everybody so clueless about film

Most people are clueless about film, that is - the films you're into. General public aren't really movie buffs, and a lot of movie buffs are just buffs..Snatch, Deadpool, Thor, etc..the typical movies that rake in tons of cash, because they appeal to people's interest in fast and now, and not about ppl's interest to meditate on film as an almost holistic way of watching them.
There are people out there who would love the movies I do. I've met a few. It's not always easy to plan movie night, though. That's a rarity.

BTW, I'll watch Alien any day of the week. It's one of the best sci-fi thrillers ever made.

I've reviewed 4 of your top 5, all very favorably! I'm your buddy!

The last movie I saw was Brimstone.

Two very general responses:

First, I think it's perfectly okay that people don't always take movies all that seriously as an art form or only use them for superficial entertainment or distraction. Think of all the art forms in the world, and then think of how many you feel informed about. If you go to a museum and react to a painting or a sculpture, you might sound, to people highly informed about those mediums, the same way people who love Transformers sound to you, or most of us. Granted, most people who take movies seriously as an art form at least realize their ignorance about other art forms, but it's worth remembering that nobody is an expert on everything. It's okay for the world to have people who take movies really seriously, and those who don't, because everyone has things they don't think very deeply about even though others do.

Second, and this is related to the above: the overwhelming majority of people who talk about how and why they found this site, say they went looking for a place like it because none of their friends thought about movies as often or as deeply as they did. That's pretty much why it exists! That's the beauty (and sometimes the ugly side, frankly) of the Internet.

How did Avatar age so poorly anyway? It was a huge hit when it came out, and now it seems everyone to think of it as a really cheesy movie even though it's only been 10 years since it was a hit.

I think that's somewhat normal with films whose primary virtue is technological. Everyone's blown away by the visuals, but those become less impressive over time relative to artistry and story.

I think more critical moviegoers tend to shape opinion disproportionately, as well, the further from a movie's release we get. So a film can do very well at the box office but not be well-regarded later because the people who continue talking about it a decade later are people who take film more seriously, and are less likely to like it.

I'll say the first point is really really relevant here, too, because this film was obviously the type that had to be seen in the theaters. I thought it was pretty bad, but I still paid to see it on the big screen.

Avatar was partly a beautiful idea with the parts about the ecology of the alien world, with all it's wonders. But that beautiful idea was mucked up when they had to include humans in the story with the old tired idea of corporate greed and evil space marines come to destroy the planet.

They should have made Avatar a pure CG film with no humans, only the aliens and their world, maybe a coming of age story. That would have made it much better. But the film maker sucked up to profits so included a dumbed down idea of evil humans destroying the planet...and that's been done a million times before. I see Avatar as 50% great and 50% stale.

But that's just it though. The idea of corporate greed is old and tired you say, but District 9 for example came out that same year with corporate greed and aliens, and that one seems to have aged better, even though it uses the same old tired idea.

District 9 was more about apartheid than corporate greed. It was also a much better, more thoughtful film. Tired ideas seem a lot more tired when you just invoke them, without saying anything interesting (or in an interesting way) about them. Avatar just paint-by-numbers themes and villains, which exacerbates how well-tread the theme.

Avatar wasn't well written in terms of technical efforts either.


I'm on about the exposition mainly. Normally a movie will give a hint of something, which then pays off in the 3rd act and makes the audience go "oh yeah, I remember that!".
Ghostbusters for example, they mention crossing the streams once. Only once. And it's a throwaway line based around a safety talk for the user of a proton pack.


Total Recall is brilliant at it as well. In the first act, you're told the entire plot... but they do it in such a fashion that it's not obvious.
Then, in act 2 they give you the entire 3rd act of the movie in a speech... and again, they do it in such a fashion that it's not obvious.


Avatar has a number of lines of dialogue, that are blatantly thrown into the viewer's face in such an obvious fashion, that immediately and knowingly, you know everything about the 3rd act before the 1st act has barely started.
This is simply down to bad writing.


The biggest example in Avatar, was when N'Tiri says "My grandfather rode on the back of one of these creatures, and when he did, he united all the tribes against a common enemy"
On my first viewing of Avatar, I knew straight away that Jake would ride on the back of one of these creatures, and when he does, he will unite all the tribes against a common enemy.

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That's just how it is man. People who aren't really into film aren't really gonna be looking at much other than the ones everyone and their mom knows about.

If people are saying 'This is weird' after every movie you show them, then you're going too fast. You have to ease them into the weirder stuff so they don't mind it as much.

But I thought the villains were suppose to be paint-by-numbers, cause in real life, those corporate greed types have paint-by-number personalities, and visions, which is why people are like that, cause they have paint-by-number visions. So I thought it was intentional.

But other movies do this too, and are still well liked today. Like in The Matrix for example, early on Morpheus tells Neo that there is a prophecy that the one will do this and this, etc. Then the one does all that, so you know how it's going to end. So why is it okay for movies like The Matrix but bad for Avatar?

Because The Matrix didn't do it in an obvious fashion, and they also threw in a fakey in act 2 telling the audience that Neo wasn't The One.


Avatar's writing felt amateur in that it was obvious.
The set-up for the dialogue talking about her grandfather was just bad. It threw the 3rd act into your lap.


RoboCop (sorry about bring up RoboCop again)... RoboCop does it in act 2 with the data-spike.
It's just a gag. A prop.
He uses it to access the Police files.
Then, in act 3 when he's fighting Boddicker... Robo gets trapped, and as the audience is thinking "how will the hero escape?"... boom! Data-spike!
Leaving the audience feeling wow.


If RoboCop had been written by the same people that wrote Avatar... there would have been a dialogue heavy scene in act 1 that brought up the data-spike, talking about how it's a data-spike, and also a close combat weapon even though it's not really intended to be used as a weapon.
The audience would immediately think "He's gonna use that later against a bad guy"

Oh okay, I thought Avatar also had the fakey act 2 though, where almost all the aliens were dead and the main character was not going to be able to ride that creature.

I didn't think the spike in Robocop was that well done. That's like having a movie where a cop uses a laptop to access the villains file, and then later, beats him to death with the same laptop. So what?

Real people are almost never that simple, no.

Don't think it'd make for an interesting story even if they were, though.

Oh okay, I thought the reason why the villain's lacked depth was intentional cause greedy evil people in real life, are shallow people who lack depth. I thought maybe that added to the movie by showing how shallow they really are, and not trying to force some sort of deeper meaning in their personalities.

But even if that is a weakness, I still like Avatar as a popcorn action movie, nothing more.

I imagine James Cameron thinks the corporate world is full of those kinds of people, sure (he thinks very little of most people), but I think that's just his own shallow view of them.

People who sometimes lack depth in real life, of course, but even those people are deeper than the kinds of cartoons you find in movies like Avatar. Even if this were not the case, even if it were both accurate and intentional, a thousand films have already used the same generic greedy corporate stooge character as their bad guy.

Well in personal experience, I have met people who are just as shallow and cartoon-ish as the villains in Avatar, so maybe my view of villainous people is pretty bleak. But just because enough movies have done that, since when do villains have to be human qualities now in movies? I mean the villains in Mad Max: Fury Road also are also shallow, and that movie was a much bigger hit than Avatar it seems.

Huh... deja vu.