I just saw 'Avatar' on the 6th of Feb. I immediately began to harp upon the weaknesses of the story, particularly the cliché elements of the romance plot and other parts of the plot. Between my friends and I, it was undoubtedly a very extensive, if unofficial, analysis and breakdown of the movie's weaknesses and strengths. That said, this is one of the best movies I've ever seen. I love it. No question about that. Are there weaknesses? Yes. Are they fairly obvious to a perceptive viewer? Definitely. But really, who gives a damn? To me, it was one of best motion pictures ever, or at least that I have seen. For numerous reasons, emotions, and feelings, it transcend plot holes and cliché storylines and simple dialogue. IT WORKED. I will admit that several parts of the narrative and story annoyed and frustrated me, but as I said, 'Avatar' rose beyond that.

How the actors and actresses were able to effectively portray emotions through the facial motion capture was particularly impressive to me.

Intelligent replies are welcome

Limitations breed creativity (e.g. less money on effects in the hands on someone skilled leads to a greater focus on story and character) and it seems to me that the film could have benefited from more of this on the screen. Most of the plot holes and fuzzy logic are addressed within the treatment; characterisation is better and is less dependant on plot convenience. It gets to the end result in a way that is logical and relates to the original theme. Even the deus ex machina ending is built up to. Possibly of most importance, the resolution as to why the Na’vi could ACTUALLY win a war against a technologically superior foe is logically arrived at in a true nature beating technology way.

The creator(s) had though these things through which meant that these points were important, and the fact that I was conscious of there being logic absences before having read this treatment does tend to suggest I do have some idea of what I’m talking about. For most folks this doesn’t bother them and that’s fine, but all I’m saying is that these things do matter. There are always niggles and bumps in logic or character, but they’re usually minimal.

Seriously READ the treatment, see where the character conflict is, how much better the stakes for both sides are defined, how early on the the shared consciousness is defined (and thereby EARNING the ending), the true pressure bearing down on Earth if they fail here. It’s all there. Even the oversights in technological weaknes are less important due to the way in which the Na’vi win in this draft. Like I said I don’t KNOW why Cameron took this out but I would suggest that it was because it costs nothing to show character and millions to show a mo-capped cat that a lot of the former lost out to the latter. Once you’ve spent the money the scenes that get deleted will be the ones that cost less. Maybe there will be an extended edition with this material put back in, and we’ll be able to compare.

You are right that I have gone on about the technology but it was mainly a way of trying to express the symptoms of the problems here, something that would be easier to relate to that a discussion of structure, character and plot. In hindsight I may have done that differently. For your curiosity I will say that I am a writer though I don’t work in the field of film… I’ve enjoyed a lot of films which have been all style and no substance or “event” films, I’m not against it because its popular or made a lot of money, to a great degree that is the business of movies. But there is a strong “Emperor’s New Clothes” feeling that comes with movies that get overhyped that to question the majority view is scandalous. I’m not saying that is the case with any of the opinions here, but all sides of an argument should be aired. To suggest that someone who has written or directed a film is incapable of being criticised by someone who hasn’t is also not healthy. If you look the reviews from a lot of the media, the film is rarely praised for (and often attacked because of) its writing, so really my criticisms aren’t unique, even if they aren’t the majority view. A lot of reviews also disagree with the perceived originality of the effects and that there is little new here but there is MORE of everything. More doesn’t mean better.

Joystick control is one thing for piloting an aircraft, but when aiming a weapon in the middle of a battlefield full of other people it is a pretty dumb and reckless idea. Unless you’re a tank gunner and can aim at large targets before you fire, but even then, you don’t fire into an area with a lot of friendlies that are too close, the point of being able to control the mech suit with your own movements is to be extremely precise with your movements.

Why do you think on the Apache gunships, the gun is controlled by the movement of the gunner’s head and not a joystick? So it can’t cover full 360 but within line of sight he can fire off shots with pinpoint accuracy within a split second of spotting a target because he simply has to look at it instead of tilting a joystick and hoping the “sensitivity level” is high enough to sweep to the target in time but low enough to aim precisely… Not to mention having to compensate for the movement of the vehicle itself, but that’s something we can do quickly and precisely with our hands, head, or whatever other part of our body that we have full motor control over.

Here, how about we “dual” and I get to aim a gun with my hands, you have to use a joystick, let’s see who will be faster and more precise, lol.

And I already acknowledged that they didn’t negotiate and why they didn’t really try, so that’s pretty pointless to repeat. But I’m not even trying to “convince” you about anything with the movie anymore, you don’t like it, that’s fine, I just wanted to make fun of the whole joystick idea… Why not just give them a Xbox controller? lol

Freakin joysticks…

The fact that NO other reason other than its value is mentioned is the point I’m getting at. It’s all part of writing a very bad screenplay to basicially present everything as one dimensionally as possible.

As for the aircraft you’ve missed my point. I didn’t say that the aircraft were designed for sapce they’re designed for war and a civilisation that is capable of building materials to survive inerstellar travel that are too stupid to have put toughened glass into a milatary aircraft is another example of plot convenience over logic.

You’ve also misunderstood the point about the mech suits, and in fact you make some of my own point for me. The fact that the operators are inside HOLDING BOTH HANDS IN A POSITION TO HAVE TO MIRROR THE GUN THE ROBOT is holding is completely stupid. You make the point about being able to pilot it while using a shoulder mounted gun, surely this is worse? With a joystick you could have 360 degree cover in seconds, by holding a gun you basically have to turn round and only ever cover one angle at a time as oppposed to multiple. Again the desire here was to deliberately create a weakness the blatantly overpowered Na’vi could exploit.

And they DIDN’T negotiate. It was stated that was there intent and then they never did it. I was paying attention but the characters weren’t. The general sent him in to find all the weak spots which is why they know where to hit on Home Tree because he told them about the internal strucure of it. He never explained their intent, or had a dialogue of any sort in an attempt to get the Unobtanium through less drastic means. Which is again plot convenience at the expense of logic.

And I found this http://chud.com/articles/articles/21969/1/PROJECT-880-THE-AVATAR-THAT-ALMOST-WAS/Page1.html which is about the original outline for Avatar and as far as beleivability, plot logic and characterisation plugs a lot of the gaps I have said are absent. The stupid tech side of things is only the symptoms of the wider problem which it would appear James Cameron at least at one point realised himself. A shame he didn’t go for this version of things, I know I would have enjoyed it more and would have had more positive feedback on its writing and not just the effects. It even does an alternative version of the deus ex machina moment that is set up from the start and seems less of a convenient plot moment later on.

They didn’t say what the material was used for. It’s WORTH a lot of money, doesn’t mean it’s just there for money alone. There’s something called supply and demand, if a material is useful for SOMETHING, regardless of what that is, there will be a company that will try to provide it, even if their motive is simply to make the profit from it and not to actually reap the benefits of the product itself.

Also, not all of the aircraft are capable of space travel. OBVIOUSLY the ones driven by propellars are not… Hello, vacuum of space…

The big shuttle is the only one I actually seen travel through space, and I don’t remember seeing the glass break on that one. Unless I just don’t remember that detail…

And about gravity making projectiles less effective… When was the last time you took a physics course man? A forward moving projectile will fall at the same speed as an object dropped from the same level. The only exception is if the projectile is arched, but I didn’t see any time where they relied on that factor for their weapons to be more effective. They always shot their arrows and threw their spears directly at their targets. And even when arched, (of course eliminating the air resistance factor) an object thrown up when it falls back down, by the laws of physics when it falls back down to the same level as it was thrown, it should be at the same velocity as when it was thrown. Obviously air resistance would slow that down somewhat, but that rule is the same for all levels of gravity. Less gravity just means it will take longer for the object to reach the crest of its arch.

And what shoulder mounted weapons are you speaking of? I assume since you mention the mech suits at the end of that paragraph that you’re talking about the rifles those mech suits used. They are not really “mounted” on anything, they are actually free weapons being held in the arms like a real person holding a regular rifle, just in much larger scale.

Unless I was sleeping during the movie, those mech suits were operated by just one operator right? He had to “drive” them right? So how is he supposed to be able to drive the suit AND be able to control a 360 degree rotating turret? I know in video games it’s all done by one person, but you realize that in a real tank there are a minimum of 3 people in them and in US tanks there are 4 since ours don’t use autoloaders right?? The driver all he does is drives, because it’ll take a whole hell of a lot of attention to drive AND control a turret, that’s why it takes a whole other position, called a gunner, to control just the turret. Then it takes a whole other person just to load that gun, called the, you guessed it, the loader. Then there’s the commander that, well, commands.

Obviously the suit’s intuitive controls give the drivers of them the ability to use a weapon which is already an improvement over our current system where a driver’s attention is fully captured by the act of driving by itself. And for your last question, yes, they are so they can run through a forest. I assume the lack of wheeled vehicles going through the forest is because the terrain would be too hard for smaller wheeled vehicles to brave the terrain.

And about not negotiating… I don’t know, I’m starting to think you weren’t paying much attention to the movie. That’s what the scientists and the corporation wanted them to do. Remember his conversation with Quaritch? He gave Sully the option to ignore those orders and for him to try to infiltrate them to gather intelligence about their defenses and about their “home tree.” And that’s what he was doing at first. Then he simply got lost in their world and was simply “living” with them. He said that being with the Na’vi was the real world and him waking up to his real body became the dream. So he obviously didn’t have any of the whole company negotiations or whatever in mind at all. He said it in one of his video journals that Quaritch played back that he simply felt that there’s nothing they would want that they would be able to negotiate with. So he simply didn’t bother.

Anyway, while I agree that the movie is definitely not the best movie of the year or anything, but those points are not really what held this movie back. For me, I felt the details were tended to in traditional James Cameron fashion, what kept this movie from being as awesome as it could have been was the kind of cheesy Ferngully/Dances With Wolves story and the political messages that kept popping up. But I do agree with part of one of your points, the antagonists were too one-dimensional. But in their defense, they didn’t make Quaritch evil to the point that he wanted to simply eliminate the Na’vi. In the first offensive he tried to get them to leave before he brought down the tree. Even in the last fight, he wanted to destroy one of their sacred places as a way of scaring them off. The intention was never to simply kill them. Now I’m not saying that’s it’s “ok” to drive a people away from their home to destroy said home or whatever, just saying that Cameron could have easily made Quaritch want to fly in there and just start blowing them up forcing them to fight.

While I’m kind of glad he didn’t go that route, I still think he didn’t do enough to make the mercenary force seem more human. I would have expected more dissenters than just Michelle Rodriguez’s character… Even if not fighting against them, maybe some who simply refuse to carry out their acts…