Hot Toys Avatar is official (Movie spoilers)
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greygoose
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HottoyzJoker
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15 bucks where do you live? here 8 for normal... 10 for 3D... and 12for 3D Imax tickets... Blame the prices on you home town not Avatar...
greygoose
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UK prices for 3D are $16 (£10) plus around me. Rising up to about $19 for IMAX 3D.
olbertfrog
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Avatar ate my lunch and stole my purse.
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80% of all action movies this year are in 3D. Which means, I have to pay to watch converted crap. I'll only pick SELECT 3D movies. Which is like 2.
IMAX has always been stupidly expensive. Where I live, 3D IMAX and regular IMAX are the same price too.
And cinema tickets are expensive regardless, from paying $11 to $13-14, whatever. Just more incentive to avoid cruddy looking movies like Thor and Green Lantern which just slap on converted 3D for a quick buck. I choose to vote with my dollar.
As for the Dances With Wolves thing...uhhh yeah, I recently rewatched it (blu-ray came out not too long ago), and beyond the going native trope (which dww hardly invented), both movies are their own beast, and differ in some pretty fundamental ways. Wouldn't be surprised if most people who whine about the DWW connection...have never even watched that movie.
And cinema tickets are expensive regardless, from paying $11 to $13-14, whatever. Just more incentive to avoid cruddy looking movies like Thor and Green Lantern which just slap on converted 3D for a quick buck. I choose to vote with my dollar.
As for the Dances With Wolves thing...uhhh yeah, I recently rewatched it (blu-ray came out not too long ago), and beyond the going native trope (which dww hardly invented), both movies are their own beast, and differ in some pretty fundamental ways. Wouldn't be surprised if most people who whine about the DWW connection...have never even watched that movie.
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God damn where these figures at? This summer is gonna be all Marvel (nothing wrong with that) but this was announced in 09 and 10!
ExMem-LarjaThwei
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All Marvel? Isn't the only Marvel movie coming out this summer the X-Men Prequel?
Nvm.. Forgot about Thor and Captain America...
Nvm.. Forgot about Thor and Captain America...
Marcus Wright
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All Marvel? Isn't the only Marvel movie coming out this summer the X-Men Prequel?
Nvm.. Forgot about Thor and Captain America...
And Green Lantern.
ExMem-LarjaThwei
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Ooooo, Green Lantern....
Not sure if that last part was directed at me, but just in case, yeah, I've seen both films several times and the similarities were rather striking. I'm not saying it's an exact port over, but again, the over-all themes were familiar. When you have James Cameron confirming it as well, that pretty much puts it in perspective. Wouldn't be surprised if most people who don't see the connection... have never even watched that move...
Hes never directly said it. Some interviewer just named it off and he responded with a "yeah like that" IIRCNot sure if that last part was directed at me, but just in case, yeah, I've seen both films several times and the similarities were rather striking. I'm not saying it's an exact port over, but again, the over-all themes were familiar. When you have James Cameron confirming it as well, that pretty much puts it in perspective. Wouldn't be surprised if most people who don't see the connection... have never even watched that move...
In truth, the reality is much simpler. Avatars over-arching plot is pretty much the single biggest geek fantasy ever put to film. Boy travels to alien world, gets the girl, and becomes their leader. Cameron was a self professed geek growing up, and Avatar is essentially one of the quintessential geek fantasies at its core. Throw in heavy E. R. Burroughs influence, aka one of the actual major influences that Cameron himself acknowledged as far back as 2007, and you have your main plot.
Though one part of the film that I would agree is a direct influence from DWW is the Sturmbeast hunt, and that wasn't even in the theatrical cut lol. But if you go back to the 1994 scriptment, you can see the full genesis of the movie. Clear parallels to vietnam, much harsher anti-military sentiment, a less "ideal" and "mythical" arc and more hardcore tech and science (though the final film is still completely pro-science). Aka, its clearly a pure Cameron creation. Unfortunately due to the scope, a lot of things had to be trimmed, skimmed, and outright thrown away (or saved for the sequels), and then when it came to the theatrical feature, it suffered even more due to having to be molded to a 160 minute runtime for theatrical exhibition, despite the movie clearly having enough content to sustain a 200 minute runtime (Camerons original cut was 4 hours and a half).
Btw, once you watch scenes like the Dreamhunt (aka the Acid trip on the extended blu-ray), then you start to realize that there is a pretty serious hallucinogenic drug experience vibe that is informing not only that scene, but the entire film as well. That scene was probably the most unfortunate cut, since I think seeing a full on explicit hallucinogenic trip that goes on for about 5 minutes straight in such a mainstream film would have rattled quite a few people.
tl;dr, saying that Avatar is simply DWW is as facile as saying that Inception is simply Chris Nolan aping an Uncle Scrooge comic.
At the end of the day, what I can say is that when I watched Avatar, I wasn't thinking of DWW, I was thinking how it was a classic Jungle adventure in the Burroughs style brought to life in a way unlike any other before, I was thinking of how refreshing it was to see a movie that wasn't bending over backwards to put the military in a positive light and how it was placing science as THE voice of reason, and I was inspired by how the film could convey emotion through visuals alone, something very very few movies can do anymore. But I guess some people were sitting there thinking of DWW, a movie that nobody had even cared about or talked about for over 14 years, not even when The Last Samurai had come out.
I'm not sure why you appear to be taking this personal, but it was simply an observation on my part.
I enjoyed the film for what it was. The reference to "Dances With Wolves" was a legitimate one and actually not meant as derogatory. If you wish to dismiss the similarities and Cameron's acknowledgement of it's influence, I honestly couldn't care less. I'm fairly certain that he wouldn't wish to admit more than what he did admit to. I'm not here to argue the artistic merits of this film in this thread. It was groundbreaking in it's visuals and was enjoyable and moving experience, but as for the story, I personally didn't see it as a life-changing experience, as some people perhaps do.
All that I'm interested in at the moment is that Hot Toys eventually releases figures from this film so that I can add them to my collection.
P.S. Personally, I found the anti-military theme as contrived and rather unoriginal. Still, I enjoyed the film enough to want to have collectible figures from it.
Good post, with lots of passion. I like that.
But surly you can see how the actual story line is similar to Dances With Wolves.
A military man taught to view natives as savages comes to relate to said "savages", ultimately becoming one of them. Meanwhile the "civilized" people come in to take the natives resources. In DWW it was the buffalo. In Avatar it was the mineral. Both movies present the military in a negative light.
I agree with FlyAndFight that this is not really a criticism. I loved DWW, and I think the story bears repeating. But the story of Avatar is not new.
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And nothing in that movie was original enough to keep me guessing. I still like it, but I knew everything that was going to happen from the first 10 minutes. It was just a little too straight forward.
lol, I didn't mean to make it seem personal, I guess I can come off as too assertive some times. I can't really help it though, Cameron is my favorite director and I love everything that he has done
Btw, I keep almost hitting my monitor to swipe away that damn fly in your sig btw. It happened last night, and I almost just did it again
The problem with that is that its not just some trope of fiction. Its our history. It was once gold, land, etc. You can't trademark reality. Hell, even to this day people in the world are displaced from their lands by mining operations. But aside from that, DWW was about a man who knew the inevitable, and it was reflection on what this country lost on the bullet train that was western expansion. Avatar on the other hand was about a man who took part in a revolution to prevent humanity from doing to another world what it did to itself. Avatar isn't about the inevitable. Its pure science fiction and fantasy, showing how humanities irresponsibility with what it already had, led it to commit the same sins against a world it had no right to and how they were rightfully rejected from that world. Its a pretty clear distinction between Historical fiction and Sci-Fi/Fantasy that I kinda find hard to ignore...
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