I think people blamed the frame rate, but for me it was the rest of the effects that put me off, faces were too softened, lots of scenes had weird color saturation, as others mentioned there was a lot of motion blur, compared to LOTR the VFX really pulled me out of lots of scenes.
Not to mention it was a one trick pony. I remember it was great when I saw it with friends in the theater. We rented it later on to see the extra scenes and couldn't get through half of it because of how boring it was.
I remember it well (I was 20). It was a very boring movie. I think it's famous just for being 1st, i guess they poured all the money into the CGI because it's a 2-star story.
I liked the new one fine, but I felt the same way. It was mostly just gawking at effects rather than story-intrigue for me, although I'm already familiar.
Spent more time thinking about the CGI than I did thinking about the plot, I think that might indicate something.
If the plot was terrible, the visual aspects didn't impress me at all (it looked way too shiny and polished, some elements were trite - the snowy-white locations, the red desert ones; or taken from previous movies, for example Spielberg's AI). The music was generic but bombastic. The kung-fu fights completely unnecessary and pointless.
I've watched the making-of video I linked several times and I get anxious every time he rides the motorcycle off the ramp. In comparison, the final version in the movie where they used CGI to remove the ramp is way less exciting to me. I found the scene in the movie a bit of a let down.
For me movies are about escaping reality for a few hours and enjoying good story. I didn't like the HFR, maybe because it looked too real or maybe because I found the story lacking a bit, but the net result was I found it hard to simply get whisked away to fantasy land.
Or maybe I just didn't like the movie that much and picking on HFR in 3D is the easiest way to express my dislike.
Yes the effects were great. Especially the city, but come on how could the story in the movie be sooo weak! Instead of an kickass army verteran we got Scarlett Johannson playing a little girl.
Yeah, there were so many other things I did not enjoy about those movies that any potential weirdness from the higher framerate didn't even come into play. Rewatched them this past year while down with COVID and after finishing the LOTR extended versions.
Production-wise, it was the silly looking CG characters. Even worse was the way they stretched one simpler story into three movies (while the LOTR trilogy just managed a good job of adapting three long books into three long movies without too much oversimplification.)
that goes for the creature designs as well. there were "dogs" and "horses" in the movie. and in fact i'd argue that goes for the plot itself. a lot of people criticize the plot, but i think it was a very deliberate choice. a "screwy" or "clever" or too-sophisticated plot would have detracted from the rest of the movie
5. Saw it in 3D on a non-IMAX screen. I know enough to know that I'm supposed to be impressed by the CGI in the skin/eyes of the Na'vi and other creatures. And given that I'm supposed to know that, they (generally) succeeded. The 3D wasn't really any different than any other Real 3D movie, and I really didn't see any difference in the quality of the CGI landscapes versus LoTR or even Jurassic Park (which were just arial shots). The story, of course, is Dances with Wolves in Space.
I wish I went to Up in the Air instead.
As to the ZOMG: Glengarry Glen Ross could have been filmed in the 1930s, but it's one of the best films in my lifetime. To say that Avatar changes movies forever is insane.
I generally am not a big fan of the CGI-dominated action film catering to international audiences. But I'm mostly not a huge fan of art house fare either.
I ended up walking out about halfway through it. I had no problems with the casting (I though Scarlet did a good job), and the visual effects were stunning. It was the writing and plot that weren't good. I found it missing all the implied sub-plots (it was overly simple - as you said - dumbed down).
I also found myself missing the interludes from the animated film. The scenes with the canals, the jet passing overhead between the buildings. They all had a beauty to them and they let you reflect on what happened in the previous scene. This film proceeded too quickly from one scene to another, likely because the studio was afraid people would get bored if something wasn't happening every single moment.
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