Avatar: "I never thought I could be so aroused by someone with atail"

[archerships]

Saw it with Jason and Corinna at the Metreon. Astonishingly beautiful. Filmmakers haven't crossed the uncanny valley yet, they're very close. It was very easy to accept the Na'vi as real creatures, rather than CGI characters. The human technology also felt plausible. For example, the transport ship looked like two geodesic beach balls connected together, with a long rotating arm to provide gravity. The plot? Cliched and PC; as other reviews have suggested, it's Dances with Wolves in Space. However, despite the plot deficiencies, I was engrossed throughout, and would recommend it to others. ****gripes with mild spoilers****

It would've been a nice flip of expectations if corporate guy had turned out to be the hero. As it was, he and the military commander were 2-D baddies. Also, why were radio communications in the valley disrupted, but not the avatar/human connection? What about latency? And it seems likely that any technology sufficiently advanced to create the avatars could have also easily fixed Sully's spine. And it seems vanishingly unlikely that the DNA of the Na'vi and the humans could be combined in the first place (also why didn't the human DNA mess up Sully's ability to plug into the other forest creatures)?

Posted via email from crasch's posterous

Comments

[fau74.livejournal.com]

Looks like this is not a command link, but the "soul transfer", kind of the connected cans model: you have two shells compatible for the single "soul" identity, dumpen one to the maximum degree and thus have the "soul" to squeeze to other. The tree does the similar thing, btw.

And the Sally's spine was not a question of technology, but a question of money. He could'n afford that kind of medical intrusion.

[deftly.livejournal.com]

They did motion capture on the actors' faces, and then used computers to adjust their features to Na'vi proportions. The only uncanny valley moment I had was when Sigourney Weaver's avatar smiled.

[madkiwi.livejournal.com]

When they decided to get all the clans together why did they have to fly everywhere? If all the trees/planet is some kind of giant neural network why not just send an email?

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know they said that he couldn't get it because it cost too much. Which still bugs me because, given all the other tech in evidence, the cost of the procedure should've been small enough that even a grunt could afford it.

[blueadept.livejournal.com]

All of the tech in evidence was very expensive, especially the avatars.

I was annoyed by the "floating mountains" as I saw absolutely nothing that could actually hold them up.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Spinal cord injuries are almost repairable with today's technology. 150 years from now, it should be an easy and cheap repair.

I assumed that the mountains were held up by the unobtainium-derived forces, which appears to be the case. (1)

(1) http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Unobtainium

[azalynn.livejournal.com]

Clearly you haven't spent much time examining the way budgetary stuff tends to work in the real world, otherwise you wouldn't be remotely confused about this. Whenever you've got government agencies involved in particular (and I am counting military as government agency) you have a lot of "color of money" stuff going on. When I was an intern at NASA I remember at one point the department I was in badly needed new computer equipment. Only we weren't allowed to actually buy that equipment, because apparently there wasn't enough money pre-allocated for that. Instead, my boss there ended up buying a big box of picture frames, just for the sake of using up the money in a particular budget area so he would not "lose" the money the following year. Seriously, that was one of the biggest WTF moments of my life, and I actually gave "Avatar" props for what I think was actually likely to be a very accurate future prediction -- that is, yes, we will have plenty of Mega Advanced Medical Techniques available, but they won't be available to everyone, and the paperwork and such associated with getting them will continue to be a colossal pain in the arse. :P