I was listening to the live feed of this weeks Slice and heard the discussion about Avatar. I also heard the voice mail show. The plot is about is about a seriously injured space Marine who through some type of new technology is able to control an Avatar of an alien on another world and escape his confining wheel chair. Whether it is an actual alien he takes over or some type artificial alien I do not know. Watching the trailer I noticed the alien race is facing some type of invasion which the space Marine helps to fight off. I noticed that the evil invading enemy is human or human built machines so my immediate thought was, "This is going to be Dances with Wolves in Outer Space."

So I punched "Avatar is Dances with Wolves in Space" into Google and found a link to a Los Angeles Times interview of James Cameron in which he acknowledges that influence. I love the title of this article: "James Cameron: Yes, 'Avatar' is 'Dances with Wolves' in space. . .sorta." He also acknowledged the influence of the movies “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” and “The Emerald Forest.” The interviewer who has seen a 30 minute preview of Avatar thinks he sees similarities to "Farewell to the King" and "A Man called Horse."

Here is a link to the entire interview.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomp...ckery.html

That could be really good, or really awful.

Well, Dances With Wolves is A Man Called Horse only not nearly as good. DWW is to date the only movie I have actually fallen asleep to in the theatre. Sure, the scenery is beautiful, but why spend four hours telling a 1½ hour story?

Arkle Wrote:That could be really good, or really awful.

Indeed. After all, the movie has been 12 years in the making, with the director putting out nothing else in the meantime. It is James Cameron, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt, but I remain sceptical...

Arkle Wrote:That could be really good, or really awful.

I have no doubts on the level of chunkage that will be produced from such a movie.

I wonder what it is about the trailer that's turning people off. Is it the blue people? Maybe the epic battle sequence reminds people of the ewoks v. storm troopers.

I remain on the hopeful side mainly because I always enjoy Cameron's work. Never saw Titanic but I liked the Terminators and liked the Abyss even more. I seemed to remember a lot of Abyss hating when it came out and I never really understood why. I read dug the deep sea sentients.

I thought about Enemy Mine when I saw the trailer. But "Dances with Wolves in Space" is a better description.

This feels like it's going to be a snoozefest. The fact that Cameron has poured so many years and sweat into this one movie makes me think it's going to be self-indulgent. He'll be unhappy that people didn't appreciate his vision, what he was trying to say with it.

Skiznot Wrote:I wonder what it is about the trailer that's turning people off. Is it the blue people? Maybe the epic battle sequence reminds people of the ewoks v. storm troopers.

I can tell you my issue: It looks cartoonish to me. Now, by and large, I am not a fan of animated people/characters. Here's the thing: cameramen in Hollywood, no matter how good they are, cannot get things 100% in focus at all times. And people aren't 100% pretty...not even Megan Fox. So, when CGI characters are created, they are TOO crisp, they are TOO clean, they are TOO in focus. They look out of place to me. Cartoonish. So, my mind instantly dismisses them. So, what turns me off is that the rampant CGI makes the movie look like a large cartoon. There's something to be said for real sets and little itty-bitty models...if you want your spaceship to look like it was really made by humans, have humans really make a model of it.

I like calling it Dances with Space Wolves more than Avatar is Dances with Wolves in Space

After all the hubbub, I looked at the trailer and thought to myself, "Is this what all the fuss was about?"

It's await for the dvd time for me on this one.

Dee

bretf97 Wrote:...So, when CGI characters are created, they are TOO crisp, they are TOO clean, they are TOO in focus. They look out of place to me. Cartoonish. So, my mind instantly dismisses them.

I think you make a good point; sometimes the technology can overwhelm the story.

For the record, Cameron did state that there are twists and turns that the audience won't see coming; he hopes, so my description of Avatar as Dances in Wolves in Space is somewhat simplistic. The other influences that Cameron mentioned were Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs. He wants audiences to feel they are watching a classic adventure story.

I'm withholding judgement for now. I hope this turns out well. Right now the story as shown in the trailer doesn't impress me. The technology looks great but Bret97 has a point, the CGI tech might be a more distracting feature then an enhancing one.