Re: Avatar reviews
But the story looks good and its James Cameron, who is pretty good at telling stories. I actually think the people on here who are complaining about an "f/x extravaganza" are letting their own bias against CGI getting in the way of what looks like a good story.
Matter of opinion. I think the story looks like it has potential, but whether it's good will depend heavily on how well the story is told. The flashy graphics being only a part of that (and for me, a small part). I'll gladly forgive shoddy effects if the underlying story is good. Hell, I enjoy the old Flash Gordon serials, despite the waaaaaaaay outdated f/x because it's a cracking good adventure story. If Cameron can do that, then I'll likely enjoy the film. If he can't, I'll be proven right that the hype machine is in overdrive again.
My bias against CGI is also not based on nothing. It's based on watching plenty of films that I wanted to like which turned out to be crap stories that relied too heavily on CGI to carry the day. Often CGI that I found to be imperfect. Let me tell ya, when the story's good and engaging, I won't care if the CGI isn't perfect. I'll be too busy enjoying the story. But as soon as you lose my interest in the story, that's when I start noticing that the animations were too fluid or the surface textures were too glossy.
Honestly, as impressive as Gollum is in the LOTR films, I still can spot the flaws in the CGI....and I don't care. Why? Because the story's so good and more importantly because Andy Serkis' performance is so amazing. It doesn't bother me that Gollum's proportions aren't always maintained 100%. Likewise, it doesn't bug me that he looks too glossy at times. It's just a good story and the imperfections don't detract from it.
Cameron has never made a film that didn't have a good story. Granted his dialogue can be clunky at times, but if the story to Avatar is bad it will be a first.
I haven't seen all his films, but I've enjoyed all the films of his I've seen. The problem I'm seeing is that so much of the discussion -- especially coming from his camp -- is about the "ZOMG!!! LOOKIT DA NEW TECHNOLOGY!!! IT'S AMAAAAAAAAZING!!!" It's not "You know, we really wanted to try to tell a story that is, at its core, just about humanity and two sides of it. In a way, the Na'vi are just an aspect of humanity. The technological stuff was really just to make the Na'vi look more realistic than, say, prosthetics or traditional CGI." Hopefully my concerns are unfounded, but I've been burned too many times on stuff like this to not go in at least a LITTLE skeptical.
I agree with you, I really do, but I think human (and sci-fi geek) nature is to focus on the negative, and I think if you looked at film discussions as a whole around here, negative posts would faaaaaaaar outweight positive/excited ones. Is that a reflection that more bad movies come out than good? Absolutely. But people are pretty fast to nitpick things to death in the geek community. Remember the Comic Book Guy in Simpsons criticizing Itchy and Scratchy?
That's certainly true, and I think it comes from the degree that people care about the underlying material. Either because it ruins something they liked, or because they love the stuff and in the course of watching it for the umpteenth time, they notice imperfections (like the Gollum stuff I mentioned above).
For me, though, my concerns are a far cry from nitpicking this or that. Saying "Story was clunky and unengaging" is pretty different from "OMG, I can't BELIEVE that they gave Gollum hair!! It specifically says on page 349 of the third appendix to LOTR that after Gollum moved underneath the Misty Mountains, he spent years tortured by the ring and in the process tore all his hair out! It's like they didn't even CARE!"
I'll be seeing this, hopefully in 3D. If it's sufficiently big, perhaps its other flaws will be overcome. But that sounds a lot like an attempt to like The Phantom Menace, doesn't it? I dunno...I suppose I do want to like it, despite Cameron's puffery.
I don't do that anymore. I don't go to movies HOPING to like them, because I almost always end up disappointed. I go in either with no expectations, or expecting to like the film and having no reservations about it. I also go in after reading reviews (both professional and casual) and piecing together whether I'm going to enjoy the film based on what folks have said.
