don't forget the whole opposites attract romance storyline and the "i am the only one who can stop this so i will shoot anyone who gets in my way" action storyline.

John was a great dentist with horrible teeth, while jane was a horrible dentist with perfect teeth. together they form the ultimate world saving alliance. but will it end in love or tragedy?

One thing that caught my attention in this Disney book that PBass and many others have referenced a lot on these forums, is that Disney thought every story possible has already been conceived. He says that it's all about how the story is told. It's not bad if stories are repeated. It would just be nice to see some other more original ones.

I think a lot of peoples' eyes would be opened if they based more stories off books' stories rather than other successful Hollywood films. It's kinda like Newgrounds here. People base their work off other local hits and fail to realize there's an infinite number of other stories they could possibly tell from books.

But I'm not going to rant much more. I just think there's a good time to use previous stories but not if they've already been used too many times. Disney says how the story is told matters a ton. The same could be said for 'without a good story, it will be impossible to tell it well'.

Just read books kids!

At 1/16/10 08:38 PM, ImpendingRiot wrote: I don't see why people are bashing the story though to be honest. It's a simple one, yes, but it's enough to move it forward.

Simple+Original is great. Simple+Cliche is not. Avatar is the later unfortunately.

At 1/16/10 06:06 PM, doctormario wrote: Let's not for get this one...

Once upon a time, this nobody kid gets thrust into an epic battle between the forces of good and evil, and manages to save the day, against all odds.

Yeah... that works for just about every Star Wars movie, War Games, Avatar The Last Airbender, The Last Starfighter, Dune, blah blah blah...

. . . . . >___>

Exile?

bhaahahaha :P

Except i got shit all epic and planned.. i'll make sure its less cliched lol. Luke won't save the day...he'll just die when worse comes to worse.. just like that XD

. . . or not >_> whatever..

Cliche'd storys:

How about the typical group of teenagers go somewhere they were strictly told was haunted (or evil, or whatever), but go anyways, and all end up dying except for one :P

At 1/16/10 08:38 PM, ImpendingRiot wrote: I don't see why people are bashing the story though to be honest. It's a simple one, yes, but it's enough to move it forward.

The problem is the fact that it will probably be up for Best Movie, come time for the Oscars.

I went there for the 3D, the blue people and the awesome CGI and I was pleased with that.

Then came the OMG ITS THE MOST EPIC BEST STORY EVER!!!!111 From everyone I've talked too... I try to explain to them why it's not, and then I'm the idiot.

I don't like that.

Movies of the year

Oh GOD twilight OF COURSE
LOL FAIL JK DONT ATTACK ME!!!

UP was definitely a phenominal movie, Kevin and Doug were just sooooo funny <3 Pixar just doesn't disappoint ... EVER

District 9 well its already been brought up, this movie was epic...

For a comedy, The Hangover was pretty funny i thought, and did really well!

Star Trek was suprisingly good too...

but not mall cop. God help us all if mall cop wins anything....

I also really liked watchmen! but i have to stop listing movies now..

Webpage Flash Widgets

I'm not sure how to refer to this, but I really like it. I've created a couple widgets so far of increasing complication and it's been pretty cool! An example of what I just finished is an XML-based, item grid. XML controls the width/height of the grid, it also controls the placement of each item box, with generic boxes filling in the blank spaces. Essentially, the boxes call up a pop-up page which displays certain information, or it can just be an image. Another example is a radial menu that I made which has x points in a circle, each being a button. The button then grows when you hover over it. The circle itself is based on how many options are needed, so it can be 1 button, a square of 4, or a circle of 13.

These two projects have been very enjoyable, and I just wanted to know if anybody here needs something like that done? Just a little flash based widget for their site. I'm not sure what to call it, so I'm not really sure how to find a market for it. Anyways, that's my spiel/offer.

Avatar
It had the potential to be one of those rare movies that have both an original and intelligent plot and extremely cool fight scenes, like Matrix. But every time the writers had a chance to come up with something unexpected and smart they just chose to write a dull, child-like continuation of everything that was already obvious and predictable after the first 5 minutes of the movie. I wanted to see Jake go through an internal conflict of which side to stick with, I wanted to see how those blue guys would deal with being annihilated by the humans with their superior weaponry, I wanted to see stuff go wrong. But no. Heck, even superhero movies nowdays (ie The Dark Knight) have become smarter than the old "you know who the good guys are, you know who the bad guys are; now we're gonna show you a fight where the good guy defeats the bad guy". But apparently avatar still hasn't figured out how to get past that stage.

When the humans destroyed that huge tree I thought, after those long hours, finally the massive technological advance of the humans starts to bear its fruit. Surely now the na'vi will have to actually use their minds if they want to get anywhere, right? Oh wait, nope. Turns out they have some sort of backup-tree and they actually didn't lose all that magical network. But surely now, after the loss of their homes, they will find themselves divided and without morale, right? Oh wait, wrong again. Seems like 5 minutes after their home was destroyed, they were already happily doing their massive circle jerk around the (new) magical tree. And not only that, but now they suddenly have 2000 more na'vi warriors joining them. Awesome! As if that weren't enough, after they get decimated in a supposedly "strategic" ambush on the humans, mother nature decides to send out all its animals to fight! weeee. Surely huge 50 ton aircrafts made of solid metal cannot survive a couple of birds killin themselves on the windows, right? Right.

Well that turned out to be more of a summary of the movie than an actual rant, but I stand by my point. I kind of enjoyed the 3 hours I spent watching that movie, but it turned out too disappointing for calling it a "good movie". Too bad.

Also, I can't fucking believe how fucking pathetic people are:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/0 1/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html

At 1/17/10 12:21 AM, Toast wrote: Surely huge 50 ton aircrafts made of solid metal cannot survive a couple of birds killin themselves on the windows, right?

Not every pilot can be Sully Sullenberg.

but ya, I liked Avatar for it's visual effects and the plot, while simplistic and cliche, was at least entertaining. I do wish they didn't make the human general "PURE EVIL" though, it's like ya that's a way to make the audience hate him for sure, but it makes him completely unbelievable. Likewise, nobody really switches sides throughout the movie. Right from the start you knew who was "good" and who was "bad" and there was pretty much no fuzzy areas in the movie.

They also could have done a little more with the main character being handicapped. The only real purpose it served was to give him an obvious reason to like being a na'vi. What if he did get his legs back halfway through the movie, then pass on being an avatar for a while before deciding to go back or whatever? I mean, they had enough time in the movie to do something like that, but there wasn't much progression.

Whatever though, it was still entertaining.

At 1/17/10 12:21 AM, Toast wrote: I wanted to see stuff go wrong.

I agree. I felt the plot was definitely acceptable, but too easily expected at times. I wish some Navi became corrupted, or the humans won in the end, or something more drastic. The story felt like a television cartoon for me, partly because it had a hero and a villain instead of an protagonist and an antagonist.

I do commend the movie greatly on many other accounts though, including an excellently realized world and culture, fantastic CG, and the best motion capture I've ever seen.

At 1/17/10 01:01 AM, PBass wrote:

I do commend the movie greatly on many other accounts though, including an excellently realized world and culture, fantastic CG, and the best motion capture I've ever seen.

That wasn't motion capture, they ACTUALLY hired a shitload of Na'vi!

The last time filmmakers went out of their way to hire non-human actors was waaaay back to these good ol' guys! (pic below)

I'm happy they're finally starting to give other creatures a chance :)

I got asked to enter some animation competition for some university. I wasnt given much details at all, but I decided to start anyway ;) I have 40 seconds of rough storyboard done, and I'm pretty happy. When i get started on some finalised animation I'll show you lot (:

I went to see Daybreakers yesterday. Was sickk. One of my favourite films, despite some lack of character development.

Honestly, I think one single thing could have actually made Avatar a good movie.

If Jake sully could never, and would never be able to become a Blue cat.

Then, there's internal struggle. You know from the start, and then the prediction is solidified once Sygorn--- sigorny? chickFromAliens's character tries to become one, that he'll be able to somehow become a blue man group member in the end.

I would have looked passed all the other "cheese." The "OMFG onry 1 person ever has ridden that big fucking Dragon lulz!" The "Animals! Attack now! (But not when our shit was threatened earlier on)" ect.. ect..

If, in the end... and throughout the movie, Jake would have decided to become a Martyr (in the sense of "I can never become one of them") to save the Na'vi people. I would of changed my entire opinion of the movie.

I didn't enjoy avatar all that much.

That army guy must have iron lungs to hold his breath for that long. Firing a gun. Running about. Shouting. Piloting a mech. etc.

So does that helicopter lady. She must've been up there in that beat up helicopter breathing the air for close to an hour with no trouble.

Where did ol' scar face get a knife for his mech? Why would anyone give him the go ahead to request the manufacture of such a big knife. It holds no practicle purpose.... See More

What are these machines running on? If it took three months to send out the diggers to that planet - how are they able to get so much fuel for all these mechs and helicopters?

That one GIANT helicopter would NOT be able to fly. Those four propellers would not be powerful enough. If they were - those smaller helicopters would not be able to take off ANYWHERE near as close as they did.

Frank Buffay manages to summarise the story line in about six seconds right at the start of the film. "See this rock. They have a tree over a lot of this rock." - If you can do that with the plot of a film -- it's not an interesting enough plot to stretch out for three hours. What makes that worse, is his little speech about this 'unobtanium' had no relevence to the conversation he was having. It's like he has ADD or something.

WHY ARE THERE FLOATING ROCKS? THIS MAKES NO SENSE. sdfjerpijge90a5wu509yhjtras >:C

How much energy do these plants produce in order to give off light? Seriously.

The hair. That's just... silly. They explained the network - and I didn't like the idea, but it sort of makes sense in a fantasy sort of way. But the idea of all these things evolving to work off the same network is rediculous. And why can a horse not merge with a pterodactyl or whatever. Why is it only the Na'vi who do this?

People get stored in that tree? Or their memory does? Their 'energy'. Since when has someones conciousness been a quantative amount that people are able to measure and store.

There's no emotional connection to the characters. I don't care if their avatars die in the start of the film because they just wake up in their little tube. There's no danger for them. It's boring.

The Na'vi are made out to be this do-no-wrong preechy spiritual gods. Seriously. This is the preechiest film I've seen in a long time. I don't want to be told how much of a cunt I am for destroying my planet. I could sympathise more with the humans than these blue people.

The fight scenes were good - even though there were a few awkward camera angles that made no sense. 3D was used well. Animation firmly in the uncanny valley.

But pretty graphics don't make a film.

I'm not disliking it for the sake of disliking it. I'm disliking it because it's a bad film.

On an interesting side note:

Compare the na'vi to the mudokens [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddworld:_
Abe%27s_Oddysee] - They have so many similarities. But I can sympathise more with the oddworldians. They're not flawless, they fart and make mistkaes. They don't understand every little bit of their world.

I'd much rather help them save their forest than these tree hugging blue people. >:C

Copy and Pasta'd from a rant of mine elsewhere.

The main thing that irked me with it though, was the way it was marketed. They used the animation and photo-realism as it's main selling point. But they were trying to achieve realism to the point that you would believe these people existed. They shouldn't have mentioned it at all. It's Lucas Arts selling starwars with, "Guys! Look how good these suits are!".

Meh I loved avatar. I don't mind unlikely events/ paradoxes in movies as long as they entertain me to be honest. Thought it was a decent story (obviously not brilliant but I still found it pretty entertaining.) Also I didn't really care about the avatars dying but I was hella pissed off when Trudy got blown up. In the cinema like "NOOOOOO!" :L

Anyway if you guys want a good story look for The Company of Myself flash game. Not sure if it hit Newgrounds but it's definitely on Kong. Fun game to spend a bit of spare time on.

At 1/17/10 03:08 PM, ArthurGhostIy wrote: That army guy must have iron lungs to hold his breath for that long. Firing a gun. Running about. Shouting. Piloting a mech. etc.

He did get an oxygen mask after a while. You'd be surprised how long some people (especially in the army - they probably train for it) can hold their breath.

Where did ol' scar face get a knife for his mech? Why would anyone give him the go ahead to request the manufacture of such a big knife. It holds no practicle purpose.... See More

It did hold the purpose of giving him a last-resort chance to stay alive, didn't it? I don't see what you're complaining about.

What are these machines running on? If it took three months to send out the diggers to that planet - how are they able to get so much fuel for all these mechs and helicopters?

They went to Pandora for mineral resources, right? What makes you think they wouldn't be able to create fuel on a planet as rich as Pandora?

That one GIANT helicopter would NOT be able to fly. Those four propellers would not be powerful enough. If they were - those smaller helicopters would not be able to take off ANYWHERE near as close as they did.

Assuming that Pandora's atmosphere is denser than earth's, helicopter-like propellors would be much more efficient. This might also be the reason why the can fall from heights without getting hurt as much.

Frank Buffay manages to summarise the story line in about six seconds right at the start of the film. "See this rock. They have a tree over a lot of this rock." - If you can do that with the plot of a film -- it's not an interesting enough plot to stretch out for three hours. What makes that worse, is his little speech about this 'unobtanium' had no relevence to the conversation he was having. It's like he has ADD or something.

How much energy do these plants produce in order to give off light? Seriously.

That's ridiculous. Plants use the nutriments and gases they consume in biological reactions to create energy (under form of ATP molecules). There's nothing biologically infeasible about fluorescent plants.

People get stored in that tree? Or their memory does? Their 'energy'. Since when has someones conciousness been a quantative amount that people are able to measure and store.

Agreed. Transferring that human scientist's brain, or "conciousness" or whatever you want to call it should be like trying to run a .wmv on a gameboy color.

But pretty graphics don't make a film.

Agreed.

Compare the na'vi to the mudokens [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddworld:_
Abe%27s_Oddysee] - They have so many similarities. But I can sympathise more with the oddworldians. They're not flawless, they fart and make mistkaes. They don't understand every little bit of their world.

I don't know about that. Oddworld is a fountain of creativity, and I remember all the "flying rocks" business in there too, but I'm not sure there's a connection.

Avatar

It was pretty good.

When I saw the previews for the movie, I was afraid the big movie studios were trying to blend a "fantasy" movie, a genre generally reserved for more alternative film studios, with a big budget action movie, the kind you'd expect a big movie studio to produce. When I saw it, they managed to not completely destroy the fantasy aspect of the movie, but the fact that it was an action movie as well prevented the movie from reaching its full potential. An action movie(by action movie, I refer to mainstream action movies, because almost every movie contains 'action' of a sort, but I digress) and a fantasy movie tend to be in two completely classes, one designed to appeal to a person's imagination, and one designed to appeal to the average person's desire for action and adventure.
The movie appealed to audiences who sought either, or both, types of stories, even though the movie never was truly optimal for showcasing either type of genre.

As far as visuals go, it was pretty much as good as could of been. They managed to create a whole new world that the audience could almost believe was real. My only real issue about the visuals was it seemed kind of dark toned, even in the light. I can see how the studio was trying to make the movie convincing by providing realistic dark tones within the scenery, but you can't really try to infuse a fantasy world with realistic elements without taking away some of the effect of it. Otherwise, exceptional art and effects.

In a slight response to Toast's review, I agree about the inevitable "good" outcome of the movie. I was half-hoping once the bulldozers came through destroying the forest, that the Nav'i's(That looks wierd...) way of life up to that point would have been completely destroyed forever, but from the start I never actually expected that, and that they would resort to the "good" Hollywood ending all along.

Lame.

Also, the main character's internal struggle could have been elaborated on more, but whatever.

I could also go on for another good 6,000 or so characters about metaphors about human mysticism, the literal and figurative connection to nature, and the destruction of native people's lands by Europeans, but I doubt anybody has even read this far into my review. Besides, I just needed a place to dump my mind about this movie anyway so I don't expect people to take my ideas as seriously as I do.

Summary of my Avatar review: Good visuals, fairly cliche but interesting storyline, interesting ideas, some interesting characters. 8 out of 10

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/52 4807 Closure Trailer is submitted here at Newgrounds! Vote fivvvve!!11111111111

At 1/17/10 03:46 PM, tommattox wrote: I was hella pissed off when Trudy got blown up. In the cinema like "NOOOOOO!" :L

LOL she needs to get a new type cast, honestly she is the only thing I actually disliked about the movie haha, no offense ofc im sure it's just taste, but her 'omg I'm a girl pilot with aviators' got old, seriously did she stop wearing the aviators once?? I was thinking she was gonna crash into the big ship since she was dead... but no such logical luck.

Agreed. Transferring that human scientist's brain, or "conciousness" or whatever you want to call it should be like trying to run a .wmv on a gameboy color.

I disagree. We're talking about an entire ecosystem that is built upon a neural network. Consciousness, as boundless as it may seem, is still run on hardware. The movie made it clear that the neural network between the trees is more than enough hardware to store an entire history of civilization.

Now, whether the events of natural selection to cause such an ecosystem are plausible, that might be another story.

At 1/17/10 09:23 PM, PBass wrote:

Agreed. Transferring that human scientist's brain, or "conciousness" or whatever you want to call it should be like trying to run a .wmv on a gameboy color.

I disagree. We're talking about an entire ecosystem that is built upon a neural network. Consciousness, as boundless as it may seem, is still run on hardware. The movie made it clear that the neural network between the trees is more than enough hardware to store an entire history of civilization.

Now, whether the events of natural selection to cause such an ecosystem are plausible, that might be another story.

How is that an argument against anything I've said? Movies run on hardware, and gameboy contains hardware. How does that go against your assumption that conciousness runs on hardware, and the neural network tree is hardware? No one ever argued about how much information those trees can store, I don't know why you're even bringing that up. All we're saying is that it's ridiculous they would be able to somehow "transfer" someone's brain (what you would call conciousness, as ill-defined as that term is) into the tree.

hold on ill upload my conciousness.zip into your servers.

At 1/17/10 10:02 PM, Toast wrote:

hold on ill upload my conciousness.zip into your servers.

Too late, I beat you to it!

At 1/18/10 12:05 AM, zrb wrote:

Got accepted in computer science, biotechnology and computer engineering in my local uni :D
Dunno which one I'll take though.

all of them!

At 1/18/10 12:05 AM, zrb wrote:

Got accepted in computer science, biotechnology and computer engineering in my local uni :D
Dunno which one I'll take though.

Which uni my canadian bro?

How is that an argument against anything I've said? Movies run on hardware, and gameboy contains hardware. How does that go against your assumption that conciousness runs on hardware, and the neural network tree is hardware? No one ever argued about how much information those trees can store, I don't know why you're even bringing that up. All we're saying is that it's ridiculous they would be able to somehow "transfer" someone's brain (what you would call conciousness, as ill-defined as that term is) into the tree.

Why are you using the comparison of wmvs on gameboys? The size of the network has as much to do with complexity as it does with storage space. A better comparison would be being able to play an Atari game on a PC.

The whole point of all that nueral network talk in the movie was saying that the planet's network is a sentient entity that is more than capable of learning and processing information. I think a system like that is biologically possible, I don't see any reason to rule it out except for sheer odds, but then you might as well go after the sextaped feature that many creatures seem to share as well.

At 1/18/10 12:56 AM, zrb wrote: Or maybe I can just be a hobo. That sounds like fun too !

At 1/18/10 12:34 AM, Coolio-Niato wrote: Which uni my canadian bro?

University of Ottawa lol :)

Ohhh Ottawa U. Does Montpetit still sell those delightful iced cappucinos in the lower floor? :3

You don't actually have to answer that. I'll never be on campus again :P

We've got a little "situation" again.. A couple of threads have been deleted and with that some users undeservedly banned. Things will be worked out when Wade decides to crawl out of bed, for now just sit tight if you're one of these users.

At 1/18/10 08:10 AM, knugen wrote: We've got a little "situation" again.. A couple of threads have been deleted and with that some users undeservedly banned. Things will be worked out when Wade decides to crawl out of bed, for now just sit tight if you're one of these users.

Who was phished this time?

A collab of mine was deleted...

At 1/18/10 08:10 AM, knugen wrote: We've got a little "situation" again.. A couple of threads have been deleted and with that some users undeservedly banned. Things will be worked out when Wade decides to crawl out of bed, for now just sit tight if you're one of these users.

Wade get out of bed!

Will their be a chance we get our threads back complete?

I think Wade has done everything he can already, the bans are cleared but the deleted threads are probably gone.