James Cameron's AVATAR

I wasn't blown away by the trailer, but it's most certainly something I'm looking forward to regardless.
 
Really the problem here is that Avatar currently looks like a videogame, not because the CG is bad but because the character designs carry connotations of elves, furries and night elves from World of Warcraft. This is fantasy stuff, the kind that uses neon blue and pink as shorthand for magicalness. I mean, when you watch The Abyss they use the same bright colours, but it works because the aliens are these weird-ass manta rays based on real deep-sea life .
 
By dodgy I mean that some of the CG, specifically the mechs and wildlife, lack believable textures. They look a lot less convincing than the rest of the CG.
 
Someone from SA just came back from the 15 minute preview, and pretty much confirmed what I said: This isn't about the CGI. This is about the 3D technology being used in the movie. Hell thats what its always been about.

Alright I saw the 15 minute preview and still remain underwhelmed with the actual film. And I say that as someone who was as hyped up as anyone for this movie, and have been for months upon months. The 3D is amazing and indeed game-changing, and will be worth the price of admission. I'm pretty sure my mouth was agape in at least half the scenes. There's never been a movie made that is anywhere in Avatar's league. Do I think this is the future of entertainment cinema and will live up to the billing from a technical standpoint? Without a doubt. It's so much more immersive than a 2D film, and is not at all gimmicky. Directors will jump at this technology.

The movie itself, though, is not drawing me in. I will say that the characters look significantly less cartoony on the big screen (I was EXTREMELY put off by them in the trailer), although they're so close to human in so many respects (toenails, really?) that I'm a bit disappointed by the dismal attempt at thinking-outside-the-box here. Too safe. And it's not like Cameron isn't capable of designing creatures that look alien (The Abyss) or coming up with a simple yet amazingly executed idea (T-1000). The story line, or what little of what was gleaned, is standing out as hokey. For instance, (not that spoilery) asked why she [the main female character] just pretty much risked her life to save the newly formed Jake avatar, her response was that she could see he had a 'big heart.' I think she also said something about recognizing his courage. If I wasn't in a theater with 400 other people I would've groaned really loudly. The dialogue is a step-down from a Disney movie. I also get the feeling of effects masturbation, that there are going to be a shitload of scenes that exist solely for us to marvel at. From a visual effect standpoint, it's going to be great. From a film standpoint, a little less than ideal. That being said, there was a childhood sense of wonderment rising up in me. If any of you read the Dinotopia books as a kid, and just marveled at the drawings where turning each page was like entering a new world, it was that type of experience.
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Adrik_Senturu said:
Someone from SA just came back from the 15 minute preview, and pretty much confirmed what I said: This isn't about the CGI. This is about the 3D technology being used in the movie. Hell thats what its always been about.
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I'm not doubting the 3D at all. I have never seen a 3D movie, so I'm actually looking forward to that aspect. Based on the fact that Cameron referred to the CG as "photo-realistic", I would expect that to be the case with or without the 3D. Remember, this movie will be not just be viewed in the theater, but at home too when it get released. Terminator 2 and Aliens are great movies out of the theater, shouldn't this one be as well?

From here:

"Avatar is the single most complex piece of film-making ever made," said Cameron. "We have 1,600 shots for a 2.5 hour movie. It's not with a single CGI character, like King Kong or Gollum. We have hundreds of photo-realistic CG characters."
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He also does mention that it looks better in 3D. Will it be possible on an HDTV though?
 
Well the trailer did look better on my TV but I just cant imagine there being a way to replicate the theater experience if the 3D is what really makes the film.
 
Adrik_Senturu said:
Well the trailer did look better on my TV but I just cant imagine there being a way to replicate the theater experience if the 3D is what really makes the film.
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I think that's what the issue is here as far as the CG goes. Cameron claims that it is photo-realistic regardless if it's in 3D or not. Some of it certainly looks that way, and some of it needs work. There is a very large number of people right now that are criticizing the CG, and it's not just confined to these boards. This movie's hype is riding heavily on it's special effects. I'm just hoping that the final product delivers on the promises, because James Cameron has not let me down yet, and I don't want it to happen with a movie that's been so long in the making.
 
Thats what bugs me out I guess. Not the complaining about the CGI, but the fact that people are saying "WELP DOESNT LIVE UP TO THE HYPE" when the CGI was never hyped up to the amount that the 3D technology was. I can agree perfectly with some of the complaints regarding some of the CGI because even on my TV some of it still looks wonky as hell, but when people start saying "SO MUCH HYPE" its just a "wait what no its the 3D thats being hyped" kind of thing for me. I've been following it forever now though, so I should've expected it I guess.
 
Adrik_Senturu said:
Thats what bugs me out I guess. Not the complaining about the CGI, but the fact that people are saying "WELP DOESNT LIVE UP TO THE HYPE" when the CGI was never hyped up to the amount that the 3D technology was.
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I really knew nothing about Avatar, except that it was being made by James Cameron and it was going to feature advanced 3D/CGI. Cameron has made some of my favorite movies of all time, so I watched the trailer with this kind of expectation. So when I saw it, I was kinda thrown off, since I didn't realize that there were gonna be big blue cat people running around. It just seems weird. So even if the CGI for all the mechs and what not had been photo realistic, Id still be a little miffed about the actual story (which seems to be summed up as Ferngully/Dances With Wolves/Furries in space... ). That being said, Im still gonna see it opening day :D
 
how the **** would you have the aliens looks?
like Reptiles? That's original.
 
I dunno, I dont have the creativity chops to design an alien for movies. But these aliens, while beautifully rendered, kinda weird me out.
 
unozero said:
You know why they call it alien right? :p
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yeah, I know. But I like it when they at least try to go for something very unique, like this:

alienvspredator.jpg


district9prawn.jpg


52854664.jpg


neek72.jpg


jabbathehuttrotj.jpg



but avatar's aliens are more... "human" looking, for lack of a better term. Which somewhat reminds me of these great, but unoriginal designs:

cinefex25.jpg


oherlihylaststarfighter.jpg


romulan11232502010.jpg


tvaliennation.jpg


chonaandorian.jpg


for the record, I like Alien Nation, Star Trek, The Last Star Fighter, and Enemy Mine, but im just not fond of very human looking aliens. And while Avatar's aliens are unique, the overall design doesn't impress me that much (really, I think its the blue skin lol). They're like something I would have seen in the background in one of the newer Star Wars movies.
 
Unique aliens are a cliche.

I want more humanoid aliens such as the ones in Avatar! Will be a breath of fresh air.
 
Regardless of environmental conditions a balanced species in terms of limbs & sensors is more than likely to be a common standard across the universe if you subscribe to evolutionary theory when it comes to evolved organisms. That's not to say I'd expect to encounter star trek like humanoids everywhere (far from it) but certain successful characteristics are probably fairly common, such as vision, hearing, the ability to use tools, pass on knowledge etc, etc, regardless of situation.

Of course the real question is how many species actually bother to evolve? Fact of the matter is, for all the millions of species that have emerged on this planet we are by far the most advanced there's ever been by a long way, and its taken us a considerable amount of time to get here. We are an aberration Vs the norm. Truth of the matter is, the vast majority of species if they get good at something just carry on doing it. Sharks have been around far longer than we have, yet they've barely evolved at all, they eat, they ****, they die. likewise ants, have been around for millions of years, yet they haven't become masters of the food chain. Its only when we had to compete against ourselves for survival that we really began to evolve as a species.
 
You all say that you will see it in Imax. I didn't know it was that widespread. Still not a single one in this country (that I'm aware if) :(
 
Disregard the following post, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Ok, first off, I'm giving the film the benefit of the doubt that a lot of the cgi seen in the trailers may be unfinished. I really don't think so, but could be.
Anyway, From what I've observed, the problem with CGI in movies is the detail. They model or animate or whatever a spaceship, and they have all the little details and bolts and screws in there. Then you see the spaceship in the distance, and you can still see all the bolts and screws very clearly, whereas if it were a model or a prop being filmed some of the small details like that would be blurred and indistinct, and the seams and greeblies would be implied and the blanks filled in by your brain, rather than being clear for you to see. Aside from that, the way the CG spaceship appears on the background is a giveaway. I think the characters in TF2 the the slightly brighter outline were a good way to overcome and problems with that.

Aside from far-away shots, closeups are a problem, especially in things like skin. There's all the little lines and creases and divits on skin that either is omitted or looks like it's painted on. This seems to vary in this movie, for example in the trailer the hands and feet of the blue guy on the operating table look especially fake, but the skin around the eyes in one of the stills in this thread of the blue chick looks very good. But in those same stills the hair looks really weird, it's a case of the details being too sharp and it looks like the artists put too much effort into the wrong places.

Watching older movies with CGI like Jurassic Park looks really good. It may be a combination of them not having been able to render all the details perfectly in every shot and the fact that the lower quality of VHS makes it look more real. To me, anyway.

I haven't seen district 9, but in the trailer with the big-ass spaceship and the helicopters flying towards it, that looked great. The details were there but they were so far away they'd get lost in themselves and you take it in as a whole. In the avatar trailer, the environments in general look super. Floating rocks especially.
 
Its as much about dust in the atmosphere reflecting light, as it is about our focus. That's why things that are distance appear fainter, or after a large rainstorm everything seems much brighter and clearer (because the atmosphere is temporarily dust free). In our minds we make these natural associations about depth. Concept artists use this simple rule of saturated colours to the foreground, faded colours to the back to fool our minds into perceiving distance on a flat plane, even without obvious perspective references at times:-

catonemoidiaESTABLISH1.jpg


Of course when you have photos taken in environments where there isn't atmospheric dust such as on the moon:-

090716-07-objects-should-be-visible_big.jpg


The lack of saturation fade can throw people out, because the distance between objects seems much less.
 
After seeing the 3d footage I am completely blown away, it looks sooooo much better then the teaser trailer. Jake's Avatar looks photoreal, I kid you not. The environments are also as close the photoreal not really there but with the 3d element it takes you that last step from cgi to photo real and it feels like you are there. I also loved the art design, very fantasy inspired. (sorry for poor English)
 
Roger Ebert saw the 15 minute preview of Avatar, and wrote about it on his site:

I'm hoping that James Cameron's "Avatar," opening in December, will be a terrific film. But I was underwhelmed by about 15 minutes of preview footage I saw in 3-D on Friday night.
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you can read the rest here

Roger Ebert is one of my favorite critics, and is usually very insightful in his reviews. I'm just hoping he is wrong about Avatar. Granted, his complaints are solely based on 15 minutes of footage, and he really doesn't like 3d movies, so I guess its best to take it with a grain of salt.
 
I wonder if Imax theaters will show the 15min preview again or was friday the only chance people had to see it.
 
Just done watching the trailer myself and... everything looks good except the aliens themselves. This has to be some of the worst alien CGI I've ever seen. This is supposed to be a movie not a Disney cartoon FFS!

Also:

StardogChampion said:
The annoying thing is that you can see better stuff from one guy in their bedroom at cgtalk.
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This

Kadayi said:
Without a 1000 plus unit server farm I highly doubt it. :dozey:
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You sir are wrong. I've seen plenty of high quality believeble aliens created by peolple in theirs spare time, without the need of a "1000 plus unit server farm". It's not so much about computing power but more about art direction. What they got here is aliens that look cartoony, no matter how detailed the motion capture or the skin shaders are.
 
Remus said:
You sir are wrong. I've seen plenty of high quality believeble aliens created by peolple in theirs spare time, without the need of a "1000 plus unit server farm". It's not so much about computing power but more about art direction. What they got here is aliens that look cartoony, no matter how detailed the motion capture or the skin shaders are.
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*gasp* Did you just question Kadayi? Prepare for a 1000 word thesis that may or may not be bullshit.
 
Remus said:
You sir are wrong. I've seen plenty of high quality believable aliens created by peolple in theirs spare time, without the need of a "1000 plus unit server farm". It's not so much about computing power but more about art direction. What they got here is aliens that look cartoony, no matter how detailed the motion capture or the skin shaders are.
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You're missing the point. I suggest you actually think about it a bit more before wantonly throwing in your lot with short sighted idiots. There's a big difference between making a single frame render Vs making an entire feature film (in 3D).
 
Harryz said:
You talk so much shit. I want to know where you buy your magic 8 ball from. How the hell can you be so sure Airbender is going to do financially better than Avatar?
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Airbender fans are pubescent girls on DeviantArt and manchildren. Prepare for ticket sales.

Feel free to hold me to this in the future and rub it in my face if I'm wrong, or pretend to forget we ever talked about it and hope I don't bring it up to you if I'm right.
 
Darkside55 said:
Airbender fans are pubescent girls on DeviantArt and manchildren. Prepare for ticket sales.

Feel free to hold me to this in the future and rub it in my face if I'm wrong, or pretend to forget we ever talked about it and hope I don't bring it up to you if I'm right.
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Eh, I'm kinda skeptical of the power a limited but rabid fanbase wields with regard to making a film a financial blockbuster. I have been ever since the Browncoats failed.
 
Slashdot said:
Den Of Geek wonders if James Cameron's Avatar is heading for a fall, and if it will even be a science fiction film, off the back of the previews shown last week. It writes: "It seems in Avatar that all this gee-whiz science is merely there to draw the 'old crowd' in and provide some kind of rationale for a brightly-coloured fantasy-world which reflects the most emetic of the artwork plastered over teenage girls' MySpace pages.
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http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/09/08/24/1420233/Avatar-Has-Sci-fi-Found-Its-Heavens-Gate
 
Geekrage, BAWWWW

I know for a fact that several of his "what if...?" leading questions at the end there have answers different from what he implies.
 
im really glad im not the only person in the world who was severely unimpressed.
 
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