James Cameron's FernGully

[Sara]

[quote name='John']I liked Beanie Babies as a kid, I don't hate [I]Avatar[/I], and I'm sure you know what I actually meant in that post.[/QUOTE][font=secret font!][size=3]Oh, I am teasing.

For the record, I totally hated Beanie Babies [i]for no good reason[/i] except that they were very popular. I did, however, end up with a lot of the cats (Snip, Flip, Trip, Zip, I don't know. All their names rhymed). I don't recall how I justified that to myself.

I do think it raises an interesting point about backlash, though. When something becomes very popular, it also often has very vocal detractors. [i]Avatar[/i], Beanie Babies, [i]Harry Potter[/i], [i]Twilight[/i]?you can see this phenomenon with all of them.

I think a lot of people (those who fall in the "pro" camp) tend to automatically classify everyone in the "anti" as being reactionary and lashing out against the thing just because it is popular. And for some "anti"s, that is clearly the case (like I said, guilty on the Beanie Baby front)!

But there are also some people who honestly dislike the product for legitimate or personal reasons that aren't related to popularity (I fall in this camp for [i]Twilight[/i].) And there are maybe even more people who are simply indifferent?but tend to align themselves more strongly with the "anti" camp, if only to distinguish themselves from the rabid fans.

"I don't get the hype" and "I really dislike this" both sound pretty similar to someone whose feeling are closer to "This is the best thing ever!"[/size][/font]

[eleanor]

[quote name='John']I guess I'll try to be more impressed by the same stuff other people are impressed by from now on...[/QUOTE]

[img]http://i48.tinypic.com/2qty68l.gif[/img]

[James]

[font=franklin gothic medium]What Sara said.

(I'm not sure that Australia ever had the pleasure of Beanie Babies. Should we be concerned that we've missed out on something major here?)[/font]

[Heaven's Cloud]

[quote name='James'][font=franklin gothic medium]What Sara said.

(I'm not sure that Australia ever had the pleasure of Beanie Babies. Should we be concerned that we've missed out on something major here?)[/font][/QUOTE]

No. You didn't miss a thing. They were toy animals stuffed with plastic beans. They limited production on each toy animal they made which led to them becoming collector's items for a little while. Other than that there was very little remarkable about them, I would even say that they lack that unique/iconic design aesthetic that a lot of truly collectible toys have.

[Sangome]

[FONT="Microsoft Sans Serif"][SIZE="1"]Thread necromancy gogogogogogo!

Ahh. Uhmm. Hmmm. I can see this thread has been oh-so [I]delightful[/I] in the past. I'll try to be careful.

So I finally saw this on Saturday.

I didn't mind the cliched story. I personally do not care if it is "unoriginal", especially since "originality" is something very hard to achieve in this day and age, when practically [I]everything[/I] has been done at some point or another. I didn't mind the extremely basic characters and characterization. I even [I]liked[/I] some of the characters [Grace and Neytiri in particular]. The visuals were absolutely spectacular, and I appreciate the standard it has set in that regard.

What [I]did[/I] bother me, you ask? Well, Ace touched on it already, but I'll say it again -- the absolutely anvilicious second half of the movie.

Okay, James Cameron. I admit it. I suck. I suck 'cause, according to you, I have the unfortunate circumstance of being born a human. Humanity as a whole can suck, has sucked, and will continue to suck for a long time to come.

But you know what? I don't need you to tell me that. Pretty much every other freaking movie/show/whatever with an environmentalist message has told me that. Heck, I grew up with my peers telling me that. I've accepted it. If I wanted to be told I sucked that badly, I'd don my nerdiest attire, go back to my high school, and sit smack dab in the middle of the cafeteria while talking about the latest video games I'm playing. That'll learn me right quick. I don't need your multi-million dollar blockbuster and your Purity Sue Smurfy-cats bludgeoning me over the head with an anvil 'til I'm brain-dead to tell me that. I get it already. What exactly are you wanting me to do about it?!

You know what this movie needed? Evil Na'vi. Despite the fact that we were being told that we sucked, with Jake driving it home with his "WE KILLED OUR MOTHER" spiel, it did show us that not all humans are bad, just the military. [Oh ho. Like I've not heard THAT before, either.] But it never showed any evil Na'vi. Sure, Tsu'tey was a jerk, but not for entirely unwarranted reasons, so he doesn't count. There should have totally been, like, Na'vi that were completely fed up with the fancy-pants prettiness of Pandora and wanted to blow it all up for no good reason. Sure, it woulda been pointless, but maybe I wouldn't have raged so much if it showed an even balance of good/evil humans and good/evil Na'vi.

But I still don't think the movie was terrible. There was a lot of wasted potential; I got bored and did random research on places like Avatar Wiki, and there was a [i]lot[/i] of interesting things about Pandora, the Na'vi, even the crapsack word Earth has apparently become in the movie, that would have been interesting if they had put it in the final movie. I'll probably see any potential sequels just because of that. There's still worse ways of spending 150 minutes of your time. It's just a shame half of that time nearly made me ragequit.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[John]

[quote name='Sangome'][FONT=Microsoft Sans Serif][SIZE=1]I personally do not care if it is "unoriginal", especially since "originality" is something very hard to achieve in this day and age, when practically [I]everything[/I] has been done at some point or another.[/SIZE][/FONT][/quote] And yet every major entertainment industry still manages to consistently release products that are more than just a dense pile of cliches. Except Broadway (BOOM, roasted :bdance:).

Not every movie needs to focus on a brilliant storyline and engaging, well-rounded characters in order to be quality entertainment, and most of them don't. But the backbone of any narrative film is still the narrative itself, no matter how much focus is placed on style or other concerns. In the same way that the production values need to be at least high enough for the audience to be able to visually and aurally discern what's happening on the screen, the narrative needs to at least be strong enough to pull the viewer into the world of the film and draw their sympathies in whichever direction the filmmakers desire.