What sexual dysfunction best explains Avatar fandom?

[Green Shinobi]

In terms of writing, Romeo and Juliet is so much better than Avatar that it's like comparing Jimi Hendrix to Wes Borland.

[The Fake Shemp]

To be fair, while those are real words, they still sound stupid. Xiphoid is a real word, but nobody is tripping over themselves to use it to describe a swordfish.

[Madrun Badrun]

In what terms then is Romeo and Juliet not better?

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

Who the fuck is Wes Borland? Did you just make that name up?

Guitarist from Limp Bizkit I think.  Left the band if I recall correctly.

[Green Shinobi]

In what terms then is Romeo and Juliet not better?

Well, they are different mediums...

The only film adaptation of R&J that I've seen is the Franco Zeffirelli version. That one had Michael York as Tybalt. The acting in that was better than Avatar.

I didn't feel nearly as much awe and wonder though. So that's R&J - 2, Avatar - 1.

Edit: Olivia Hussey circa 1968 > Neytiri, even if Olivia was underage. So that's 3 to 1.

[fistfulofmetal]

i wonder how much it would have changed the story if mel had decided to make willie wallace fly a chopper.

Like sometype of crazy ass wooden helicopter?

with blades made out of fuckin claymores man.

[Green Shinobi]

Oh shit, I forgot about the Leo and Claire Danes version.

I guess that one was so bad that I blocked it out of my memory.

[Great Rumbler]

[youtube=560,345]6S6IJWilpx4[/youtube]

[CajoleJuice]

I'm waiting for Drinky to declare his love for Avatar here.

[Cormacaroni]

I'm waiting for Drinky to declare his love for Avatar here.

No shit. Another member of the 160 Club weighing in could tip the scales considerably.

[The Fake Shemp]

Game over, man. Game over. Just give it the Oscar now.

[Joe Molotov]

To be fair, while those are real words, they still sound stupid. Xiphoid is a real word, but nobody is tripping over themselves to use it to describe a swordfish.

That sounds pretty badass, actually. I'm sure we'll hear more about it in James Cameron's Piranha 3-D: Xiphloid's Revenge

[Madrun Badrun]

I'm calling it now, James Cameron's Piranha 3-D: Xiphloid's Revenge will just be a rip off of Finding Nemo.

[Phoenix Dark]

I'm waiting for Drinky to declare his love for Avatar here.

I actually just saw his comment lol, and came back here to see if he had posted a review.

It's a fun, amazing looking movie. IMO it's very hard to deny that.

[Green Shinobi]

Drinky saw Avatar and liked it?

Link?

[Flannel Boy]

343 combined IQ points can't be wrong. Billcowned.

[Phoenix Dark]

Drinky saw Avatar and liked it?

Link?

you need more iq points to view cool club posts

[Ichirou]

Drinky and Green Shinobi together - they would make the world's finest team.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

Drinky and Green Shinobi together - they would make the world's finest team.

They're Drinky and the Green
They're Drinky and the Green
One is a genius
The other's in--

spoiler (click to show/hide)

--Korea 

[close]

[Ichirou]

After Green Shinobi makes the ultimate sacrifice in defense of Avatar, Drinky arrives to wreak vengeance for the nonstop annihilations GS had to endure....

[Diunx]

Superman looks so weird in that pic

[Mandark]

I'm moving this here so it won't shit up the Movies You've Seen thread.

Either way, this discussion is ridiculous. It's turned into a troll-fest with personal attacks being thrown around, and why? Because I said that the film that won Best Picture for 1997 deserved its award? Because I don't agree that some other film got robbed?

It's because you make big, declarative statements about stuff without thinking it through first.  Then if anyone ribs you for it, you interpret it as an attack on your intelligence and get super-defensive, and you wind up saying even more things that get you laughed at, and the cycle continues.

Look, it's obvious that you don't have a very strong, well-informed opinion of what is or isn't a melodrama when you have to look up the definition on Wikipedia.  Which is perfectly fine.  But if you do get caught talking about something you're not that familiar with, then the best thing to do is cop to it and move on in good humor, not fight an internet war of attrition over it.

I'm seriously trying to help you here.  At some point you've gotta look at your post history and see the pattern, right?



PS  Yes, Titanic is a melodrama, whether you use the more traditional genre conventions or the newer, more expansive critical theorist hoo-ha.

[Ichirou]

Green Shinobi comparing Titanic to The Masque of the Red Death in the other thread

Seriously, he sounds like a middle-aged housewife who once upon a time got a liberal arts degree and is now set on using what hazy memories she still has of her college days to prove that her soaps qualify as "art."

[AdmiralViscen]

Why even acknowledge him? I'm reading the start of that 'discussion' now and GS is trying so hard to make a fight it's pathetic. He brings it up, then 15 posts go up about Inglourious Basterds, then he throws in "durrr btw I used to hate Titanic and now I love it! Please respond!"

[Phoenix Dark]

Green Shinobi comparing Titanic to The Masque of the Red Death in the other thread

Seriously, he sounds like a middle-aged housewife who once upon a time got a liberal arts degree and is now set on using what hazy memories she still has of her college days to prove that her soaps qualify as "art."

[Madrun Badrun]

Now that Drinky likes this I think we need a new sexual dysfunction.

Vanillophilia, or getting exited over the same old thing repeatedly.

[Green Shinobi]

Why even acknowledge him? I'm reading the start of that 'discussion' now and GS is trying so hard to make a fight it's pathetic. He brings it up, then 15 posts go up about Inglourious Basterds, then he throws in "durrr btw I used to hate Titanic and now I love it! Please respond!"

ITT, Viscen ironically sides with a professional troll against someone who actually attempts to make rational arguments. You should name your ship the U.S.S. If You Don't Agree With Me Then Fuck You.

[AdmiralViscen]

OK

Funny thing is I am closer to your opinion of Avatar than almost anyone on this board. You're just a cumbutt about it.

[Green Shinobi]

cumbutt

[Mandark]

the fact remains that melodramas don't sweep awards ceremonies and have their screenplays nominated for WGA Awards

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025464/awards

[AdmiralViscen]

omfg

[Howard Alan Treesong]

Just off the top of my head, there's Love Story and The Greatest Show on Earth and Crash and A Beautiful Mind and hell, Slumdog Millionaire won last year. Awards shows and the academy award melodramas all the flipping time. I'm a Titanic apologist - I that movie to death - but it's a melodrama! It is, it totally completely is.

[Ichirou]

Just off the top of my head, there's Love Story and The Greatest Show on Earth and Crash and A Beautiful Mind and hell, Slumdog Millionaire won last year. Awards shows and the academy award melodramas all the flipping time. I'm a Titanic apologist - I that movie to death - but it's a melodrama! It is, it totally completely is.

But do you see the parallels it has with Poe's The Masque of the Red Death?

[Green Shinobi]

Just off the top of my head, there's Love Story and The Greatest Show on Earth and Crash and A Beautiful Mind and hell, Slumdog Millionaire won last year. Awards shows and the academy award melodramas all the flipping time. I'm a Titanic apologist - I that movie to death - but it's a melodrama! It is, it totally completely is.

What is your definition of melodrama? Maybe I just can't shake the idea I have that melodrama automatically equals shitty. I'll give you Crash, but I don't think of A Beautiful Mind or Slumdog as melodramas either.

[Mandark]

See?  GS just had a vague idea of melodrama as a pejorative, and has to defend something he likes.

How much better would it been if he had said "I dunno a lot about melodramas" rather than making a stand?  I think about this much better.  *holds hands two feet apart*

[AdmiralViscen]

YOU DREW FIRST BLOOD

spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://www.evilbore.com/forum/index.php?topic=32623.msg1050686#msg1050686

[close]

[Ichirou]

See?  GS just had a vague idea of melodrama as a pejorative, and has to defend something he likes.

How much better would it been if he had said "I dunno a lot about melodramas" rather than making a stand?  I think about this much better.  *holds hands two feet apart*

That about sums it up.  You're too nice, though, Mandark.  I used to try to warn him off when Willco was obviously trolling him when I first came back here, but then I realized the guy actually seems to enjoy the verbal abuse and/or attention.

[AdmiralViscen]

There is no doubt in my mind that he knew exactly what he was doing when he brought up Titanic. He kept bringing it up over and over even as the topic had moved on, until someone finally took the bait.

[Ichirou]

I couldn't resist.

[Green Shinobi]

See?  GS just had a vague idea of melodrama as a pejorative, and has to defend something he likes.

How much better would it been if he had said "I dunno a lot about melodramas" rather than making a stand?  I think about this much better.  *holds hands two feet apart*

No, I know exactly how melodrama is defined. I just think that you guys are using the term too loosely, especially if you're going to apply it to something like A Beautiful Mind.

[Ichirou]

Oh God, Shinobi is now going to defend that Akiva Goldsman-penned piece of SHIT, I just know it.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

Just off the top of my head, there's Love Story and The Greatest Show on Earth and Crash and A Beautiful Mind and hell, Slumdog Millionaire won last year. Awards shows and the academy award melodramas all the flipping time. I'm a Titanic apologist - I that movie to death - but it's a melodrama! It is, it totally completely is.

What is your definition of melodrama? Maybe I just can't shake the idea I have that melodrama automatically equals shitty. I'll give you Crash, but I don't think of A Beautiful Mind or Slumdog as melodramas either.

A melodrama is just a movie that lays it on thicker than it needs to - rather than letting the story speak for itself, it's manipulative of the audience's emotions. It can be a good movie or a bad movie, but the director is willing to push all the buttons - twice - to make sure that the audience is feeling exactly what they're supposed to.

[Mandark]

No, I know exactly how melodrama is defined.

Really?  Then why did you take the definition given on the Wikipedia page?

[Green Shinobi]

A melodrama is just a movie that lays it on thicker than it needs to be - rather than letting the story speak for itself, it's manipulative of the audience's emotions. It can be a good movie or a bad movie, but the director is willing to push all the buttons - twice - to make sure that the audience is feeling exactly what they're supposed to.

Crash definitely does this, but I really don't see it in Titanic, A Beautiful Mind or Slumdog.

Really?  Then why did you take the definition given on the Wikipedia page?

Because I wanted to show how the film by definition wasn't a melodrama?

[The Fake Shemp]

Now he's just trolling

[Ichirou]

BUT WE DREW FIRST BLOOD WILLCO

[Howard Alan Treesong]

I know I am going to regret even trying to change your mind, but A Beautiful Mind is, like, in the dictionary next to "melodrama." He's a genius! But he's tortured! No one understands him! Except his wife! etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. The movie is RIDICULOUSLY overwrought, stereotypical, and manipulative.

And I enjoyed A Beautiful Mind! I don't think it's a great movie or a Best Picture, but I thought it was watchably entertaining.

Slumdog is shit, though.

[Green Shinobi]

We all have pretty much the same definition of the term, but we differ in its application. What's so difficult about that?

[Great Rumbler]

 

[Howard Alan Treesong]

Can ... can you at least admit Forrest Gump is a melodrama.

[Ichirou]

I'm slowly watching Patel be destroyed by trying to deal with Shinobi as though he were a rational human being.

This is bizarrely enjoyable.

[Mandark]

Really?  Then why did you take the definition given on the Wikipedia page?

Because I wanted to show how the film by definition wasn't a melodrama?

But the definition you took was the wrong one, based on an almost comically literal use of etymology, which was meant to apply to 19th-century theatre, not modern film.  Put that aside, though.



You see what Patel's doing?  How he's all "I like movie X, but I won't deny the obvious in order to defend it, because my ego isn't that fragile?"  Notice how he can like a bunch of stuff that's largely unpopular here, but nobody thinks he's a head case or dogpiles on him in a billion-page thread?

Think maybe there's a lesson to be learned there?  Just a little?

[Howard Alan Treesong]

I mostly liked A Beautiful Mind because I'm gay for Paul Bettany.

Not so gay I saw Legion, mind you.

[Great Rumbler]

Star Wars is a melodrama.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Are you SHOCKED?

[close]

[Ichirou]

That and A Knight's Tale made me think Paul Bettany was cool (too cool for those movies).  I heard he was up for the lead in Kingdom of Heaven but the studio wanted a bankable star so they told Scott to go with Orlando Bloom instead.

Kingdom of Heaven is amazing, but imagine how much better it would've been with a competent lead actor.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

That and A Knight's Tale made me think Paul Bettany was cool (too cool for those movies).  I heard he was up for the lead in Kingdom of Heaven but the studio wanted a bankable star so they told Scott to go with Orlando Bloom instead.

Kingdom of Heaven is amazing, but imagine how much better it would've been with a competent lead actor.

God, a Paul Bettany Kingdom of Heaven would really have been unbelievably awesome.

[Great Rumbler]

That and A Knight's Tale made me think Paul Bettany was cool (too cool for those movies).  I heard he was up for the lead in Kingdom of Heaven but the studio wanted a bankable star so they told Scott to go with Orlando Bloom instead.

Kingdom of Heaven is amazing, but imagine how much better it would've been with a competent lead actor.

God, a Paul Bettany Kingdom of Heaven would really have been unbelievably awesome.

I liked him in Master and Commander.

[Green Shinobi]

Mandark, it's possible that I go a little overboard sometimes. But why is everyone willing to cut Ichirou so much slack when his posts in these threads are far more mean-spirited, far more personal, and represent far less of a genuine attempt to argue an actual opinion?

[Ichirou]

He's great in everything he's in, and he's married to Jennifer Connelly, lucky bastard.  I even liked him in Wimbledon, which is a total chick flick.

Bettany

[Mandark]

That and A Knight's Tale made me think Paul Bettany was cool (too cool for those movies).

Pretty similar roles, in that they're both supporting characters who are meant to bring an irreverent energy that the main character won't.  It's tricky, cause if you cast someone without the charisma to pull it off then they get very irritating, very quickly.

Imagine if they'd gotten, say, Ryan Reynolds.