James Cameron's "Avatar"

[synrgy]

Looks just fine on my 42" LCD at 1080p

There's just something about the blue-ray on a large HD screen that throws me off. It's *too* pristine. Because the shots without humans are basically 100% digital, that's exactly what it looks like; 100% digital. The DVD looked totally normal to me, but the blue-ray is just too damn clean for it's own good. The first time I walked into a Best Buy and saw the film on display, I honestly thought it had to have been the video game. When I realized it wasn't, I was definitely left .

IMHO, of course.

 

[pink freud]

Not only that, isn't he making a trilogy since it did well? Hard to say what's going to happen with those. Might be bigger than Star Wars in 30 years (and this is coming from a Star Wars nerd).

Hard to say. Star Wars is bigger than the average person really knows, because of the novels and such. I'm a passive SW fan, and I know that there is a lot of cannon (or fannon, if the extended universe is counted as such) that I don't know about. Avatar has the same potential for universe expansion, but I doubt it will happen to the extent that SW did. It's kind of like how there won't be another Beatles. SW set the paradigm, and everything after it is less successful.

 

[Ben.Last]

thanks for reading my post carefully. We are not talking about the same thing.

I don't know if you intended that to be sarcastic. I read your post carefully. You're boiling the idea of a film being a phenomenon a la SW down to a lot of people going to see it ("in droves"). Not only did I address why I don't think that that's all there is to it, I also addressed why, from that standard, you'd have to possibly consider Titanic a phenomenon of the same level of SW or more. I also addressed why the idea of his statement being objectively wrong is incorrect.

(edit: and this is the last thing I'm going to post about it as it's fairly off topic and I don't want to derail things into bickering about semantics)

 

[Marv Attaxx]

There's just something about the blue-ray on a large HD screen that throws me off. It's *too* pristine. Because the shots without humans are basically 100% digital, that's exactly what it looks like; 100% digital. The DVD looked totally normal to me, but the blue-ray is just too damn clean for it's own good. The first time I walked into a Best Buy and saw the film on display, I honestly thought it had to have been the video game. When I realized it wasn't, I was definitely left .

IMHO, of course.

For me it was the exact opposite
Watched it on DVD and thought that everything looked just...unreal
On the other hand the Blu-ray-Version looks great and much more inartificial imho. On my 37" 1080-TV the movie looks as good as the cinema-version (Wasn't the 3D HD version delivered on Blu-Ray Disks? Or harddrives?)

 

[sakeido]

I don't know if you intended that to be sarcastic. I read your post carefully. You're boiling the idea of a film being a phenomenon a la SW down to a lot of people going to see it ("in droves"). Not only did I address why I don't think that that's all there is to it, I also addressed why, from that standard, you'd have to possibly consider Titanic a phenomenon of the same level of SW or more. I also addressed why the idea of his statement being objectively wrong is incorrect.

(edit: and this is the last thing I'm going to post about it as it's fairly off topic and I don't want to derail things into bickering about semantics)

No, its not off topic.

For something to be a cultural phenomenon, it needs to get a big audience; Star Wars did, so did Avatar. He was talking past tense, as if Avatar was never a big deal - and he was objectively wrong on that point. It was a huge success, much the same way Star Wars was. Whether you like it or not, the two have had roughly the same amount of initial success.

For it to go further, which is what you are talking about, people need to pick it up and run with it; obviously this happened with SW, and there are early indications of a very dedicated Avatar fandom springing up. The potential is certainly there. You've got all the right ingredients.. Trying to project where Avatar is going to end up right now is a fool's errand.

 

[Explorer]

The more easily something is emulated, the more the nerds/geeks will embrace it.

So, if one talks about "the Force," it's going to be hard to say, dude, you're fooling yourself. It takes a while for someone for master the Force in the movies, so it's easy to pretend.

If someone is talking about how we might be living in the Matrix, it's easy to say, dude, show me how you can alter the laws of physics like in the movie. Fail!

Star Trek? Normal people in costumes, for the most part.

Avatar? No real-world examples of some world hippie spirit working in an obvious way, and definitely no wildlife resembling that of the movie, so there's no way for someone to really geek out on the movie in a big way.

And, to be even colder but honest, you need to be in shape to even attempt to slather yourself in blue like the Avatar folks, while you only a robe at minimum for Star Wars. *laugh*

I always feel kind of bad for the folks who go to the anime conventions around here, dressing up like someone who can do amazing things in the cartoons, and yet never being able to actually do them. I remember bildering and working on balance-walking when I was younger, and loved free climbing until I almost fell some ridiculous distance and decided that the rush wasn't worth death. *laugh* I'm kind of surprised that parkour hasn't really taken off in a huge way, because it alway seemed like the next skateboard-type activity to me, cheap and requiring only practice and the will to do it....