First look at James Cameron's Movie: Avatar | Hacker News Reader

First look at James Cameron's Movie: Avatar

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17 pointsthrawn18 comments

I don't like to read about movies that are supposed to be good.

It raises my expectations, and then I enjoy the movie less when I see it.

I think there are some in the movie world who take note of this. I think the previews for The Dark Knight were made with this in mind. In the first trailers there is very little pre-view and much more building of anticipation without building expectation.

If it takes ten years to truly learn a programming language, it might as well take ten years to make a true movie.

Perhaps it takes ten years to learn the language of film. In fact, it almost certainly does. But if you're spending ten years developing every product you launch, you're doing it wrong.

I disagree. If it takes me 10 years to make something that is truly unique and useful, then so be it. I would rather make something that is wonderful and amazing than a thousand half-baked attempts. There is something to be said about the dedication behind a decade-long masterpiece, regardless of its public reception. The launch-early, launch-often mentality works great in some fields, not all. Dali took years to paint each of his large paintings, like The Hallucinogenic Toreador ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hallucinogenic_Toreador ).

I would definitely want Apple to release updates to iPhone often and web apps to crank out new features frequently. But I wouldn't be so demanding when it comes to other fields, especially art.

James Cameron has earned the right to take as long as he wants on his projects; he has one of the highest signal to noise ratios in Hollywood.

What other films has he made, out of curiosity? This is the first I've heard of his name.

Notable films from: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000116/#director

Titanic (1997) Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) The Abyss (1989) Aliens (1986) The Terminator (1984)

Ugh. Not the sort of person I'd expect to suddenly turn around and release a good movie. This story re: the graphics was interesting, though. I might give Avatar a shot.

> Not the sort of person I'd expect to suddenly turn around and release a good movie.

Well, you shouldn't dismiss his movies just because some of them fall into the action/horror category.

In fact, you might want to consider watching them.

I've seen a few of the movies on that list. Titanic in particular stands out as a non-action/horror film on the list that was resoundingly mediocre.

The thing about a film like Titanic (and most other films in the epic genre) is you know the ending: the boat sinks, almost everybody dies. 'Personal heroism overwhelmed by unfortunate circumstances' is a pathetic narrative, in the most literal sense of the word pathetic: pathos is a literary device of reflecting a characters problems in their environment, eg it starts raining to show someone is sad. Normally this is terminally cheesy, but when its set in the context of a real event it's rather different. Films like this are not meant to leave you feeling satisfied.

You're welcome to email me if you want to vent on what you disliked about it. I work in film/TV so I'm quite interested in people's point of view.

>>> Titanic (1997) Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) The Abyss (1989) Aliens (1986) The Terminator (1984)

>> Not the sort of person I'd expect to suddenly turn around and release a good movie.

> I've seen a few of the movies on that list.

Well, why didn't you comment on the movies themselves then, instead of saying something that made it look like you were only making guesses as to the nature of James Cameron as a director based on seeing a list of movies he's made? :p

Yep, Titanic was what it was, but as such, not a particularly poor performance either.

Terminator 2, on the other hand, is one of the most epic movies ever made. You should have seen it in a movie theater when you were 14 years old.

Have you seen Terminator 2? If not, watch it :)

I know movies run on hype, and I know that I'm feeding the monster.

But still -- I'm really looking forward to this movie. Cameron is an excellent director, and the new technology angle is potentially jaw-dropping.

If nothing else it should be a great flick. Maybe it will be totally incredible. There's no downside to this.

The problem with CGI is that it (almost) always looks fake. Cloverfield was a good movie until that goofy CGI monster came into frame. If Cameron figured out how to make CGI look real and I mean really real, Avatar will truly be a breakthrough.

Jurassic Park succeeded I felt.

Jurassic Park didn't make CGI look real; it just used real-looking models that happened to move.

It sounds like Cameron may have beat the uncanny valley...

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