Marvel Cinematic Universe

[Daniel]

Yeah, that last episode was wild. The unique TV era appropriate themes are one of favorite features. Only two more episode left to premier! They should be a doozy.

[gaastra]

It's done. Dances with ferngully has beat endgame. It's back in first place again thanks to re-release!

https://deadline.com/2021/03/avatar-ove ... 234713788/

[Bill1978]

I've always wondered how Avatar's BO would have been if it was the first big blockbuster to use 3D (so to speak) and the ticket prices that went with it. I feel most people went for the novelty not because they actually thought the movie was amazing.

Also hate how re-issues are used to count towards the title but that's just me. I imagine End Game will get a re-issue at some stage in the future and claim the title back.

[EricJ]

I've always wondered how Avatar's BO would have been if it was the first big blockbuster to use 3D (so to speak) and the ticket prices that went with it.

You mean, if it was Polar Express...Boy, there's a choice of poisons.

(Although most at the time treated it like it WAS the first blockbuster to use 3D, since everything else was a kiddie or B-studio action movie.)

[Bill1978]

That WAS was meant to be WASN'T.

And while there were movies in 3D before Avatar, I always felt the marketing for the movie strongly pushed people to feel like 3D was the preferred choice to truly enjoy the movie. Whereas everything else was promoted like if you want, see it in 3D but we really don't care. Whereas Avatar was all 'See it in 3D or you will regret it!!!'

And typing that all up made me wonder is 3D even an option these days for movie experience? I have no idea as I never chose 3D due to my colour blindness.

[Ben]

I hate Avatar. I think it’s a really dumb movie. There’s a film called The Squaw Man, widely acknowledged as being the first "feature film" (at an hour quarter), and its about a guy who saves one of the Utes tribe females from a Wyoming outlaw, gets her back to her people, though is later injured, nursed back to health by the woman he saved and, whaddayaknow, they fall in love, and when the outlaws come, he fights with her people against them.

I remember sitting in Avatar, being really quite bored with the story, the stupid terms, and pretty much the whole predictability yawn factor, and my thought was that, after 100 years, Hollywood was still telling, basically, that exact same story.

But my friend, who actually basically agreed, said, "yeah, but the 3D was amazing"! Case in point: good marketing and a gimmick really *can* make a turd seem polished as anything. Of course I’ll see the 26 unnecessary (and unwanted?) sequels, but probably not until they hit TV or Disney+. I shan’t be rushing back to a theatre to see more of the same.

[gaastra]

I can't see 3d good so i didn't care about it n 3d (hollywood forgets there are people who can't see 3d. Man i'm glad 3d is dead again) and saw it in 2d from redbox on dvd.

So the film had to stand on it's own without the 3d stunt. Found it "ok". Trouble is i saw it twice aready. It was beat for beat a rip-off of ferngully and dances with wolfs with a little enemy mine thrown in.

It's not fun when you are watching it for the first time and say to yourself "I saw this aready!" It's the same with joker ripping off taxi driver.

I do own the blu-ray (and used the digital code on my vudu) but not going to lie. I have not touched or watched it at all once after these years of buying it. It's just sitting on the shelf collecting dust!

I have seen endgame a few times but i don't care to see avatar. Without the 3d stunt it's just a boring ferngully rip-off. To me it was the 3d only that got it that much money as the story is just swiped from other films.

[Randall]

Avatar absolutely succeeded as it did due to 3D marketing. There was the effects work, too, and the motion capture blue folk; but 3D tickets drove up its bounty considerably.

Let's face it, though--- There are no new ideas out there. Everything is a variation on what has come before, with few exceptions. (e.g. WandaVision had a great hook, but in the end it was good versus evil, with a theme of great personal loss and mourning.) The Sqaw Man begat Dances with Wolves (and a couple of progresive westerns prior to that), which begat Pocahontas, which begat Avatar. Avatar doesn't fail by being unoriginal, or you can condemn every single film made today for the same reason. It fails by uttering the term "unobtanium," and by pretending that a skirmish in the jungle actually ends a dispute over a planet.

But that's why I love seeing early films. I like to see how an archetype started.

[EricJ]

And typing that all up made me wonder is 3D even an option these days for movie experience? I have no idea as I never chose 3D due to my colour blindness.

And what...exactly...does "color blindness" have to do with polarized 3D, that we've had since 1952?

[EricJ]

I remember sitting in Avatar, being really quite bored with the story, the stupid terms, and pretty much the whole predictability yawn factor, and my thought was that, after 100 years, Hollywood was still telling, basically, that exact same story.

I actually walked out. I can think of only a handful of films I've ever done that. (Although "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" had been earlier, so it was still grumpily on my mind.)
Not so much because it was "bad", but because I was thinking "Life's too short" if you can sit there writing the script before it happens. Oh, and because Sigourney Weaver made Cameron's own misogynist issues particularly hard to take.
And I didn't blame "Arthur J. Hollywood", so much as Cameron's need to put white progressive sermons in each one of his action movies, like his idea that we should blame the Titanic on 1% rich people and sexism, not icebergs.

But what I remember thinking was, it's not just that the movie resembled Disney's Pocahontas, it's that "Okay, that one resembles Chief Powhatan, that one resembles the hotheaded warrior she's supposed to marry..." The CGI character design was almost INTENTIONAL.

I have seen endgame a few times but i don't care to see avatar. Without the 3d stunt it's just a boring ferngully rip-off. To me it was the 3d only that got it that much money as the story is just swiped from other films.

You saw Endgame more than once? That's like watching Deathly Hallows Pt. 2 more than once!

[ShyViolet]

I hate Avatar. I think it’s a really dumb movie...I remember sitting in Avatar, being really quite bored with the story, the stupid terms, and pretty much the whole predictability yawn factor, and my thought was that, after 100 years, Hollywood was still telling, basically, that exact same story.

This! In my opinion the best way to assess certain movies is not by what they are, but what they aren’t, or, in other words, what they could be. Why couldn't the main character (Jake?) be more complicated...like suppose he betrayed the love interest for selfish reasons but was still in love with her? How should the audience feel towards him? Or suppose the general guy wanted to dominate and seize control of the alien society "for their own good" and not simply the motives of pure evil that he had in the film? Why not tell NEW stories?

And the 3D wasn't even that good...first it's like "Wow!" and then gets less and less impressive until it's as boring as the film's plot. I totally understand that in a way "there are no new stories" but can't there be SOME variety??

[EricJ]

And the 3D wasn't even that good...first it's like "Wow!" and then gets less and less impressive until it's as boring as the film's plot. I totally understand that in a way "there are no new stories" but can't there be SOME variety??

One of the reasons 3D enthusiasts couldn't convince an 00's generation of Angry Cheapskates (y'know, the ones complaining about ticket surcharges, and that Blu3D players were a "conspiracy" to make us buy more hardware) that there was some merit to it is that Avatar's 3D was mostly depth.

Yes, that opening sleep-pod shot was amazing, but otherwise, nothing "popped out" at us, like Grandpa's old legendary stories of 50's 3D. Even the brief "art" phase of Ang Lee and Martin Scorsese rushing to Cameron's "Directors can use 3D if they want to!" persecuted-artist phase was mostly in creating rich depth scenes, and it was only Spielberg in "Adventures of Tintin" who started having fun with setting up scenes.
Not to mention the rush of cheap up-converted re-releases, which drove the AC's out of their skull, and couldn't DO the pop-out effect.

Which is why, although Blu3D was fatally sunk by Fox holding Avatar's disk "hostage", early-adopter fans at the time were creating an almost literal cult for demanding that every new Blu3D owner buy an import disk of "Sammy: a Turtle's Tale", which, tbf, knew how to throw the money-effects at us.

[Randall]

Y'know what? Best 3D disc for a modern movie? Thunder and the House of magic. Really. Now THAT is some fun 3D. I've always said, if you don't do pop-out effects, then there's not a lot of point to doing a film in 3D. The 1950s films largely got it right. In Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Creature reaches right out of the screen to grab you. Even walking through the bog, I was ducking branches.

In Avengers (bringing this back on point a little), the only time that I really noticed the 3D was with Thor's hammer handle coming toward the viewer from the ground once. Ho-hum.

(We actually viewed Little Mermaid 3D last night. The "View Master" effect is fun, but from now on, I'll stick to the 2D.)

[Bill1978]

And typing that all up made me wonder is 3D even an option these days for movie experience? I have no idea as I never chose 3D due to my colour blindness.

And what...exactly...does "color blindness" have to do with polarized 3D, that we've had since 1952?

I don't know, but that's the only thing I can think of for why the 3D has very little effect on me. With or without the glasses, the image is pretty much the same. I just always put it down to my unique combination of colours my rods and cones cannot detect properly.

[Randall]

No, polarized 3D has nothing to do with colours. As I said above, some of my best 3D experiences have been with black and white films. It would have to do with a lack of binocular vision ("stereoblindness"), due to having a weak eye or trouble with eye alignment. So, you may be both colorblind and stereoblind.

https://www.mediacollege.com/3d/depth-p ... d%20nausea.