James Cameron Speaks Up against Avatar Trolls: “They See the Movie Again and Shut the F*ck Up”

[Grimlakin]

As I remember everybody was raving about it, it was the talk of the town and there were only two kinds of people at my work: The ones who saw it, and the ones who wanted to see it. Except of course for me.

It was like a virus that infected everyone and made them watch it.

But nobody could point to anything about it why it was so good, it seems to me that they only said it was great because everybody else said it was great. So it might have been the greatest lie in history where people just pretended to like it, to not be excluded from the "cool club".

The movie is visually stunning, set a new standard for how to do 3d right, showed that a digital movie could be very successful if done right, and broke new ground on many technologies.

But lets throw the baby out with the bathwater here and claim it was all bullshit. That's fine too.

 

[MadMummy76]

The movie is visually stunning, set a new standard for how to do 3d right, showed that a digital movie could be very successful if done right, and broke new ground on many technologies.

But lets throw the baby out with the bathwater here and claim it was all bullshit. That's fine too.

Yeah, and it ruined movies forever by making the glaringly fake CGI acceptable in blockbusters. Before that CGI was used sparingly when absolutely needed. After avatar practical effects started to be replaced with CGI more and more, and now we are at the point where even the set is fake.
All because Avatar has shown that the average consumer doesn't care that it isn't even remotely convincing.

I think the movie industry needs a hard reboot, and a way back to actually making movies, and not faking everything with CGI. I think the runaway costs of movies is partly due to making everything cgi whether it is necessary or not. CGI is not cheap. Blowing up a car in real life probably costs less than doing it with CGI if you include the costs of modeling the car, digitizing the environment and making the explosion effects.

So in a way Avatar is the root cause of the problem. So I'd not just throw it out, I'd stomp on it.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

I think the movie industry needs a hard reboot, and a way back to actually making movies, and not faking everything with CGI.

Poor Dark Crystal Age of Resistance tried to do that and was canceled after its 1st season on Netflix despite winning awards for its puppetry. They said it cost too much to continue. It blended puppetry with CGI. I'm not saying it was fantastic but we enjoyed it and were looking forward to the 2nd season.

 

[Zarathustra]

As I remember everybody was raving about it, it was the talk of the town and there were only two kinds of people at my work: The ones who saw it, and the ones who wanted to see it. Except of course for me.

It was like a virus that infected everyone and made them watch it.

But nobody could point to anything about it why it was so good, it seems to me that they only said it was great because everybody else said it was great. So it might have been the greatest lie in history where people just pretended to like it, to not be excluded from the "cool club".

Huh. I remember it being a blip, if anything.

Like some ads on TV with co-marketing (pictures of blue people on burger king cups or something?) but other than that it went by entirely unnoticed to me. No buzz among my friends, no one at work talking about it, no one asking if I want to go see it, etc. etc.

Again, possibly age/location dependent.

 

[MadMummy76]

Poor Dark Crystal Age of Resistance tried to do that and was canceled after its 1st season on Netflix despite winning awards for its puppetry. They said it cost too much to continue. It blended puppetry with CGI. I'm not saying it was fantastic but we enjoyed it and were looking forward to the 2nd season.

Practical effects or good cgi won't make a movie. But bad cgi can ruin one.

That said I'm willing to look past bad CGI in a TV series, for example I liked Dark Matter where cgi was mediocre at best. But fake looking cgi is inexcusable to me in a billion dollar blockbuster.

 

[Zarathustra]

Practical effects or good cgi won't make a movie. But bad cgi can ruin one.

That said I'm willing to look past bad CGI in a TV series, for example I liked Dark Matter where cgi was mediocre at best. But fake looking cgi is inexcusable to me in a billion dollar blockbuster.

You know, I remember back when the Phantom Menace came out, noticing that all of the CGI in recent movies was starting to have a very similar quality to it, and I remember thinking that I actually liked the old school physical scale model effects (when done right) better. The lighting just looked more natural to me.

I havent thought much about it since. Maybe CGI got better since then or maybe my brain just got used to it.

 

[MadMummy76]

You know, I remember back when the Phantom Menace came out, noticing that all of the CGI in recent movies was starting to have a very similar quality to it, and I remember thinking that I actually liked the old school physical scale model effects (when done right) better. The lighting just looked more natural to me.

I havent thought much about it since. Maybe CGI got better since then or maybe my brain just got used to it.

CGI in movies should be undetectable. My tolerance levels for it was tripped when even the cars were CGI in Fast and the Furious 4 or 5, IDK which. I even had an argument with an actual CGI artist who worked on big budget movies. Same guy from whom I know that crunch in the gaming industry is child's play compared to crunch in the VFX field.

This is a good video on how CGI should be used: