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The Science of Avatar
Jamie noted a bit on
The Science of Avatar running on Ain't it Cool, written by a professor of astrophysics who has worked on searching for planets and SETI. I believe I might be the last person on earth who hasn't seen it; here's hoping I can find 3 free hours over the holidays.
I haven't seen it because all of my friends have torrented the damn movie, some even watched horrible cam rips with a foreign language and no subs.
Nobody wants to go to the cinema any more.
Fuck you, torrents.
I haven't seen it, and I'm not planning on it. You can't just take Dances with Smurfs and call it something else! That's not kewwwwwwwwww'!
anyone who is excited for this movie is an idiot.
Translation: I'm poor and lonely and will be sitting by myself on /. all Christmas, so I'm going to make overly-generalized statements regarding the intelligence of anyone happier than me!
Seconded -- it actually almost makes me physically ill to think of the fact that Avatar will probably make close to (if not more than) a billion dollars while thousands of brilliant, thoughtful films wallow in obscurity. We are no longer a nation that takes pride in greatness -- we reward mediocrity and shun anything that might challenge our preconceived notions. Our entire nation is roughly at the emotional development level of an 11 year old -- just turn on the television, radio, or walk into your local multiplex if you don't believe me.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I have never seen this movie, heard nothing but good things about it, and it has a gigantic budget, so therefore it's terrible and I will never see it. Yet somehow I think I can write an opinion about it.
If Cameron knew it was a silly premise, why not change the premise? Why not create something intelligent that challenges viewers? This will certainly be hugely popular either way, right? Why this notion that for something to be entertaining it has to be devoid of any thinking? It is this mentality that is quickly turning America into a nation of drooling retards. Skip this garbage and go pick up a copy of Blade Runner or 2001 if you want to see what sci fi really can be.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
"I didn't watch it and I don't like the idea of it, so anyone who does like it is obviously a moron and is a sign of things to come for our society. Why can't people be intelligent like me and like some obscure movie by some obscure director???"
BooHoo, get off your high horse. The movie is visual excellence, nothing compares to it in that department.
It depends on what you value. If you value effects most, sure, it's wonderful. If, on the other hand, you care more about plot, acting, and script, you might think it was a very pedestrian movie.
I personally enjoyed it while I was there, mainly because of the graphics, but after I left, I started thinking more and more about how lousy it really was.
Avatar Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying About The Plot And Love Technology
In case you're one of the few people left who haven't bought into the Avatar hype yet, I thought I'd provide my take on the movie. I saw it last night, so it is fresh in my mind, yet I've had some time to think about it. You've probably only heard great things about it ("Sensational entertainment....Technical breakthrough" (Ebert), "Four Stars!" (probably someone), "83" (metacritic), "OMG AVATAR IS AMAZING" (Facebook)), so perhaps I can provide a different angle.
Dances With The Last Of The Pocahontas...er, I mean, Avatar...is a classic story (and I do mean classic, since it has been told several times already) about an evil, capitalist, colonizing race which will put profit over the lives of an indigenous people who like to run around without any clothes. The evil corporation has a token scientific branch filled with environmentalists who only have peace in mind (because they need to interact with aliens, Sigourney Weaver is cast for the lead alien-interaction-biologist role). They have raised Indian (whoops, that's Na'vi) bodies which are capable of being mind controlled by humans (but only humans who have a genetic "congruency" with the Na'vi body, which was presumably created through procreation with a Na'vi).
John "Jake Sully" Smith is a former marine who lost use of his legs beating up on some Venezualans (because beating up on Venezuala is undeniably American), and he happens to have a twin brother who happened to die before he was to take control of his avatar. Smith is recruited to control the avatar, and immediately runs off into the woods, gets chased by a few large CGI animals, and encounters Pocahontas, the daughter of the local Na'vi tribe's chief. Pocahontas convinces Mr. Chief to spare Smith, after which she teaches him how to appreciate nature, trains him to become a great Na'vi warrior, and they forget the words to "Colors of the Wind." Smith learns that all nature's spirits are intertwined (literally, because the audience is stupid to understand a purely figurative spiritual intertwinement).
Back at the base (which we'll call Pandora's Box), Governor Ratcliff, who manages the outpost, and General Custer, a crazed, macho military braggard, point out that the most valuable mineral known to man, Unobtainium (there must be some deep symbolic reasoning behind this choice of a McGuffin!), is, by pure coincidence, located directly under the Na'vi home, which happens to be a giant tree. They decide that diplomacy has failed, they destroy the tree, and a large battle involving spaceships and dragons ensues (Smith manages to tame a slightly better dragon by simply flying above it, which the Na'vi, who had been in tune with nature for generations, apparently never even considered).
The battle takes up the last third or so of the movie, in with the dragons fight spaceships amidst some giant floating rocks, for which James Cameron doesn't even attempt to come up with a tenuous pseudoscientific explanation (lazy writing at its finest). The biggest travesty here is that nobody attempts to ram one of the floating mountains into an enemy dragon/warship, indicating that the mountains float for no other reason than the animators thought it would be cool.
In short, this is a movie with brilliant graphics and sheer laziness in every other respect. The story is lame, the script is terrible, and the audience is constantly insulted with lame political messages about how environmentalists are better than murderous capitalists. It is worth seeing, if only for the interesting world they created, but it is ultimately wasted effort, and will most likely be forgotten soon after its theater run is finished.
5/10
the creatures have eyes. That seems like a pretty odd thing to develop on a different planet.
Not really. The eye has actually evolved independently more than once on this planet. Given the evolutionary advantage, it would be surprising if eyes did not evolve on other planets.
And separately, what would be believable is that if eyes develop, most large creatures would have the same number
Large animals on earth have differing numbers of nipples, in an alternate evolutionary history, why not eyes?
Even if something so utterly like us could develop somewhere else (which itself seems incredibly unlikely, given the infinitude of possibilities), why would it be the dominant life form?
I didn't see anything in the movie that suggested the navi were dominant.
Maybe you should repeat to yourself "it's just a movie, I should really just relax". Go see it in IMAX. When you're that visually stimulated, you won't really care about the nitpicks. And if you do, there's plenty of opportunity for MST3K style riffing. If you don't see it in IMAX, it's probably not worth seeing at all though.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Like I said, we have not seen enough other planets to say whether it's rare or not. Hell, nine out of uncountable billions, does not mean we can say with any probability of accuracy that life is rare. Even if we limit life to carbon/oxygen based organisms, we cannot.
It's not a science fiction fantasy to think life exists on other planets, in other forms other than our own. It IS out own arrogance that lets us think that we are so "special" as to be the only thing in the universe that matters or counts as life. Our own state is the only state that can be considered life. That kind of thinking will get us into trouble when/if we get out there.
--- Keep the choice with the user..