Those of us who actually hated James Cameron's Avatar

... Yes, I said it.

I never have understood the hype around this film. I watched it with my family (we got the DVD last Christmas) and I hated every minute of it. I felt like Cameron simply copied/pasted from movies such as Pocahontas and Dances With Wolves and put a sci-fi twist on those premises. Not exactly an original film and nothing like his 1997 blockbuster Titanic, that's for sure!

I think the only reason people even liked it was for the 3D effects, which were probably nice in the theatre but I don't think they held up for normal home viewing.

I also got to thinking about this because, since I work for Disney, Disney's Animal Kingdom is breaking ground on a Pandora themed land in 2013 and there are many of us who are a bit baffled as to what blue aliens have to do with a theme park built around animals.

So please tell me I'm not alone in being terribly critical of this supposedly amazing film.

Well, you're right, that's exactly what he did. It was the typical "unbalanced white man is hired to subdue the natives, falls in love with their way of life (and the chief's daughter) and ends up fighting along beside them" story. Personally, I liked it better when it was called, The Last Samurai. That being said, the appeal was the effects. It was a gorgeous looking movie. I'll agree not worth the hype. But I certainly didn't hate it.

Eh. It wasn't a movie. It was a vision for the future.

Basically, everyone loved it because the effects were so stunning compared to everything else being released these days. However, I am of the mind that the film will be forgotten over time as it becomes easier to make alien worlds so beautiful.

Aha. Good to see this thread. Heh.

I and my entire family hate this movie. A LOT. It's cliched, though watching the effects might dull that enough to make it tolerable. You should see the TVTropes page for this movie. They had to divide the page into categories of tropes, there were so many.

But worst is the insinuations in the movie's heart, and a very cynical prediction of the future. Earth has been completely ruined by the humans, and now they're going out looking for other places to loot and take over. Anything associated with the humans also tends to have dull, desaturated colors (I work with Photoshop and a brother who renders and restores old movies, I can tell), and boring, traditional names. The Na'vi, on the other hand, are one with nature and very vivid, exotic, have little lights glowing in them, and tend to have long, odd names.

Jake himself is sort of a big metaphor for the entire movie, just in case the audience misses everything else. Crippled. Unwhole. Depressed. Uncaring. Then he gets a shiny new Na'vi, alien body and ta-daa, he's free from his crippled existence. He's become ideal. He is also no longer human.

Quaritch is also another Aesop in the movie. Harsh, vicious, obviously the very worst of humankind, and in the end he's so consumed by greed and hatred he brings about his own fall at the hands of purity.

It's also a very manipulative movie. The colors, the effects, the characters and plot... they're all out to make you hate the humans and root for the brave, lovely Na'vi. Colors can cause emotional reactions in people, usually without them being aware of it. And who wouldn't want such a dazzling alien beauty to win when being destroyed by dull, uncaring humans?

The end is the Aesop. Jake is taken out of his human body and becomes a Na'vi. Yep. That's the only way we can become free and good. By turning into something we aren't and losing our human-ness.

Good heavens, the movie is monumental in its horribleness. The effects are great. But they're tools for the purpose. It's a wretched, wretched movie.

My hat is off to each and every one of you who sat through it. I made it through 30 minutes and decided the minutes of my life had more important things to do.

Eh, I thought Avatar was a boring pile of cliché... although personally I found the most annoying part (strangely enough) was the nature on Pandora (though pretty), you know, cos it's supposed to be "like nothing on earth" except that everything is surprisingly just like earth only all the critters have six legs and ten eyes and there's floating islands. And also the weird thing with the braids... I mean if they basically have sex with each other by connecting their braids, why is it not sex when they do it with one of the huge horsies or the flying pterodactyl-thingies ... I dunno, maybe I'm just not enough of a sweet innocent mind for Avatar :D

Hm, interesting. I have never seen it (although with all the fuss I intend to), but as soon as I saw the plot I thought, "That's Dances with Wolves".

Then some members of my family saw it and said: Yep, It's "Dances with Wolves", except with aliens.

On the other hand, I liked "Dances with Wolves", so...who knows?

(BTW, I hated the ridiculously overdramatic "Titanic".)

For all that people complain about Hollywood execs and what they do to creativity, I don't believe I've ever seen a movie play it as straight and as safe as Avatar. It borders on being a parody of a Hollywood movie.

But then to make a movie this insanely expensive, Cameron had to play it safe, and he did it so well that he got the sequels he wanted. So I'm gonna wait and see if those turn out any more interesting.

That said, I didn't enjoy the movie. It was watchable enough, but it was just shameless in its wishful thinking and sentimentalism. Which in a way is refreshing, but in another way is offputting. I sure couldn't get into the Na'vi, who out-Elfed all the other Elves I couldn't get into.

The thing about Dances With Wolves is that the Sioux (and by extension the other Native Americans) really existed, and many of them did die and much of their culture was lost because of what other real (white) people did to them.

And yet even that movie, which was partly an apology for the way these people had been misrepresented and caricaturised, managed a more ambiguous, human portrayal of the guys we were meant to sympathise with than Avatar even attempted.

You just can't get me to feel sorry for the senseless destruction wrought upon some flawless blue space cats. I'm not going to feel bad about being human because some military and capitalist stereotypes cut down the Party Tree.

I actually hated the special effects. I think it was complete overkill. If I wanted to watch a movie that was digitally animated, I'd watch something like Toy Story 3, thanks.

Ambivalent about the film itself.

Hate, hate, HATE the fact that the film has decided it owns the word "avatar" now. How full of *censored* with a *censored* up your *censored* do you have to be to decide that you have sole copyright on a word that has so many connotations beyond blue space cat elves?

I love hindu mythology. I love Avatar the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra. I love Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner. Imagine my vitriol when I found out about that law suit threat, and determination to use those words and full names over and over to tweak that stupid decision on the nose.

haaaate it. almost had a heart attack when it looked like it was going to win Best Picture at the Oscars. I'm so glad it didn't happen.

I didn't hate it per se. Instead, I spent the entire running time of the movie laughing at it. Hilarious. Perhaps it would have been cooler and I may have gotten sucked in had I seen it on the big screen in 3D. Alas, we saw it on DVD and the 'ooh pretty!' effect was lost on us. Not to mention I could not possibly take any movie seriously in which the mythical element they're searching for is called 'Unobtainium.' Seriously? Unobtainium??? Not to mention the stupid dialogue and staggering predictability. We were calling every plot twist long before it happened and then lo and behold it occurs exactly as we predicted! Imagine that!?!

Thank god it didn't win best picture...

I had the misfortune of watching this movie with someone who actualky thought Avatar's message was... deep. Like, if only we embraced the earth more, everyone would be happy!

This was unfortunate because I couldn't make snarky comments through the entire thing. The plot was so predictable and the characters so wooden it hurt. Not even Shiny!Graphics could save it.

I personally was rooting for the military and their shiny mechs throughout the movie. I'm sorry but the human race > blue cat-people for me. Jake pretty much said, "Screw the billions of humans who need UNOBTANIUM to live, a hundred sexy cat women...I mean people, need me!" He didn't even try to fulfill his diplomatic mission to work out a compromise. At least the crazy!general didn't lose sight of the entire reason he was there.

I would only ever re-watch Avatar if I had the accompanying Rifftracks to soften the blow.

I was forced to sit through this slovenly pile of garbage during a party we had in one of my high school classes. Everyone stared at me, mouths agape, when I said I've never seen it before - turns out I was lucky and could have easily done without EVER seeing it. It was boring, cliche, and overrated. All the pretty special effects in the world can't disguise those qualities!

Swiftflame, you basically summed up this movie for me much more eloquently than I could. Each point you made had me going "Yes! YES! OMGYES!!!!!"

I saw it once, in theaters, in 3D, with a bunch of A-V nerds (the differences in color and lighting were not lost on us either). To be honest I'm really glad I saw it that way because I was able to have a wonderful visual experience and now I don't ever have to see it again. Ahhhhhh. :)

However...as a Fantasy Wrimo I did have an appreciation for Pandora and its creatures as an example of world building. The fantasy writers in the group (myself included) ended up spending post-movie dinner discussing the anatomical functionality of six legged mammals more than anything else in that movie. :P

The weirdest thing about the whole Avatar phenomenon for me was the amount of times I told people I hated the film only to be asked, "Ahh, but have you seen it in 3-D yet?"

How is wearing some dopey glasses going to fix a poorly plotted, badly acted and over-long pile of tripe like Avatar?

And to even be in the running for Best Film....ARRRRGGGGHHHH!

I hated all the hype it got. I was one of the people who was super not a fan of the movie. Then you had all those people who were GUSHING over how great it was.

Most of my problems with Avatar have been said already, but as a strategy/tactical aficionado I have to state that the way the soldiers were presented with their planning was stupid as well. It simply drives me up a wall to see the stupid mistakes that the humans were making.

That being said, the movie becomes infinitely better if you view it as a tragedy about a Marine who was seduced and eventually brainwashed into serving an eldritch, scheming planet-brain, and eventually turns upon his own people and attempts to murder his own species, at the end becoming another mindless minion of the horror from space. Heck, now that I put it into words it sounds like something Lovecraft would have written.

Ohhhh, my gosh, you're right. Jake Sully was not a Marine. There is no way on Earth that man could be anything like a marine. Any Marine who watched this movie would either die laughing or die of embarrassment at Jake being associated with Marines.

And you do not do a cavalry charge at a big line of soldiers with long-range weapons!!! What kind of strategy was that?! Or was that another ploy for garnering sympathy?!

Thank you all for reading what I said. I did my best to speak as well as I could.

Swifty, what did you think of Wall-e? That had exactly the same message as Avatar did.

I get what you're saying about the colours and whatnot changing our perception; you are completely right -- but that is true of every movie ever made. Everyting is biased and pretty much EVRYTHING we're given has some kind of message behind it. You don't have to like the message to enjoy the narrative.

And yes, the first thing I said after I walked out of the cinema was 'that was dances with wolves with blue people'. But again, you can look at most things and say 'well, that's completely like ....'. I think we have to stop jumping up and down about cliches and just enjoy the way the story is being told. Because really, everything is based on something else and 'there are no original ideas'.

That being said, I'm not saying that everyone has to like the movie and I'm not saying that anything anybody has said so far is invalid. I just think that if you're going to get too worried about cliches and not-so-subtle morals, you might find it more difficult to find things you enjoy reading/watching.

But yes, unobtanium? Good one...