The CGI is pretty obvious when everything around him (character known as Spider) is fake
Posted on 12/20/2025 3:56:11 AM PST by dennisw
Avatar: Fire And Ash (12A, 197 mins)
Rating:
[TWO STARS] By Brian Viner
There comes a point in the careers of most revered movie directors when nobody is brave enough to lay a restraining hand on their arm and remind them that ‘less is more’.
Ridley Scott and Martin Scorsese have both been guilty of bloated storytelling in the last few years, but James Cameron takes not just the biscuit but every packet on the supermarket shelf.
His third Avatar film lasts well over three hours. I’ve been on shorter mini-breaks.
When a movie more conspicuously satisfies its director’s ego than its audience, something is wrong. Which is not to say that Cameron can’t dish up a spectacle.
There are some breathtaking moments in Avatar: Fire And Ash, as we might expect of a film that reportedly cost over $400m to make.
But they are not enough to stop boredom setting in, followed by despair, and a touch of cramp, and ultimately a kind of disbelieving exultation that the final credits are about to roll.
I liked the second picture in the series, 2022’s Avatar: The Way Of Water, and noted at the time that Cameron cited David Lean’s mighty Lawrence of Arabia – ‘good, old-fashioned, adolescent adventure storytelling’ was how he put it – as a major influence.
But the greatest cinematic epics never feel artificially inflated in the way that Fire And Ash does.
Seeing it in 3D, as Cameron intended, somehow compounds that sense of artificiality, even as it yields some amazing chase and fight sequences.
The first film, 2009’s global smash Avatar, introduced the story of humans in the year 2154, with Earth finally exhausted of its natural resources, infiltrating the blue-skinned Na’vi tribe on the distant, mineral-rich moon Pandora.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I like junk food.
But I’ve never seen an Avatar movie.
Guess I’m picky about my junk food. :-)
In the past, studios will demand the movie to be no longer than two hours. Maybe 2 and 1/2 hours.
Not sure why this is no longer the case.
It used to be that you'll get the theatrical version in the movies and if you want, you can purchase the extended version by the director (it used to be that you can buy them on DVDs).
Aren’t fans of animation there to watch the movie on a big screen because it is visually stunning?
As someone who went to film school, has a degree in screenwriting, and love 3d movies (own a collection), I have no interest in ever seeing this film.
I dragged many people (I think more than a dozen) with me to see the first Avatar. And I’m grateful for Cameron’s inovation that led to more 3d films being made and getting access to theaters. But I never added that film to my collection.
Cameron is a masterful filmmaker, and that makes the story elements in the Avatar movies all the more disappointing. He’s capable of better stories. These are propoganda. Long, tedious, propoganda. And he’s clearly got some strange (i.e. perverted) erotic fantasies he’s putting into these stories. It’s grotesque.
For all its box office love, “Avatar” has also been hailed as “Dances with Smurfs” (cf. “South Park”). The pop culture fiends at MTV draw some parallels between James Cameron’s 3D epic and Kevin Costner’s Oscar-winning “Dances With Wolves,” as well as the sci-fi reaches of David Lynch’s “Dune” and the don’t-exploit-us sensitivity of Disney’s “Pocohantas.”
*Crippled hero? Check.
*Traveling to distant lands? Check.
*Communing with an alien population? You betcha.
*Eventual triumph? Murky. “You just know those evil white colonialists are going to keep on fighting.”...
https://archive.nytimes.com/carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/dances-with-smurfs/
They left out, “Taking up arms against your own people on behalf of the beleaguered natives.”
Just saw it. The movie needed an editor.
My son is an AI expert (you wouldn’t know him - it is a small club and we’re not in it). He has shown me 30 minute long movies produced with the bleeding edge AI technology. What used to take a $50 million production budget, many months of time, and a literal cast of workers to produce a movie, can now be done with one person’s imagination, the right AI agents and 3-4 hours. A year from now, anyone can be James Cameron.
“btw this numpty has been living in NZ for ages. Far far far away from the maddening crowd”
In his youth Cameron and his family live a block over from me in Brea California. No idea how he and his Canadian family wound up there. He was 4+ years older so I only knew him in passing. This was the late 60’s, early 70’s.
Great minds think alike. Most of Hollywood’s droppings are unoriginal. Some retold tales can be really good. This ain’t one of them.
Drinker’s review is out...
https://youtu.be/9HQghy9ZtY4?si=KcT6Qz82tOzyc7Al
Avatar: Fire and Ash is tired and @$$.
Holy Tron Arse, Batman!
From the Critical Drinker....
What an expose off this goofy film, with a mega-huge, blank check production budget, where none of James Cameron’s money is at risk. Hilarious review, Drinker explained this entire Navi=Our American Indians franchise to me. I could only tolerate half of the first installment, barely understood what was going on.
Thanks for posting!
Here is a deconstruction of the green (new deal) bs reality, that is 180 degrees opposite of James Cameron’s greenie fantasy take>>>>
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLZZGjjuml8&t=303s
Germany’s $500 Billion Mistake (The Green Energy Trap )
The CGI is pretty obvious when everything around him (character known as Spider) is fake
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