-2031)

[Mr. Ned]

JAKE
It's cool. I'm there.


If that's not the most romantic thing ever said post-coitus, I don't know what is.

[hearthesilence]

JFC...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/201001 ... ost/420605" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

JFC...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/201001 ... ost/420605" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wow, this reads like the Onion wrote it.

[foofighters7]

"I've tried so hard to dream about me being on Pandora but it hasn't worked."


HAHAHAHHAHHAHA



"Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it. I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.'"

yes...yes you WILL be rebirthed in Pandora...just..jump. please.


I hope for the sake of man that these are jokes.

[domino harvey]

Donate the cost of a ticket for Avatar to Haiti instead

[Polybius]

"Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it. I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.'"

If any of these people listen to 2112, they're done for.

(Just to anticipate...yes, there would be a certain justice in that.)

[manicsounds]

With the billions in ticket sales, a death of a movie-goer was obviously bound to happen....

[HarryLong]

Donate the cost of a ticket for Avatar to Haiti instead

Here's a better idea. Cameron forgoes the next two installments in the trilogy & donates the projected budget ...
A billion $$$$ ought to pull Haiti out of Third World status...

[foofighters7]

It said it was the first death due to Avatar....

I would disagree. Part of me died after watching it, so, as a collective I think thousands have died.

As far as Tragedy goes Haiti is getting all the buzz.. I would say the collective deaths due to Avatar MAY rival it...

[wattsup32]

Is it safe to say Avatar will beat Titanic both domestically and world-wide? It'll run until the Oscars and then run a little after if it wins.

[Jeff]

Is it safe to say Avatar will beat Titanic both domestically and world-wide? It'll run until the Oscars and then run a little after if it wins.

It's pretty safe to say it will easily trump both the domestic and world-wide records now. It should beat Titanic's world-wide record of $1.843 billion within the next couple of days.

[swo17]

It's official: there is no God.

[domino harvey]

It all came down to the repeat audiences and I think the lesson learned here is that in a fight between nerds and teenage girls, nerds will win. And no one can be faulted for thinking nerds would lose a fight

[Peacock]

So when adjusted for inflation, how far ahead is Gone with the Wind?

[swo17]

It all came down to the repeat audiences

That, inflation, and most of all I think, the much higher cost of tickets to IMAX 3D theaters.

[domino harvey]

So when adjusted for inflation, how far ahead is Gone with the Wind?

Someone posted something on ONTD yesterday that placed the estimate in the trillions, if I remember correctly

[zedz]

Well, I’m bored, and that news is fucking depressing, so here’s my Avatar rant. I succumbed and saw this last week in IMAX 3D. Like other IMAX 3D stuff I’ve seen, the effect is sort of cool for the first ten minutes then rapidly fades into the background and is neither here nor there. I’m sure there are undreamt of applications for the technology that will take cinema into new realms (hint: let Michel Gondry loose on it for some R&D and then see where we stand), or filmmakers who could make the technology artistically meaningful and aesthetically expressive, but this sure ain’t it.

Technology aside, as cinema this is pretty feeble. The plot and characters are so generic and predictable it actually resembles a Saturday morning cartoon more than most other modern action cinema, even of the lowest common denominator kind. Even those tend nowadays to a pretense of complication, desperately hoping the tides of fanboys will mistake it for complexity. In this film every character is absolutely stock and every plot development is telegraphed at least a half hour ahead. Even the individual ‘beats’ of each sequence arrive with thudding predictability.

All the film has going for it is its look, and though this is technically impressive, I suppose, in that it’s really detailed and in goshwow 3D, the lack of imagination behind it is stultifying. The visuals are straight out of the mass-market fantasy posters that you’d find in an adolescent’s bedroom in the 1970s, and the plot, with all its puerile ‘transformation and mastery’ clichés, come directly from the accompanying wet dreams. The only iota of interest is in what all these generic vistas would look like in 3D. SPOILER: They look exactly how you expect they would.

As a fantasy world it’s not even half-realised. Apart from the general staleness of it, it’s all so undifferentiated: the characters travel for hundreds of miles but never leave the same jungle, like an old Tarzan programmer, and the same flora and fauna laboriously introduced early on come back right on schedule for the denouement . I known this kind of mechanical narrative efficiency is considered the ne plus ultra of ‘good scriptwriting’ in Hollywood, but it’s always been bullshit. The film would like to think it’s all about wonder and discovery, but it’s as mired in dull functionality as its accountant’s spreadsheet.

If I had to find something nice to say about it, I’d note that Cameron can construct action sequences that have a modicum of coherence. But just because that’s a dying skill doesn’t make it much of an achievement: he never manages to construct one with a modicum of surprise, interest or wit.

[reno dakota]

So when adjusted for inflation, how far ahead is Gone with the Wind?

I cannot find the worldwide adjusted figures, but here is a domestic adjusted chart.

[domino harvey]

Am I the only one who didn't realize how popular 101 Dalmations was?

[Peacock]

It seems GOTW made $400 million (nice round number huh..) which seemingly becomes 6 billion today

[Jeff]

Am I the only one who didn't realize how popular 101 Dalmations was?

When I was a kid (before home video was widespread), the Disney classics were re-released to theaters every few years. Not just a handful of theaters, but major wide releases with national ad campaigns. I first saw 101 Dalmatians and most of the other Disney classics on the big screen not realizing that they were from decades earlier. Those figures for 101 Dalmatians and Snow White are the totals from maybe five or six different releases. Of course major live action films got their share of re-issues too; Gone with the Wind had many, and Star Wars had at least one that I remember before the 1997 redux version (which is also included in its total).

[reno dakota]

It seems GOTW made $400 million (nice round number huh..)

Sorry to stay off-topic, but Box Office Mojo puts the figure at $400,176,459. Seems reasonable, given all of its re-releases, but maybe it's an estimate. I don't know.

[Peacock]

Oh no I just read the 400 mill figure online somewhere, i'm sure your correct

[zedz]

Zeddo, you haven't said anything about the dialogue!

If only the dialogue was the only problem! It had the same dull pre-packaged functionality of everything else, so I guess it fit Cameron's (banal) 'vision'. It wasn't even bad enough to be enjoyably campy, just dull, dull tone-deaf verbal sewage, dragging us by the neck from plot point to plot point.

I did get one genuine laugh from the film: when naked Sigourney appears in a custom-fabricated fern bikini (!) that serves no purpose whatsoever except to preserve the delicate sensibilities of the acned moppets seeing it for the umpteenth time (and, of course, in order to give the same boys something to whack off to that night). More really silly moments like that might have salvaged the film.

[SoyCuba]

The most ridiculous name ever for a mountain?