AVATAR

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Mike Manson

Still Livin'
Apr 16, 2005
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Saw this last night. Was alright for the 3D and effects. I can understand why people love this movie.

I rather watch 5 Dollars A Day again instead of this though lol.

But to each his own.
 
Nov 7, 2002
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It took you a while.

You finally made it back to the movie theater. How was it?
How are the movie theaters in CHINA? Packed?

Do they have IMAX in China?

GREAT 3D in this movie.
 
Nov 7, 2002
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saw the bootleg and it was pretty good. Is it worth seeing imax 3d?
LoL, You are still having doubts.
Have you ever seen a 3D movie?
This is the best one ever, and it's in IMAX.
In my city it's still sold out on weekends.
Don't waste the opportunity to see it in all its glory, the way it was conceived, IMAX 3D.
Let us know if you noticed a difference.

I haven't seen it but a lot of people are talking about how "epic" it was.
EPIC...perfect description.
 
Feb 7, 2006
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Sorry to bring this thread back, but I remember watching this story on CNN and just thought it was interesting because first it's dumbasses killing themselves over a movie, second: I scribed about mediation and it's real world affects while watching Avatar, and third: a lot of great theorist spoke about this kind of phenomena. Anyway, here is the news article.



(CNN) -- James Cameron's completely immersive spectacle "Avatar" may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.

On the fan forum site "Avatar Forums," a topic thread entitled "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible," has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope. The topic became so popular last month that forum administrator Philippe Baghdassarian had to create a second thread so people could continue to post their confused feelings about the movie.

"I wasn't depressed myself. In fact the movie made me happy ," Baghdassarian said. "But I can understand why it made people depressed. The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don't have here on Earth. I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed."

A post by a user called Elequin expresses an almost obsessive relationship with the film.

"That's all I have been doing as of late, searching the Internet for more info about 'Avatar.' I guess that helps. It's so hard I can't force myself to think that it's just a movie, and to get over it, that living like the Na'vi will never happen. I think I need a rebound movie," Elequin posted.

A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site "Naviblue" that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie.
Video: Depressed after 'Avatar'?

"Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it," Mike posted. "I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.' "

Other fans have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality.

Cameron's movie, which has pulled in more than $1.4 billion in worldwide box office sales and could be on track to be the highest grossing film of all time, is set in the future when the Earth's resources have been pillaged by the human race. A greedy corporation is trying to mine the rare mineral unobtainium from the planet Pandora, which is inhabited by a peace-loving race of 10-foot tall, blue-skinned natives called the Na'vi.

In their race to mine for Pandora's resources, the humans clash with the Na'vi, leading to casualties on both sides. The world of Pandora is reminiscent of a prehistoric fantasyland, filled with dinosaur-like creatures mixed with the kinds of fauna you may find in the deep reaches of the ocean. Compared with life on Earth, Pandora is a beautiful, glowing utopia.

Ivar Hill posts to the "Avatar" forum page under the name Eltu. He wrote about his post-"Avatar" depression after he first saw the film earlier this month.

"When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed ... gray. It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning," Hill wrote on the forum. "It just seems so ... meaningless. I still don't really see any reason to keep ... doing things at all. I live in a dying world."
Reached via e-mail in Sweden where he is studying game design, Hill, 17, explained that his feelings of despair made him desperately want to escape reality.

"One can say my depression was twofold: I was depressed because I really wanted to live in Pandora, which seemed like such a perfect place, but I was also depressed and disgusted with the sight of our world, what we have done to Earth. I so much wanted to escape reality," Hill said.

Cameron's special effects masterpiece is very lifelike, and the 3-D performance capture and CGI effects essentially allow the viewer to enter the alien world of Pandora for the movie's 2½-hour running time, which only lends to the separation anxiety some individuals experience when they depart the movie theater.

"Virtual life is not real life and it never will be, but this is the pinnacle of what we can build in a virtual presentation so far," said Dr. Stephan Quentzel, psychiatrist and Medical Director for the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. "It has taken the best of our technology to create this virtual world and real life will never be as utopian as it seems onscreen. It makes real life seem more imperfect."
Fans of the movie may find actor Stephen Lang, who plays the villainous Col. Miles Quaritch in the film, an enemy of the Na'vi people and their sacred ground, an unlikely sympathizer. But Lang says he can understand the connection people are feeling with the movie.

"Pandora is a pristine world and there is the synergy between all of the creatures of the planet and I think that strikes a deep chord within people that has a wishfulness and a wistfulness to it," Lang said. "James Cameron had the technical resources to go along with this incredibly fertile imagination of his and his dream is built out of the same things that other peoples' dreams are made of."
The bright side is that for Hill and others like him -- who became dissatisfied with their own lives and with our imperfect world after enjoying the fictional creation of James Cameron -- becoming a part of a community of like-minded people on an online forum has helped them emerge from the darkness.

"After discussing on the forums for a while now, my depression is beginning to fade away. Having taken a part in many discussions concerning all this has really, really helped me," Hill said. "Before, I had lost the reason to keep on living -- but now it feels like these feelings are gradually being replaced with others."

Quentzel said creating relationships with others is one of the keys to human happiness, and that even if those connections are occurring online they are better than nothing.

"Obviously there is community building in these forums," Quentzel said. "It may be technologically different from other community building, but it serves the same purpose."

Within the fan community, suggestions for battling feelings of depression after seeing the movie include things like playing "Avatar" video games or downloading the movie soundtrack, in addition to encouraging members to relate to other people outside the virtual realm and to seek out positive and constructive activities.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html
 
Nov 7, 2002
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^^^
Don't be sorry.

Good post. Good read.

Avatar will be the highest grossing movie of all time...so far.

It's on another level.

You can see what it does to people.
 
Mar 18, 2003
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I saw the movie yesterday. A few things I will say, the visuals, as has been stated numerous times, were amazing. I have only seen one other movie in 3D before this (that one blew ass) and I did not notice anything "epic" in that department with this one. When I refer to visuals I am speaking in terms of the movie in regular format without the 3D. The story was pretty bland but did have some interesting points. I would write more but before seeing it I read Dhadnot's review, came back and re-read it and it sums up my thoughts very well. Overall the movie was good.

Visually and technology-wise…amazing. The film did not start the 3d revolution people have been raving about, but I will say Cameron might have thrown the first brick.

The story is a hackneyed one… The greedy, technologically superior -yet emotionally/spiritually weak- colonizers attempt to take from the primitive –spiritually sound- aboriginals, and lose one of their kind who defects to the ways of the natives and assumes their goals. Standard Sci-fi…eh, whatever.

I didn’t give a shit about that, what was awesome about the narrative was the inclusion of the mechs, avatars, and the physical neural connection the Na’vi’ had with an omniscient planet (in the vein of Solaris). What’s so cool about that? The question of mediation, a question that arrives when we indulge in any media…how is my experienced being filtered through certain processes? Even though we watch the film as spectators, we, as the viewer, take Jake Sully as an avatar, who has his Na’vi as an avatar, and when he plugs into the geo-neural network or bio-neural networks of Na’vi, take on yet another avatar. This causes multiple steps of mediation, mirroring the process, taking place when we sit in a movie theater and watch lead characters, et cetera. This exploration of mediation, voyeurism in the form of an avatar brings up questions for the filmmaking in general and science-fiction as a genre and its purpose.

Science-fiction quandaries that were raised because of the avatar… what is a true human, do we have souls, the morality of “creating” life and many more. There were a lot more interesting questions I think the film brought up (excluding any morality questions concerning nations raping and pillaging others), it provided a cognitive experience for those into film and filmmaking and not just movies.

I would give it a B, for introducing new technology to the film world, looking and sounding amazing, for having a boring story but still hitting on some good questions sci-fi and film wise.
 

Nuttkase

not nolettuce
Jun 5, 2002
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at the welfare mall
"Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it," Mike posted. "I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.' "

 
Apr 25, 2002
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Why 'Avatar' is actually the 26th biggest movie

Boxoffice is arguably more straightforward to report than TV ratings. You have this weekly Top 10 list of returns, you compare each movie to the other movies. TV ratings are a murky swamp where one network's hit is another network's flop and context is not just a factor, but often the entire story.

Yet one respect in which boxoffice reporting is pretty odd -- emphasizing ticket grosses yet rarely mentioning ticket sales. That would be like always reporting how many ad dollars sold off "Lost" and not mentioning the number of viewers that actually watched the show. With everybody reporting how "Avatar" is The Biggest Movie of All Time based on grosses ($1.859 billion and counting), it's important to remember how rising ticket prices skew the returns.

Here's the Top 20 movies of all time ... by number of tickets sold:

1 "Gone With the Wind" (1939) 202,044,600
2 "Star Wars" (1977) 178,119,600
3 "The Sound of Music" (1965) 142,415,400
4 "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) 141,854,300
5 "The Ten Commandments" (1956) 131,000,000
6 "Titanic" (1997) 128,345,900
7 "Jaws" (1975) 128,078,800
8 "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) 124,135,500
9 "The Exorcist" (1973) 110,568,700
10 "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937) 109,000,000
11 "101 Dalmatians" (1961) 99,917,300
12 "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) 98,180,600
13 "Ben-Hur" (1959) 98,000,000
14 "Return of the Jedi" (1983) 94,059,400
15 "The Sting" (1973) 89,142,900
16 "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981) 88,141,900
17 "Jurassic Park" (1993) 86,205,800
18 "The Graduate" (1967) 85,571,400
19 "Star Wars: Episode I" (1999) 84,825,800
20 "Fantasia" (1941) 83,043,500

"Avatar," despite topping the worldwide gross list, by and by, is only No. 26 on the ticket sales list with 76,421,000 sold ... at least, so far...
 
Mar 18, 2003
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"Gone With the Wind" (1939) 202,044,600

That's crazy when you consider the U.S. population in 1940 was 132,164,569. I know this includes international ticket sales but it is interesting nonetheless. Then again, back then it was probably the only movie playing.
 
May 9, 2002
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"Gone With the Wind" (1939) 202,044,600

That's crazy when you consider the U.S. population in 1940 was 132,164,569. I know this includes international ticket sales but it is interesting nonetheless. Then again, back then it was probably the only movie playing.
Yeah, there are always variables to consider when talking about ticket sales over a span of 70 years. Things were very different back then, but still....200m is A LOT.