avatar: it's not the worst thing i've ever seen, but only because i watch terrible shit on purpose

[almostnever]

We just finally got around to watching Cameron's Avatar, with the aid of an accompanying RiffTrax-- without the riffs, we never would've made it. Even with it, damn, that was hard to sit through. It was so awful

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[txvoodoo]

I still haven't watched it, and now I'm even more glad.

[almostnever]

Seriously: get high, go to the fantasy section of a used bookstore and look at the covers while remembering every action science fiction movie you've ever seen. There, you've basically seen Avatar.

It's the same plot as every crappy blockbuster since Star Wars, and there's not a single word in this movie you haven't heard already said a dozen times in exactly the same way in other films. I really got the sense it was on purpose, too, like Cameron was playing it 100% safe and familiar to convince unimaginative money guys to pay for the CG/3D. Hell, a 15 year old can write this plot and get a $100 million movie made out of it, of course James Cameron can get $500 million to do the same basic tale.

It exasperates me the same way the Star Wars prequels exasperate me. So much money and resources and talent were available to Lucas and Cameron: they could have made anything, they could have hired amazing writers and designers to create something really special. Instead they both turned out crap that's limited by their own personal

[txvoodoo]

I think this is why I'd just rather read most of the time anymore. Or watch tv. Both books and tv are kicking movies' asses.

And I don't even get high anymore :( Maybe half the stuff I remember from my youth wouldn't be as cool as memory makes me think it was!

I haven't been able to watch the SW prequels. They just look like ...junk. Exploitation.

avatar

[elderwitty]

A 15 year old did write it. Cameron said, in one of the innumerable specials attending its release, that this was something he came up with in his teens.

I haven't seen it, and I won't. Not just 'cause of all the white male Euro privilege crap that it spews, but because it also looked like shit. It's The Last Samurai Dances with Wolves in a Hard Drive in Outer Space (with Noble Savages in Awed Attendance).

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one with no love for this dreck.

Re: avatar

[almostnever]

Cameron said, in one of the innumerable specials attending its release, that this was something he came up with in his teens.

Figures. He's one of the most successful, bankable directors in the industry: he could get anything made. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Silver Phoenix, the phone book-- anything. So of course, why not make a gigantic movie based on some naive crud he came up with in high school? :P