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[Octopunk: I'm bumping this up because the chatter is still going.]
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Malevolent
2018 ***1/2 It's 1986 for some reason, and a team of paranormal investigators are making a big name for themselves all over Scotland. ...
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I’m sure none of you except for JPX knows that I’m a bit of a germ-a-phobic. It’s annoying, but manageable. Though, since I met JPX and list...
32 comments:
I mean... It looks like a lavishly-made, straight-up sci-fi movie. Like, an old-school Arthur C. Clarke or Asimov Heinlein novel (or maybe something a little more recent, like Larry Niven, but still conventional sci-fi) having been filmed in a straighforward manner.
You know, like Fantastic Voyage or whatever, but with expensive, up-to-date, Star Wars-prequel-level special effects. Nothing intrisically mind-bending or genre-busting. Conventional.
(Maybe that's the trick, since so little "conventional" sci-fi gets made any more; it's all fantasy-opera or dark horror.)
I watched the hi quality HD version and the animation is just beautiful. Tony is a bigger fan so I'm sure we'll be going to the theater to see it when it opens.
I don't know anything about Avatar. I too was reminded of the prequels, specifically the Sith scenes following Order 66. I generally like most of Cameron's stuff and there are high expectations given that he hasn't made a regular film in the better part of a decade. I won't shell out extra for 3D though.
From toplessrobot, Actually, there is one real problem I see, and that's the Na'vi aliens, who look... like they're from Re:boot or something other CG cartoon from the '90s. They look preposterously CG and goofy to me. Am I alone in this?
I totally agree with that & I couldn't think of the name of the show but that's it, Reboot.
There are people on another site saying that Cameron "has never made a bad movie." Well, he's never made an unsuccessful movie. But he's always fighting a losing battle with the cheese...and he loses the battle completely in True Lies (which is just awful, in my opinion) and in The Abyss, which is...fine...but hopelessly nerdy (the way Avatar looks).
The fact is that the guy is extremely talented in several different ways but is a hopeless geek/nerd/dweeb. Titanic wouldn't make it at all by today's standards; there's just no way a movie that cheesy and badly written would pass muster in today's superior cinematic environment (surrounded by mature fare like There Will Be Blood and Revolutionary Road and The Dark Knight and No Country For Old Men and Doubt and Iron Man and Munich and District 9 and Quantum of Solace.
And remember that Cameron's biggest, most indisputable home run is basically a fluke: the two Terminator movies owe their excellence to 1) the budgetary contraints that forced him to tell his killer-robot story in present day Los Angeles with a time-travel gimick, creating the excellent juxtapositions of Terminator vs. present-day cops/trucks/etc. that are so great; and 2) the one-of-a-kind brilliant weirdness of young Austrian bodybuilder Schwarzenegger as a robot, which is just unrepeatable (and, really, is there anything else Schwarzenegger has done onscreen that even comes close to being that good)? Anyway, the Terminator movies are a glorious, glorious double-fluke, in my opinion.
So, he's the "master-nerd," and Avatar will be straight-up retro "master-nerdiness." In today's environment, that may or may not be enough to satisfy an audience.
From denofgeek, Here at DoG central this afternoon we were huddled around Simon's screen to watch James Cameron finally give up the goods as the publicity machine for Avatar begins what we suspect will be an extended autumn campaign.
I don't know how to put this, except to say that after the benchmark set by Benjamin Button, the VFX in the Avatar trailer don't look very good.
The very first VFX shot, showing a large ship leaving orbit, had the glossy sheen of high-class CGi animation, and if Cameron is using any of the famous 'real-tech' that distinguished Aliens, Terminator and The Abyss, he's sure gone to great trouble to make it look like it was made with a computer.
Things got worse pretty quick, as the trailer rapidly turned into a what appeared to be a cross between Lord Of The Rings and Attack Of The Clones.
The trailer shows us what appears to be the creation of Sam Worthington's genetically-tailored amanuensis, a Pan-like creature initially seen as a prosthetic in some kind of incubation tank, and then revived/brought-to-life by the medics on board Worthington's military-style spaceship. From here on the creature is CGI, and there is one spectacular, Cloverfield-style match-movement shot where a documentary-style camera walks around the creature. Thereafter things take a dive...
We get a look at an array of those power-loaders we're now fairly familiar with; it all looks pretty Aliens by now, and all looks pretty good.
Then comes the CGI-fest in the forest, and it becomes apparent that the Pan creature, now controlled by Worthington is facing the greatest nemesis any sci-fi protagonist can hope to avoid: a Cameron-penned love-story. Worse than that, the CGI of the creatures looks like an animatic for The Two Towers. The movement looks tweened and fake, the finish glossy and Bryce-like, the eyes dead and cartoony.
It feels as if The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button never happened, for most of the Avatar footage. For some of it, it feels like Lord Of The Rings never happened.
Since these VFX have entered the most-anticipated trailer of the year, I can only assume they're fully finished and offered as some kind of prime example of what we can expect in Avatar.
I'm sure the 3D glasses will help, and I'm curious, in fact, as to whether Cameron's revolutionary new 3D camera has made CGI work so problematic as to preclude the very best character animation.
I wonder, in fact, if this trailer is being released to actually tone down the incredible excitement that has built up for the movie in the last twelve months, rather than accelerate it. Perhaps we need to start getting realistic about Avatar; it's certainly wanting realism, from today's evidence, one or two shots aside.
Bad visual effects will not kill a movie any more than good VFX can save it, but all I can say is that the story needs to be a corker, because there's a hell of a lot of people who won't get to see this in 3D, and I'm beginning to wonder if Avatar is going to need the after-market after all.
Well, at last there's some real imagery from this movie to sink our teeth into.
I've watched this a bunch of times now and it's a lot of fun but yeah, there is a disconnect between the live-action footage of people and everything else. I guess we're still not in the era of perfect special effects and maybe that surprises us afresh every blockbuster season.
The jungle interior scenes remind me of the jungle in The Incredibles, which is great but way short of photo-realistic. Since this is Weta doing the effects, perhaps it's down to the director's choices instead of the FX capabilities.
I agree with Jordan's assessment that this is a straight-up old-school sci-fi movie put on screen. I'm very much reminded of Starship Troopers. I also agree with the Den of Geeks observation that the story better be good. Cameron wrote this one, too. Eesh.
I love the floating rocks. But how can there be a waterfall?
The only director about whom I'll still get really excited -- really, really, really excited -- when I find out he's doing a sci-fi movie?
Spielberg. Not Cameron, not Ridley Scott, not David Fincher, not anyone else. Spielberg. And I'm not even talking about Close Encounters or E.T.. After A.I. and War of the Worlds and Minority Report, I believe Spielberg has absolutely claimed the crown as the absolute master of sci-fi. Nobody else is even close to his league. He's a fucking visionary--those three movies are as visually sublime as Raphael frescoes. It's amazing to me that such an "old-school" director (from the 'Seventies, as opposed to the 'Eighties like Scott and Cameron or the 'Nineties like Fincher) can be as visually cutting-edge and super-modern as Spielberg. He's just the best.
...and then he can turn around and make Munich or Private Ryan. I'm just in awe.
What you said, except for A.I.
It's fun to see people feeling so strongly about a trailer. :) Open minds leave room for a more real experience. Obviously we have some strong feelings here already about a snippet of a mans dream he's been working on for nearly 10 years plus so I think that is a good thing. I don't think Cameron even wanted to show any trailers if they weren't 3d originally because that is where the sizzle is supposed to be.
I disagree with the flukiness conjecture as I feel like Aliens was superb for it's time and as much as Cameron gets involved in the writing, I think there is some real talent in there to bring together something fun, technologically advanced and with at least a moderate emotional draw.
The trailer is lackluster to me. I thought some of the animation looked a bit jerky and overall I wasn't real impressed. I watched it in 1080p and some of the scenes looked fairly impressive but nothing that said "hey this is next gen" at all.
From my understanding a lot of the "omg that's going to push movies to a new level" tech is supposed to be the use of 3d. Who knows, maybe the movie will take on a whole new experience in that light. I do know the reactions were favorable at Comicon but very few were completely blown away.
Having said that, lets not pronounce it dead at the scene just yet. ; )
i'm on nowandzen's team.
i mean we're talking about a 2D trailer for a 3d movie, that people are watching on a screen barely bigger than a bread box.
a friend of mine went to see the sneak footage in 3d yesterday on an IMAX screen and says that the audience was cheering after literally every scene that was previewed. that the 3d was so good, you could almost reach out and feel it.
the argument that the story better be good because most people are going to see it in 2D might have relevance in terms of how many second-wave tickets it sells, or how it does on a small screen. but it's irrelevant to whether or not cameron assembled the film he wanted to assemble.
it's meant to be seen in a 3D format. arguing that it's substandard because it doesn't floor you in 2D is like renting a movie in pan and scan format and then blaming the director for not having any wide angle shots.
Maaaaybe. 3D isn't going to save a bad story, regardless of what the clips look like.
The expectation that has been pushed by Lucas and Cameron, based on their own words, is that 3D will be the next big thing just like computer generated imagery was once the next big thing. That's why T2 and the Star Wars prequels are considered milestones.
And I don't see it. I think what those guys are really saying is that 3D is the next thing they're personally interested in. While the pet projects of these industry giants certainly has a colossal impact on the industry, I don't think there will ever be a comparison between CGI and 3D in terms of the impact on what we see.
For one thing, any device with a screen on it (and there are a lot) is going to display an image made be a computer at some point. 3D only works in giant theaters.
More than that, I'm just not as impressed by the experience. I've seen Meet the Robinsons, Beowulf, Coraline and the new Harry Potter in 3D. It doesn't give me a headache (although that 2003 Cameron underwater doc did, hoo boy), and the thinking behind the imagery has advanced far from the days of Creature from the Black Lagoon. And yeah, it can be kind of cool. But I can take it or leave it.
If the effects fall short of reality, as they seem to be doing, maybe Avatar will reveal some interesting element added to the realism of CG images you can reach out and touch. That would be cool, and I'll be the first to admit it.
But if the story sucks, the movie sucks.
Mind you I don't think the movie is going to suck. I think at worst it'll be cheesy and there will be a lot of CG that you can tell is CG which, c'mon, isn't all that bad.
More than that, I don't think anyone will care. We're used to all kinds of media and it's not going to be that hard to accept some gaps we can see between the real actors and the other stuff, especially if the movie kicks ass in the right places. And James Cameron is very good at filming action. Even the execrable True Lies has some good action.
And maybe it will turn out that it's just harder to make it look realistic when it's a lush jungle with colorful monsters, instead of the bleached, dusty look of LOTR or the dirty, murky look of The Matrix. In that case, the effort should be applauded.
I pretty much agree with everything octopunk said. You can even scratch the "pretty much."
There's a phenomenon I hate, where there's an object that's an example of a form (just to use some philosophy 101 terms) and I critique the object and somehow I'm giving the impression that I'm critiquing the form.
For example: If I say "I didn't like Hellboy," and somebody responds by saying, "Well, you have to realize that comic book movies are always going to work a certain way; and, also, fantasy elements on screen are going to have a certain set of qualities, particularly when the movie delves into Christian theology and takes liberties with it." I would say, "No, you've got it wrong. I don't mind any of that. I love comic book movies and I like movies that come up with their own crazy Christian theology (like, for example, Constantine). It doesn't change the fact that Hellboy, specifically, was bad."
The same thing's going on here. We all watch a trailer for Avatar and some of us don't like it. I say it looks bad. Immediately the response (everywhere, not just on H'thon) is that we can't deal with a flat trailer for a 3d movie (even though the Beowulf trailer blew my socks off) or that we can't deal with trailers on a small computer screen (see a million examples to the contrary) or that we can't deal with CGI characters (see Gollum, Dr. Manhattan, Benjamin Button, Davy Jones etc. etc.) or that we can't deal with the overwhelming expectations (see Watchmen, Star Trek, The Dark Knight).
I'm not having any formal problems! I think it looks like a lame movie. It's got nothing to do with any of the definitional frameworks or the presentational drawbacks.
Sorry if I sound too harsh but I've been reading a lot about this trailer and everyone's nonsense is wearing me out. I know how to watch a trailer.
Seriously, that's why I like the nice, cozy confines of Horrorthon discussion. I can't handle comment threads at large. If I think something needs to be pointed out, I take a look at the first dozen or two of the 75 comments and the point has usually been made by somebody else.
The Avatar trailer is an excellent example of how the nerdverse reacts: like a huge school of feeding-frenzied sharks fighting over a lone salami sandwich. In no time flat everybody's reacting to everybody else's comments more than to the thing itself. Which is fine, in my opinion, when you've got a small environment like ours.
In my earlier comments I was trying to avoid actually blaming Lucas or Cameron for the overhype of 3D, and part of my reason was that hype takes on a life of its own with very little prompting. Nerds.
You guys kind of went crazy on the "story" idea and the thread created a Frankenstein that I will be happy to turn off now if I started it somehow?
Strong stories make a movie period. I don't think anyone here needs a lesson on that do they? Judging by some of the intelligent life I have seen in postings here my conjecture is we probably all get that. Pixar continues to show the live-action scifi movies and the animated ones that very point over and over.
My thought is that this movie will have a good solid story line and I just don't see how you can dissect a few frames of film scenes into a trailer and then have a good feel if it has a great story or not? It may be a big joke when it's finally out but we can only guess right now.
I agree with Jordan's critique of form but I didn't quite see how that's relevant at least in this thread as all you can really critique is if a trailer, which may or may not have anything to do with the form, was to our liking or not. So by judging form at this point aren't we kind of prescribing before the diagnosis of the actual patient? Sure the persistent cough the nurse told you about might mean you need to be put on oxygen for severe bronchitis but it could just be an allergy. :p
Enjoying the discussion....
It's relevant because, whenever there's a new trailer and it looks good (in other words, it looks like the movie it advertises is good), I say, "That looks awesome! Yeah!" and it's fine.
But when there's a new trailer and it looks bad, and i say, "That looks bad," all of a sudden it's my fault, because suddenly I don't understand how it's just a trailer and I'm only watching on my computer and I'm not seeing it in 3D or on the big screen, and can't I tell how many years of difficult labor obviously went into it, and who the hell do I think I am to judge somebody's work based on this measly two-minute extracted sample, and anyway why am I working so hard critiquing a mere trailer etc. etc. etc.
In other words, suddenly I'm caught in a formal debate just because I got a different result. Again, I know how to watch a trailer. Avatar looks lame in exactly the same way that Watchmen and Dark Knight (and, for that matter, Godzilla) looked cool. It's really not my fault for suddenly forgetting how to watch.
these are all totally fair points jordan. you're right and i'm sorry for jumping on that particular train.
Don't mistake my tone...I'm not mad! Just mildly frustrated in a totally friendly way. I'm enjoying the discussion too.
but going back to my other point, i do have it on direct word-of-mouth that the movie looked great. this is obviously no guarantee that the rest of it measures up, that the story works, that the writing is good.
Don't mean to frustrate you dude. Sorry if you felt that way. I don't know you at all and unless I'm mistaken I'm just some avatar here throwing a few thoughts of my own on another movie that will be gone in a few months. The last time I checked with myself I don't know if my thoughts amount to a hill of beans. ;)
If you were referring to me, I don't think I was telling you that you don't know how to look at a trailer, how would I know if you did, I don't even know you?
Besides that, it's not even a trailer, it's a teaser! :p But just to reiterate one of my previous comments, it was pretty lackluster for me after all the hype and in no way could come close the magnificent teaser for From Justin to Kelly With Love. :D
Again, it's all good. I'm not calling out anyone here; I'm just expressing a general frustration with the whole phenomenon. For some reason people get all caught up in this stuff (myself occasionally included) and it becomes a battleground for everyone's "cred." It's much more fun to argue about, you know, actual completed and released movies that we've all seen.
Cinemablend's take on seeing 15 minutes of footage on an IMAX screen,
Avatar looks like the best cartoon you’ve ever seen. The fifteen minutes we saw included a few moments of live action footage, with actors like Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver up on screen interacting, but most of it is entirely CGI and it’s reasonable to assume that most of the film will be as well. Much of the fifteen minute preview is spent watching computer generated, blue-skinned aliens interacting with brightly-colored, computer-generated environments. It’s good animation, don’t get me wrong. It’s good in much the same way that Pixar’s animation is good, with impressively detailed environments and great motion-capture work on the way the aliens move and jump and run (Though Cameron's animation doesn't seem up to the task of rippling muscles as arms flex and legs bend... maybe naked aliens wasn't the way to go.). But it’s still animation. There’s never a moment where you’ll sit there and think, for even a second, that you’re watching something real.
For all his wizardry, that’s something James Cameron still can’t accomplish, that’s something that can only really be accomplished by using an actual set. Aliens feels more real than this does, or ever will. For that matter even Peter Jackson’s computer generated Gollum looks more real, if only because Jackson had the good sense to mix his computer animated creatures in with live action sets. Gollum looks like he exists because the world around him actually does. It’s a lot like the 2001 computer animated movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It too made similarly photorealistic claims which, while it looked good, it was unable to deliver on. Nothing in the fifteen minutes of Avatar shown today is real or feels real. Avatar is a cartoon. Maybe it’ll be a really good cartoon, a feat of brilliant visual animation, but still animation.
The same is true of the much vaunted, brand new 3D technology used on the film. Avatar Day’s fifteen was shown in IMAX 3D and, if I’d never seen anything in IMAX 3D before then what I saw today would almost certainly have blown my mind. It might be the greatest thing I’d ever seen. But I have seen movies in IMAX 3D and I know what it’s all about and this is, at best, only a hairs breadth better than the other things you’ve already seen projected in front of your 3D glasses. It’s worth noting that in the fifteen we were shown Cameron’s film never resorts to any of the usual 3D, leap out of the screen gimmicks. Instead 3D is really only used to provide depth to what’s going on. It’s like looking out a window instead of watching something flat projected in front of you. It’s well done, but it’s been done before.
Audience reaction to the event seem to reflect that. Afterward the mixed crowd I saw it with in Dallas’s Cinemark IMAX engaged in a smattering of applause as the footage ended, abruptly and the lights came on. Then we all sat there for a moment confused, unsure whether it was over or if they was more to come. Nothing happened and so the somewhat befuddled audience filed out without pomp and circumstance. Avatar Day was delivered, on the whole, in a fairly turnstile fashion. People line up, go in and watch, muddle their way out and another group goes in. Aside from a special filmed introduction by James Cameron, Fox made little effort to really make the event special. The rather average nature of Avatar aside, the day itself came and went without much worth remembering. Hey Fox, how about a free t-shirt or a Titanic sing-a-long or something?
In the end I drove forty-five minutes to an IMAX theater to watch fifteen minutes of footage that’s not all that much more impressive than the trailer I’d seen the day before. The movie, I have every confidence, may be good. But it’s not the next Star Wars. Should there be an Avatar Day 2, I’m staying home. Yet when Avatar itself is finally in theaters I’ll be first line, holding a ticket, with my expectations appropriately lowered.
Excerpt from denofgeek,
What most annoys me about what I have seen is the apparent cynicism with which Cameron is trying to segue into making a completely different type of movie to any that he has made before; what's been sold at the expos and through the concept art leaks suggested some kind of hard science-fiction in the vein of his work in Aliens, The Abyss and the early Terminator movies.
Yet it seems in Avatar that all this gee-whiz science is merely there to draw the 'old crowd' in and provide some kind of rationale for a brightly-coloured fantasy-world which reflects the most emetic of the artwork plastered over teenage girls' MySpace pages. In my opinion, Avatar will prove to be Cameron's most determined grab for the young female market whose repeat-ticket sales on Titanic turned him from a mere Big Cheese to a cardinal force in Hollywood in 1998.
Is Worthington perhaps to face off against a 'boss' villain with a grey beard who, by cybernetic implants and a unique solar conversion system, is able to channel deadly rays through his hands? A wizard by any other name...
NTTAWT. I enjoyed the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and I'm not averse to the odd Pixar flick - I just wasn't expecting that atmosphere from Avatar; not only has the very little pre-publicity for the movie (until now) painted a different picture, but parts of the movie itself seem to be a diversionary tactic from the kind of film Cameron has really made - for the purposes of trailers and other publicity.
There are other issues: I presume there's a reason why the Na'vi, apparently an alien race, all speak English. Babel fishes, universal translators, who knows...?
I presume there's also a reason they are all bright blue (which is 'anti-camouflage' in a green forest-world, from a Darwinian point of view) and faintly resembling refugees from Cats.
I presume additionally that the elegant and apparently universal unrealistic body shape of the Na'vi will be available as a morph in Poser. The production design of Pandora seems specifically made to appeal to the sensibilities of young children in general and thirteen year-old girls in particular.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of this. I just have a feeling that I have wasted a year's excitement on Lion King In Space, a prospect which would not have had my heart racing quite as much as 'the new science-fiction film from James Cameron' did.
I stand to be corrected, awed and generally humbled, and I truly hope that I am. I also believe that a lot of fantasy fans that were only semi-interested in Avatar, but have since seen the fifteen minutes of footage, are now ravening for December 18th. And these guys (and most especially girls) are young, with money to burn - Hollywood's lodestar!
So no, I don't think Avatar will be sci-fi's Heaven's Gate, at least not in terms of box-office returns on its $180 million budget (plus development costs for the new 3D cameras). But I also find it hard to believe now that it will be a film of significant merit, particularly against the body of Cameron's previous work. Worst of all, I don't believe that it will be a 'science-fiction film' any more than Star Wars or Robots is (and actually, a lot less).
James Cameron has, I think, seen and heeded the signs of the times. If he's innovating, it seems to be only in the field of 3D movie presentation. I guess no-one ever broke even making hard sci-fi...
Well, the same authors who penned those last two impressions thought White Chicks was groundbreaking. :D
Come on, Nowandzen...they're being much more reasonable than you're giving them credit for.
That was a joke silly. I actually had read that first one from Cinemablend when it came out and it really seemed to reverberate most of the more intelligent impressions I had read. I actually agree with you on most of your thoughts here but I loves me a good debate when you can get some good thoughts around an idea.
My honest first reaction to the whole teaser was hmmm... Cameron may have been close with his comments 10 years ago but too much has changed for him to be making his "Matrix" referenced claims and backing it up with this.
I'm a massive sci-fi geek, started reading Bradbury and Asmivov when I was around 9, and so I really want movies like this to be good for my own selfish experience. And by good I mean something that has a great story that can unearth fresh perspectives on modern life by taking us to another dimension. Sometimes things you just couldn't make the same impact without the metaphor. Visuals? As long as visuals don't tip the scale with the suspension of disbelief too far, help me continue the dream you're creating, at least something believable. I'm ok with the notion that I can't expect a gollum like transition from most films however, you claim you are revealing the next gen to us then bring me something like that was done in Clone Wars with no satisfaction.
So I'm still holding out hopeful but not excited. Not even excited enough to see it until it's been out for a couple weeks at this point.
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