A perfect summary of Avatar...

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belal50_53

New member
Unwittingly, my girlfriend perfectly summed up my feelings towarRAB Avatar when I was watching the trailer. She came in the room half way through, and straight away said "Is that a new Playstation game?". That summed it up perfectly to me - it just looks like an extended cut scene from a PS3 game, but then sometimes there's real actors in there too. To be honest, this film, in my opinion, looks pants. Or maybe I'm the odd one out here and it's actually genius...


Dave
 
It certainly looks like low-brow, dumbed down, badly written, typical James Cameron rubbish - but it's unfair to judge it based on a trailer. :)
 
Maybe it's good, story-wise, obviously I don't know that yet, but it's the Playstation-y look of it that puts me off, the fact that it looks like a game and not a movie. But hey, too each his/her own!
 
CGI done well though. If it was CGI badly done, fair enough, but face it, CGI is here to stay, physical fx are becoming more and more expensive, and the bigger the idea, the less practical the use of 'practical' FX will be, there is still room for both of course, and if balanced well they can produce some glorious work. What would you do to improve on the work displayed in the trailer?
 
The thing is, I don't think there is such thing as good CGI any more.

The CGI in Jurassic Park is a million times better than anything we get in the year 2009.
 
Reading stuff like this annoys me. Because you really dont realise how much CGI is in movies nowadays most of it goes completely unnoticed, that's how good it is!

Fantasy CGI is always going to have a hard time, because the viewer automatically knows its not real because its nothing like they've seen before. But the amount of cgi lanRABcapes, buildings and people that appear in every day movies (rom coms, period dramas, thrillers...) that goes unnoticed would shock you.
 
I was pretty underwhelmed by the Trailer to be honest.

I want to see it to see what all the fuss is about, but I just can't see that trailer turning it into the massive hit that I keep reading it's going to be. It looked like a load of nonsense.
 
People mention Jurassic Park at lot. The key thing with JP is how FEW CGI shots there are. There's a lot more practical effects shots than CGI, unlike now where it's the other way around, very few practical. 90% of the time the T-Rex is the huge animatronic.

Guillermo del Toro seems determined to use plenty of practical elements in the new Hobbit film. You just can't beat seeing something 'real' whether it's a minature, animatronics, brilliant makeup and prosthetics. CGI should always be used as the icing on the cake as opposed to the whole cake, because...who the hell just wants icing?? Too much CGI and it feels like a game cutscene. Suddenly it's not a film anymore.
 
The thing I have against CGI is that it looks cheap.
You can picture a bunch of geeks, tappity tapping at some bl**dy keyboard, then patting 'emselves on the back as to how real it all looks (it DOESN'T!!!)

Compare this to, ooh, say "Space:1999".
YES we know they are models, but at least we can be grateful for all the time, effort (and SKILL) that went into creating them.

I often say that a lot of trailers look just like ps2 games.
Sadly, this becomes more true each passing day:(
 
cheap ?

have you seen king kong (the ape himself)

lord of the rings( gollum comes to mind)

any number of movies, the tidal wave, in Deep Impact, the pseudopod in The Abyss, Transformers, so many instances exist where CGI looks awesome and certainly surpasses optical and the old visibility of matte lines, back projection etc

:confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:
 
typical james cameron rubbish?? terminator, terminator 2, titanic, the abyss, aliens....

i am very anti CGI and i hated the first cheap looking trailer BUT i am willing to give JC the benefit of the doubt.

i thought titanic sounded rubbish - admittedly a lot of people think it is cheesy but i find it 'pure cinema'. there are some films where you just have to let yourself go with them and that is one of them

JC has yet to make a film i can't watch again and again - aliens, titanic and T2 are in my all time top 10

i saw the teaser on the big screen and i did actually think 'hmmm looks a bit better'

i think on a big screen with good 3D you'll soon forget the CGI (it isn't ALL cgi either..) and immerse yourself in it

i have gone from dreading it to being desperate to see it

i have even booked the IMAX for the first time
 
Spot on.

If it had been a trailer for a new game I would have said it looks excellent but for a film I think it looks pretty naff and fake looking. Trailer just leaves me cold, I think i'll pass.

I Caught a bit of Sith the other day and I had forgotten just how bad it looked, Clones was even worse, I felt like I was watching a computer game. Personally I find these films devoid of any emotion and this is why they'll age badly, effects might look great at the time but if that's all a film has going for it then you're going to watch it in the future and think wow this really is crap.

My problem with CGI a lot of the time is the smaller things though, I feel it comes down to pure laziness on the directors behalf rather than cost. It wouldn't have cost anymore to get hold of a half a dozen scorpions in Crystal Skull and have them crawl on Mutt but it would have looked a million times better than the rather obvious looking CGI ones that we got.

Obviously they couldn't be arsed with that little extra effort though.
 
Going by the trailer it is basically Dances with Wolves in space with aliens and a recycling of the marines from Aliens.
Halo 'borrowed' the latter for its game so any CGI fest like this just looks like a glossy Xbox game intro.
At least the Avatar game devs didn't have to strain themselves too much in adapting it.
 
Most people on this thread seem to be assuming the CGI has been designed to look like real life and failed.

Perhaps the CGI has intentionally been given a more fantasy/cartoony look. It wouldnt be the first movie to do so.

If the CGI has been intentionally designed to look like that - it makes no more sense to criticise it for "not looking real" than it would be to criticise Toy Story for the same reason.
 
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