The Glade 4.0

_________________
The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

They'll just drop the Alien superweapon on Pandora.

Nuke from orbit later, then come get your unobtainium.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I thought it was pretty decent. Defeinitely can't cricticize it for painful length after "Alexander" *shudder*

I didn't so much wonder if the humans would be back to kick *** as I did why they didn't drop something on the world tree from orbit as a kinetic strike in the first place. Evidently they knew it's location and could scan into the area just fine as long as the actual scanner wasn't in the interference. It would probably have been jury-rigged, but then the bombs the shuttle was going to drop were even more jury-rigged, and if they missed they could always keep trying with impunity.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

But if you do it that way, you don't get to see the pain in their eyes right before you kill them.

_________________
The Dude abides.

In other words, no in-character reason any better than "because it would ruin the plot".

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Well, that and that it would be a P.R. nightmare. Sure, mega-corporations are evil, but they usually don't want to look outright evil. (Yes I know people on earth would probably never know, etc etc).

Now that the shineyness has worn off, I've decided I'm not a big fan of this movie.

There are a lot of reasons, but I'm going to put;

If you're going to make such an epic movie, at least write an original story

...on top of the (long and getting longer) list...

Saw it again this weekend with a friend who hadn't seen it. I was amazed at the incredible amount of foreshadowing in this movie. This may be why little about the story surprised me, they told you what they were going to do well before they did it.

Still amazingly beautiful though.

_________________
The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Finally saw it.

The movie is indeed a rehash of many other movies (Ferngully definitely being the top of the list). But, so are most of the great movies. Rehashing is what Hollywood has been doing for decades upon decades.

I enjoyed it. It was certainly the first movie I've seen to blend CGI perfectly with real elements. And I don't mind the movie sending me a message, in fact most of my favorite movies have some message to give.

This will be one that I will purchase when it comes out.

Also, even though the movie has been out for a while, the theater I saw it in was still packed. And, as the credits rolled, the audience applauded. I don't think I've ever experienced that in a theater (outside of Star Wars movies on opening day, but those don't really count). I admit I banged my hands together no more than a couple times, but Cameron I think deserved it.

James Cameron, whether you like him or not, knows how to make a movie.

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I would think that evil is better than incompetant. Getting your *** handed to you by a bunch of aliens with bows and arrows isn't exactly a PR win.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's the key here...they had no idea that the aliens they incorrectly viewed as "primitive" could mount such a defense. The loss was pure overconfidence.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Yet they were deeply concerned those same aliens could overrun a fortified defensive position, and the Colonel emphasized to his men during their advance to keep their eyes open. They advanced slowly and cautiously. Neither of those facts fit with overconfidence.

It seems more likely that their overconfidence came from believing they had the element of surprise and the aliens, being busy with their attack preparations, were not prepared to mount a defense. Essentially, they were having some really bizarre cognitave dissonance where they were fearful of the aliens yet at the same time confident they had some sort of overwhelming superiority.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

plot was relatively weak and predictable (the second i saw that giant bird thing i knew he was going to tame it).

still, doesn't need to be original to be wildly entertaining

The thing that bothers me about 3D movies is, you can add all the stereopsis and convergence you want with the 3D cameras and rendering, but they're still limited by the depth of field they can achieve.

In other words, you can make the soldiers between me and the Colonel look between me and the Colonel, but I still can't choose to look at them properly, because they're out of focus. I imagine someday, we'll have shrunk the cameras down even more, to allow for simultaneous shooting of multiple focal lengths from near-identical sets of binocular perspectives, and then composite them together in some kind of complex post-processing system (this is actually easier for computer renders, because you can simply render everything in focus rather than imposing depth of field effects upon you render to get it to blend in with the live photography).

Of course, this'll create a NEW problem, in that now everything's too sharp, when your eye is accustomed to having things you're not focusing (binocularly speaking) on falling out of monocular focus because they really are at a different depth, while you can't rely on images projected on a flat screen to do so. So we'll also have to move from dual projected images with glasses to selectively view them, to a system that will track an individual's eye movements and adjust the rendering (inserting the depth of field blur) in response to where in the image we're tracking our stereoptic convergence.

Until then, I can't help but find even our very good 3D a little distracting, particularly in scenes where I either want to "visually explore" them (like I found I was with a lot of the vistas of Pandora), or when I get a bit bored of the focus-guided action and stray from it unintentionally.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

That is very true Kaffis. When watching a 3D film your eyes are very much being directed to look at the things that the director wants you to look at. It can be both interesting and annoying at the same time. Interesting from the standpoint of seeing more clearly (no pun intended) what the director thinks is important, but annoying from the inability to really notice/appreciate some of the background detail that you miss on the first couple watchings.

That said, Avatar did the best job to date of smoothly incorporating 3D into the overall experience.

It's actually not that much clearer what the director thinks is important, because you see this in normal film/video, too. It's simply something we've gotten used to in 2D video, as well as, I think, something similar to the uncanny valley -- because it's *closer* to real 3D, the ways in which it's not can become more noticeable and seem weird.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Depending on the director, that is true. But I do think it's more pronounced in 3D and therefore easier to discern.

just came back from avatar in 3d......WOW!!!


EDIT: going to see it again tonight! yay!

_________________
Ron Paul 2012

My thought on this is the ship they showed Jake traveling on looked like a deep space ship. Once it arrives at its destination it orbits and that is it. Just because it was able to make the long trip doesn't mean it can manuver within the Pandoan system looking for things to chuck at the planet. Even if it could they may not have the capability to move asteroids they find in the right way to do an orbital bombardment. They have military equipment there but it actually seemed pretty light more for local protection from the wildlife and hostile natives than a real invasion force. I don't think it was ever planned to be a real full scale military force. Also wern't they troops actually mercenaries and not really government troops.

Anyway I thought it was an enjoyable movie, the visuals were really good the story was meh, but overall it was entertaining.

_________________
I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil

Saw it today in IMAX 3D. It wasn't bad. The theater was packed at a 2:45 show. It was very well done. That being said, after seeing the trailer for Alice in Wonderland in 3D I was expecting so much more. That looked awesome.

_________________
Raell Kromwell

He's okay, I saw Inglorious Basterds this year.

_________________
"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Eh? Inglorious Basterds is a Tarantino film, not Cameron...