Kathryn A. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kerravonsen) wrote2010-02-01 06:47 am
kerravonsen) wrote2010-02-01 06:47 am
Entry tags:
Avatar
I've been meaning to post about Avatar, which I saw with JB last week.
One word: Beautiful.
Two words: So beautiful.
(And the 3D actually worked, too.)
But it wasn't just beautiful; sure, the plot was an old and tired plot, but the characterisation was good enough that it didn't feel old and tired. No, not particularly deep characterisation, but it wasn't flat, either, and it could so easily have been.
Worldbuilding! Yes! Languages with subtitles! Alien critters! Strange loveliness!
JB and I spent quite a bit of time after the movie discussing the strengths and the weaknesses of the worldbuilding, and wondering what sort of fanfic sequel one could write. So it was good in that way, too.
As soon as I heard the word "unobtanium", I smirked. Unobtainium! They actually called it Unobtainium! (grin)
My first remark after the end of the movie was "You know they're going to be back." Because there is no way the Corporate Lackeys aren't going to come back to steal all that wealth. Full-out war, with more troops and more firepower. Heck, they wouldn't care if they nuked the planet from orbit.
This isn't necessarily what we thought that TPTB would do in a sequel, this is talking about internally consistent story logic.
JB's favourite idea for getting around this was that the planet was really a spaceship whose drive needed repairing (like a generation-ship), and they could avoid the war by not being there when the Earthers came back. I didn't think that was feasible, but we both agreed that the Unobtainium was probably some sort of antigrav mineral used in starship drives, hence (a) the floating mountains and (b) its high value.
My favourite idea was that an alien spaceship had crashed on the planet in the distant past, and some of its biotechnology affected life on the planet; specifically, that the ship's computer was the "soul tree", and it had infiltrated all/most life on the planet.
The biggest difficulty (plot hole) was the planet's atmosphere. On the one hand, the need for, and behaviour in regard to breath masks, made it look like there was little or no oxygen in the atmosphere: the phrase "four minutes and you're dead" points to that (the brain can live four minutes without oxygen), and the fact that one can recover from exposure to the atmosphere simply by having one's breath-mask restored.
On the other hand, the fact that the home-tree burned, and burned so fiercely, indicates that there is oxygen in the atmosphere.
While an alternate explanation for the need for breath masks is that there is some kind of toxin in the air, that doesn't explain how (a) it acts so rapidly and (b) it is recovered from so rapidly.
One of the nice touches was that here we have the natives being taller than humans, and then it gets mentioned in passing that the planet has a lower gravity than Earth, which thus explains why the natives are taller.
I loved their feline grace.
One word: Beautiful.
Two words: So beautiful.
(And the 3D actually worked, too.)
But it wasn't just beautiful; sure, the plot was an old and tired plot, but the characterisation was good enough that it didn't feel old and tired. No, not particularly deep characterisation, but it wasn't flat, either, and it could so easily have been.
Worldbuilding! Yes! Languages with subtitles! Alien critters! Strange loveliness!
JB and I spent quite a bit of time after the movie discussing the strengths and the weaknesses of the worldbuilding, and wondering what sort of fanfic sequel one could write. So it was good in that way, too.
As soon as I heard the word "unobtanium", I smirked. Unobtainium! They actually called it Unobtainium! (grin)
My first remark after the end of the movie was "You know they're going to be back." Because there is no way the Corporate Lackeys aren't going to come back to steal all that wealth. Full-out war, with more troops and more firepower. Heck, they wouldn't care if they nuked the planet from orbit.
This isn't necessarily what we thought that TPTB would do in a sequel, this is talking about internally consistent story logic.
JB's favourite idea for getting around this was that the planet was really a spaceship whose drive needed repairing (like a generation-ship), and they could avoid the war by not being there when the Earthers came back. I didn't think that was feasible, but we both agreed that the Unobtainium was probably some sort of antigrav mineral used in starship drives, hence (a) the floating mountains and (b) its high value.
My favourite idea was that an alien spaceship had crashed on the planet in the distant past, and some of its biotechnology affected life on the planet; specifically, that the ship's computer was the "soul tree", and it had infiltrated all/most life on the planet.
The biggest difficulty (plot hole) was the planet's atmosphere. On the one hand, the need for, and behaviour in regard to breath masks, made it look like there was little or no oxygen in the atmosphere: the phrase "four minutes and you're dead" points to that (the brain can live four minutes without oxygen), and the fact that one can recover from exposure to the atmosphere simply by having one's breath-mask restored.
On the other hand, the fact that the home-tree burned, and burned so fiercely, indicates that there is oxygen in the atmosphere.
While an alternate explanation for the need for breath masks is that there is some kind of toxin in the air, that doesn't explain how (a) it acts so rapidly and (b) it is recovered from so rapidly.
One of the nice touches was that here we have the natives being taller than humans, and then it gets mentioned in passing that the planet has a lower gravity than Earth, which thus explains why the natives are taller.
I loved their feline grace.