[QUOTE="Tigerman950"]
Forgive me if this has been said before...
I've seen the two trailers for this movie and simply haven't been blown away as everyone seems to have been. The trailers (specifically the new one, which I saw the other day attached to '2012') just don't make my hair stand up as do other films as big and hyped as this one, and I've spent some time wondering why. I've come to suspect that perhaps James Cameron's Avatar is a massive rip-offs of several movies of a similar genre that have come out in the past.
You know what I mean--the giant human-controlled robots, the warring tribes, the human-like creatures, the "THIS IS OUR LAND!!!"--you get the idea. It all seems totally cliched and it feels like I've seen all of this in many classic films before, such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Star Trek....the list seems to go on.
I realize that James Cameron is trying to make something big and his latest film means a lot to him if he waited so long to make it, but I don't see what the big deal is. I realize that a lot of people seem to be bashing on this film and its trailers, and maybe it is because it seems like a rip-off (forgive me for living under a rock). Please share your thoughts on whether you think I'm right or not.
MrGeezer
First off, let me just say this about Cameron. He sort of annoys me. Out of all of his movies (except Titanic which I never saw, and Piranha 2, in which he was supposedly sort of a director "in name only"), The only ones I've really liked were Aliens and The Terminator. The Terminator was released in 1884, Aliens in 1986. Outside of those movies, I really haven't enjoyed any of his movies that I saw.
Anyway, a lot of people are anticipating Avatar for one reason alone. It is James Cameron's return to movies, and it's his return to science fiction.Ask these people, and they'll say that Cameron ALWAYS delivers on story and charcters.
And in that sense, I'll actually sort of agree. As much as I loathe Terminator 2, at least it tried to make the characters the focus of the movie. Same with The Abyss. And as stupid as True Lies was, it was actually very well-made. In fact, even though that's probably the dumbest James Cameron movie I've ever seen, I actually liked it more than T2 and The Abyss, sense the way it was presented was more true to what the movie actually was. It was a VERY well-made dumb 80's style action movie that was sort of fun. It succeeded on those terms, and it didn't aspire to much more than that.
But anyway, the thing about Cameron is that he IS an extremely skilled and talented filmmaker. He DOES focus on characters, he knows how to make an effective story and present it well, and his Titanic is tied for the most academy awards ever won by any movie in history. He's good. He's damn good. And now he's back. People are going to get excited based on that alone.
But one thing that always sort of irked me about him is his "bigger is better" attitude, which was actually apparent as far back as Aliens. That's sort of a Michael Bay type attitude. Furthermore, his whole sort of obsession with his new revolutionary 3D technology, just sort of reminds me of Robert Zemeckis' weird fixation on his motion capture BS. That, plus Cameron's HUGE movie budgets, just makes me really skeptical about any new project he has coming out. I have sort of a big apprehension to unnecessarily bloated budgets (District 9 was cool, showing just what was possible with a meager budget), and I always get more worried when people are talking more about tech or special effects than on an actual STORY. It's seems like far more people are hyping up Avatar's truly revolutionary 3D, rather than talking about the actual STORY.
Bottom line is that I have little interest in Avatar. Sure I have SOME interest, since this is James Cameron, and I wouldn't take objection to someone calling him a "genius". That being said though, I haven't enjoyed one of his movies since 1986. And people seem to be talking way too much about the technology behind this movie, vs it actually being GOOD. After full reviews start coming in and people start saying that Avatar IS a masterpiece, then perhaps then my interest will increase substantially. But then again, people loved the hell out of Terminator 2, and that movie pisses me off to no end.
Damn, I'm getting old... Those Terminator movies are ancient.
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