ew

You made an account to diss a movie.

Really?

Anyways, looks great. Getting more excited to see it.

Wow. That was amazing.

I think it'll be mine too. Watching that on Avatar Day was the highlight of the summer, if not the year so far, it was brilliant :D.

Me and my bud actually went and saw it again immediately just because of that sequence. When they flew against the gorgeous planet of Pandora, I might've even shed a tear. The beauty in that scene was phenomenal, the details in IMAX were just... hard to describe. The details and whatnot were just mindblowing. We immediately bought tickets to the midnight showing, despite the AMC Santa Anita IMAX being an IMAX digital.

(And that scene with the Thanator(?) gave my friend nightmares. Granted, we were sitting right underneath one of the big speakers x)

I don't know how exactly other performance capture movies are done, but for some reason this feels the most liberating and fascinating to watch, whereas others feel tied down and very constricting. It seems as if everyone is given freedom; using models to get the exact flight plan, the actors getting very physical in their performances, and finally with the director being able to control a virtual camera in real time, not sitting down at a computer with an animator telling them what to do. I'm very impressed, looking forward to this movie a lot more now.

I do not disagree with anything you say, but I'd like to point out: not many people know or remember, but much of this tech was introduced by Peter Jackson while filming the LoTR. The virtual camera in real time was used in the Cave Troll scene in the FoTR in Moria.

Obviously Cameron has taken everything up a couple notches, I'm very impressed as well and can't wait until Dec. 18.

Boy oh boy. I need to stop watching this stuff and just wait till the movie comes out, because each successive thing I see looks worse and worse and worse...

Also, have the makers of any movie ever had their mouths so firmly placed on their own dicks?

Any chance this is on youtube or any other website? I can't watch hulu because I am Australian. I really want to see it too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m_BSkl33n4

You Tube link to same video

Oh bummer -- I'm not in the US.

Where are their penises/vaginas?

You wouldn't believe me if I told you.

For good or ill, this is the biggest budget Saturday morning cartoon ever made.

Nah that was Spiderman 3 and it was a piece of trash.

I'm pretty sure this has a bigger budget than spiderman 3.

One day all of you will watch Spiderman 3 again and recognize it for all of it's campy goodness. To this day the scene of Parker dancing has me in stitches. It was just Raimi being too constricted by the studios and an avid fan base for so long that he needed to do a movie like Drag Me To Hell in order to get the campiness out of him so it doesn't leak into his bigger budget studio movies.
So to all of you who hated Spiderman 3, you'll have Spiderman 4 to look forward to. For the rest of us... It was fun to see a little bit of Evil Dead seeping over into his other work.

Cameron just made Zemeckis his bitch.

Despite what you may think about Avatar as a film, it's difficult to deny that the technology behind this project is highly impressive. Look at the faces of these creatures. Their muscles move beautifully.

This is not a Saturday morning cartoon, as another user said. Look at the depth of detail in these backgrounds. They look absolutely believable.

Saturday morning cartoon??? you must be a little boy!!so sad mommy and daddy won't take you to go watch it... booo..hooo=..(

Boy you people are touchy.

In character and creature design, setting, and plot it is a Saturday morning cartoon. It focuses on dragon riding blue cat people.

It is very well animated and looks very expensive, thus it's the biggest budget, most well animated Saturday morning cartoon ever. You can take that as a good or bad thing, that's up to you. Personally, I'm sure it will be fun, but it's still kinda goofy.

That is a simplification of the storyline. Technically speaking, this is not a cartoon. This is painstakingly animated, yes, but it borrows directly from genuine performances. When they are riding, the background of Pandora looks absolutely believable, particularly the shadowed cliffs.

The X-Men movies are about super-powered mutants battling a judgmental government (when I simplify the storyline, see how silly that sounds?), but it's not a Saturday morning cartoon. Similarly, Avatar also incorporates live action elements. By dismissing it as a cartoon, you ignore the technological complexities beyond this project that go far beyond the depth seen in your average cartoon. These are not simply "blue cat people", as you ignorantly say. These are creatures that are animated by genuine human performances with real, raw emotion and passion.

I'm only "touchy" when it comes to ignorant simplifications.

The DESIGN is goofy. The blue people look silly. They ride dragons and glowing horses. There are floating islands. It's all right out of a Saturday morning cartoon. No matter how well they are animated, how good the graphics, the DESIGN is silly. The DESIGN is right out of a Saturday morning cartoon.

As for the story, I don't think it is silly, just not all that compelling.

The movie will be a fun ride, and be very pretty, I just wish the characters and creatures looked less ridiculous.

"The X-Men movies are about super-powered mutants battling a judgmental government"

Uhh, that actually sound pretty awesome.

I like how you used X-Men as an example of something that sounds like it could be a Saturday Morning cartoon when you simplify the plot; only to then inexplicably say: "...but it's not a Saturday morning cartoon."

What? What planet do you live on? X-Men is absolutely a Saturday morning cartoon. I know because when I was a kid I watched it every Saturday morning.

Obviously the X-Men movies are not "Saturday morning cartoons" because they are LIVE ACTION MOVIES.

That's the whole point. AVATAR is very much a Saturday morning cartoon type of film. And the fact that the movie starts out in live action is irrelevant because it becomes a 100% animated movie. It doesn't make a single bit of difference how they went about animating the characters.

When you look at the screen and there is not a single thing that is not animated; that is called animation.

Live action is live action. ANYTHING else is animation. Whether you draw it with a pencil or you capture someone's real performance with super 3D computers and then animate it from there. It is still animation.

My point is that the depth in Avatar's animation, which arguably borders photo-realism in many sections of this presentation, is far beyond the capabilities of a mere Saturday morning cartoon. Dismissing Avatar as such is ignorantly simplifying the vastly superior technology that has made this film something that's quite a bit more than animation: it's animation that approaches absolute realism in how the characters interact with this fascinating world. When you see the environment in this video, look at the cliffs and mountainous structures in the background. They appear to be absolutely realistic, as opposed to "Saturday morning cartoon" animation that rarely mirrors reality.

That is why I object to a comparison with cartoons that could be found on television. From its very presentation, Avatar is another experience entirely. No, I would not mind if you called Avatar an animated experience, but I don't quite believe that its quality is comparable to that of a Saturday morning cartoon.

My point with the X-Men comparison is that you could take a fantastical concept and simplify it to make the entire thing seem silly. Calling Avatar a "film about cat people flying birds" is a simplification of the actual storyline that's intended to make it sound silly, like super-powered mutants battling exaggerated governmental agencies. That's absolutely ignoring the emotion and complexities in these stories.

"..the depth in Avatar's animation, which arguably borders photo-realism in many sections of this presentation, is far beyond the capabilities of a mere Saturday morning cartoon."
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Dude. THAT IS EXACTLY THE POINT. The original guy was saying that AVATAR is just a really big budget Saturday morning cartoon and your response was basically:"No it's not. Saturday morning cartoons don't have this big a budget and don't use this kind of technology."

Which is exactly his point. AVATAR is just the biggest budget Saturday morning cartoon of all time. Then you said:


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"...They (environment's in the video) appear to be absolutely realistic, as opposed to "Saturday morning cartoon" animation that rarely mirrors reality."
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EXACTLY. And why does it look better than a Saturday morning cartoon? BECAUSE it's the most EXPENSIVE Saturday morning cartoon EVER!

Then you said:

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"...I object to a comparison with cartoons that could be found on television. From its very presentation, Avatar is another experience entirely."
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And why is it another experience entirely (beside the obvious fact that it is a movie)? Not because the story. But because they spent more money on it. Thus the statement: The most expensive Saturday morning cartoon. Then you said:

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"No, I would not mind if you called Avatar an animated experience, but I don't quite believe that its quality is comparable to that of a Saturday morning cartoon."
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Of course it's not comparable, because no Saturday morning cartoon has had that size budget. Thus the statement: Most expensive Saturday morning cartoon.


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"...That's absolutely ignoring the emotion and complexities in these stories."
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But the thing is, there is nothing at all complex about the story of AVATAR. It's incredibly cliché and unoriginal. Now I'm still going to go see the movie because it looks cool, but the story itself is very much reminiscent of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Thus the statement: Most expensive Saturday morning cartoon.

Have you seen Avatar, then? How was it?

Since you have not seen the entire story, I would say that your argument is severely flawed. Just because it's animated does NOT mean that it should be dismissed as a Saturday morning cartoon. NOTHING about Avatar strikes me as "cartoonish", because cartoons do not have the nuances found in these creatures.

SwedishLore15:
We can clearly see the design of characters and creatures. Right now I am looking at a picture of a blue cat person riding a dragon. That is straight out of a saturday morning cartoon. That is my point. No matter how great it is, it will at least LOOK like the most expensive saturday morning cartoon ever made. No matter how well they are animated, the Na'vi and the creatures of Pandora are absolutely cartoonish. Watching the whole 2 1/2 hour movie won't change that.

awesome. thanks hulu. Canadians left out again.

I am really excited for this movie each time I see it keeps getting better and better will be going for it on opening night for sure.Peter at least now think of doing a video blog about Avatar or after the opening night of the movie I am dying to hear your and Steve thoughts on this one.

this movie is just gonna be great!! i m so excited for this flick!

Steph
http://www.isopurewater.com/

I like cameron's intent behind the film, I just absolutely cannot like the horrible design of these creatures we are supposed to care for.

So I'm still not pumped for this movie, though I will definitely see it. This has me more excited than I was, which has been true of everything I've seen from it.

My main problem with this is the way it sort of takes credit for being groundbreaking technologically. As impressive as this looks (very impressive, much more so to me than when I saw the teaser trailer), it's nothing new. Mo-cap has been around for while now and while it looks great here, it's not the first film to use it. Of course we all know Zemeckis swears by it but what about the strides made by "Lord of the Rings"? I don't know about anyone else but Gollum still impresses the hell out of me and Serkis/Jackson did all of that in mo-cap. The only thing that looks different here is the camera on the boom in front of the face. Smart? Sure. An improvement? Sure. But not groundbreaking.

That's like calling the original "Clash of the Titans" groundbreaking instead of an improvement on the effects that already exist. I feel like the same can be said of "Titanic". As impressive as it is, it has to stand behind a movie like "Jurassic Park" which was truly groundbreaking. Maybe I'm just being picky and I, of course, don't know all of the visual effects created to make "Avatar" work (or "Titanic, or "Clash of the Titans" for that matter) but by what I have seen featured in this special this is but the next step and not a brand new path altogether.

Cameron has said that Jackson's work on Gollum and even King Kong led him to believe that technology had reached a point where he could "push it to tell the story [he] always wanted to tell." Like all great artists and innovators, they stand on the shoulders of brilliant people but that does not mean they lack brilliance in themselves. These new advances were necessary in order for Cameron to make the leap. In the same way T2 was necessary for Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park stood on the shoulders of T2 and knocked it out of the park (on a special effects basis, T2 is still the better film IMO).

That's completely fair. I guess I just didn't see any of that here and I sort of get tired of all this "this is the movie that will change everything" talk. Of course Jurassic Park relied on T2 and I just haven't seen any special where Cameron says that about Jackson. I suppose all I want is credit where credit is due...even if someone would have to reference Robert Zemeckis at some point.

The virtual camera rig is incredible. The amount of freedom that it would give the director is great. The hands on aspect of directing is where CGI lacked but it seems like Cameron has figured out a way to bring traditional directing to the computer environment.

The "camera" work is awesome. I have to say that I'm very impressed so far with these small tidbit releases.

I'm going to see Avatar in 2D like most other films and see how it holds up that way.