Avatar pictorial review – I love Avatar and why box office records will be broken

This is a pictorial review of Avatar with lots of pictures and only a few well-chosen comments and links. After the review, I will write a few words about why I think the box office records will be broken this weekend and later. I’ve written about Avatar previous “Avatar reviews are good“.

Warning: there are spoilers in this review but I’ve alphabetized things so you won’t know when exactly things happen.

Lets start with the pictorial review! (Images from the amazing Avatar HD trailer.)

1) The Air Battle is simply spectacular. The story telling rules supreme over the well tuned and used special effects. You care about the characters and are following the story. Unlike some other big budget films where you go to watch the special effects with completely silly characters who you don’t care.

2) I was rooting for this scary monster and was excited when it took out this soldier.

3) Thank you James Cameron. Thanks for imagining this world and inviting us to travel in this beautiful world that you created and imagine. May be we can imagine a better world. May be.

4) A bulldozer has probably never been as hated as this one in Avatar. The sound of the beeping “beep beep beep” just drove me nuts. Yes, the beeping “beep beep beep” (replace “beeping” with your favourite swear word).

5) Some people see good Sci-Fi books and films as tools to help us imagine the future. We thank Arthur for imagining satellites before our technology catches up. Many of the technologies in Avatar are in various stages of research and development in places like MIT Media Lab, U of Toronto’s DGP, etc around the world.

Here is a Wired Magazine article about the cool film technologies used in Avatar, if you are curious.

6) Beautiful under water scene.

7) One bad ass Colonel! A hero needs a worthy opponent. Stephen Lang did a great job.

8) This is one mean looking beast! And at the point of the story, everyone is rooting for the beast!

9) Bows and Arrows against enemies with bombers, are they nuts? If you were them, would you fight with everything you’ve got even all you have are bow and arrows?

10) This is James Cameron’s version of the Japanese animation Gundam. Still great to watch them in action.

11) This is James Cameron’s version of “Laputa: Castle in the Sky“. Laputa is one imaginative Japanese animation. One of the highly recommended classics.

12) Beautifully executed chasing scene. And then Cameron was able to use short hand to bring back this super big monster convincingly.

13 ) It was stunningly beautiful when every step they take, the ground lights up.

14) I don’t hug trees but I was sad to see this one fall.

15) Fly baby fly! Beautiful

16) Help sometimes arrive in the darkest hours. Be brave and stay positive. I was worried that Cameron was going to let her die right there.

17) One day when our medical technologies advance this much, the general public will not be able to avoid the ethical questions those technologies will bring.

18) Jake, our hero. Wow, the soul in those Avatar eyes. Well done. (More when I talk about Neytiri’s eyes.)

19) The Land Battles are spectacular to watch.

20) I love Neytiri’s eyes. I don’t know if Cameron applied some techniques learned from the beautiful eyes in Oscar nominated Canadian animation short “Madame Tutli-Putli“. See this report about the beautiful eyes of Laurie.

21) Given the initial desire to have “real legs”, what a amazing journey we had with Jake.

22) The infamous “Unobtainium”!

23) Other great images and character we saw and met in Avatar.

I think the current opening weekend box office record is going to be broken. If you disagree, please share your comments. Here are my rationales,

1) The $15.50 or $17.50 for regular or IMAX 3D are expensive but worth every penny (in fact, 24% and 40% more expensive compare to the regular $12.50 ticket). So the box office is naturally going to be bigger. By the way, if I had more time, I might even looking into see whether CXG is a good investment idea but I just don’t have the time to do the proper research plus current price may already reflect the box office of Avatar, etc. Many people are going to watch Avatar more than once. And some fans have already watched it more than once already!

2) Many of the repeat customers for Titanic are women. I think this film may attract more men but I think women may love the warm and fuzzy bits of Avatar too. Are you going to watch Avatar again? And are you male or female? Please comment.

3) The positive online buzz in blogs and Twitters are deafening. And this film is going to be THE conversation film this holiday season. If you haven’t watched the film, many of your friends will have. And many of them will be telling you how cool the film is. Ebert has a point in saying, “It is an Event, one of those films you feel you must see to keep up with the conversation.”

4) Oops, I am not a fan of Twilight New Moon and may have underestimated the power of the girls/women box office power! At press time (Dec 19), according to Box Office Mojo, New Moon has been released for 29 days, and worldwide box office of $631 million is great!

Have you watched Avatar yet? What do you think about the film? And the box office potentials?

(Article also published in examiner.com – “Avatar pictorial review – I love Avatar and why box office records will be broken”)