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3D is a lame gimmick. Avatar was visually pretty but void of anything in the way of a good story and interesting characters. Even the 3D visuals weren't that good (I didn't seen anything mind-boggling about it, even anything new). Personally, I was more impressed with the cinema 3D logo before the movie began. Now, that looked awesome!

Are you serious? Avatar was awsome. Everyone I know says it should have one the oscar instead of the Hurt Locker.

Yeah the story is like Pochohantas, but the characters were pretty good. I really liked Jake, Neytiri, and Grace.

I'm serious. Avatar was shallow as they come. I went in hoping to enjoy it and came out seriously disappointed. I don't expect a James Cameron film to be high-brow but I do expect interesting characters and a good story. He's done it before.

When I first saw Avatar I was blown away, by the visuals, the 3D, the mythology, and the action.

I was worried I wouldnt like the film when i got it on DVD, yet when i saw it again I still think its a good movie. I don't think its shallow. The story has been told before (Dances with Wolves), but personally I like it told this way. As for the characters, I personally enjoyed Sigourney Weaver's character. And Neytiri was also pretty good. Zoe Saldana gave a pretty good performance I think.

I'm actually worried that the voyage of the dawn treader movie will be shallow. Because I actually felt Avatar had more depth then PC. Which is wrong since PC was suppossed to have a deeper, spiritual meaning...containing messages that were overlooked for action sequences.

Look I love action, but there needs to be proper character and thematic development preceding it. Maybe thats why I liked Avatar. The whole film was a lead up to the final battle. My favorite movie, The Two Towers, was also an example of this.

If Apted is to add in fights at either the Lone Islands or the Dark Island, he needs to add depth to the characters. Judging by the trailer, it looks like we'll just get "cute" characters or characters made for comic relief. Reepicheep and Gael for instance would be the cute and comic relifef. Lilliandil and Corikan would be there for exposition. And Lucy and Edmund just to learn a lesson on temptation...with Edmund's temptation being something he already took care of in the first two films.

Not to get too far off-topic, but in an age when most big summer blockbusters have either an incomprehensible plot or no plot at all, i thought the fact that Avatar had such a basic, tried-and-tested plot formula was actually to its credit.

But anyway, to bring us right back on topic - what does everyone think of the recent (though long expected) news that Avatar is set to be re-released in Cinemas as an Extended Version from August 27th?

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/ne ... 7463.story

At first i was slightly surprised they weren't waiting till later in the year, but i was also pretty relieved as the last thing VDT would have needed would be for an Avatar re-release to come and steamroller it..... but then of course i remembered that "duh!" they are both 20th Century Fox movies. Of course they wouldn't purposefully shoot themsleves in the foot by doing that.

Then of course i figured that this could actually be a very smart move as far as Fox is concerned. Obviously their main goal is to make as much money out of Avatar while they still can, but a nice side-effect of this will be that it may reinvigorate the 3D market right before VDT comes out.

If you take a look at Alice in Wonderland - a film that received average reviews from critics and got average repsonses from movie-goers - it still managed to gross over 1 billion dollars at the worldwide boxoffice. Its a film that is pretty out of place amongst that exclusive club of films as it never really had the same sort of big cultural impact as those films did, but of course when you factor in the price of 3D tickets, and that it had the advantage of being the first 3D film out of the blocks after Avatar and was able to ride on the coat-tails of Avatar's success, you can see that its really a $600m film masquerading as a $1billion film.

So if Fox are going to rerelease Avatar at the end of August, it could mean that VDT will have some brand new coat-tails to ride on the success of. Plus a late August release for an Avatar Extended Edition would be a pretty good place for Fox to premiere a 2nd VDT Trailer in 3D

I think it's a good move for Fox. Warner Bros. did something similar a few year back; The Dark Knight was released in July 2008, obviously to both great reviews and a great box office run. However, the film had been out of theaters for awhile by the time awards season 2009 rolled around. In order to garner some buzz for the film leading up the Oscars in Feb. 2009, WB re-released TDK in January of '09. Unfortunately TDK didn't get the Best Picture nom., but it was nominated for 8 other categories, so one could argue that the re-release helped to secure some of these nominations.

Similarly, I think that 3D has taken a hit this year, despite the films released in the format doing well financially (mostly because of inflated ticket prices). Critics keep pointing out the poor quality of the post-converted films, and I think moviegoers are starting to catch on. At least from talking to people I know, it seems that in general moviegoers are getting tired of every blockbuster being released in 3D. Particularly they are tired of paying higher ticket prices for a gimmick that doesn't add anything to the film during a time when, in the U.S at least, the economy is in the tank and disposable income isn't as readily available as it might otherwise be.

Re-Releasing Avatar in 3D could potentially get moviegoers excited about 3D again going into the Holiday film season, which would in theory help VDT's box office intake, as well as Fox's other 3D holiday release, Gulliver's Travels.

3D isn’t supposed to look bad. Obviously it is supposed to look good; otherwise no one would pay to see it.

Folks, remember that Alice in Wonderland was converted. How much time did they have to convert that film? -The whole of post-production? I thought the 3D in Alice was fine.

Also, I’d still like to hear from someone who’s seen the trailer in 3D. The trailer has extreme wide scenic shots and a lot of quick cuts, so we’ll be able judge how the 3D in the film will work by watching the 3D trailer.

The 3D in Alice does look fine. But that's because, even though not filmed in 3D, the film was conceived as a 3D film from the beginning. All aspects of the production were put in motion with the intent of making a 3D film.

I agree with you that 3D isn't supposed to look bad. Animated films have gotten the technology down to an art, and with Avatar, James Cameron was finally able to utilize technology to give us, regardless of your feelings on the film, the best 3D movie ever made.

The reason the 3D looks "bad" in recent converted films is because, like I stated in one of my previous posts, the films are shot as 2D films, which just doesn't translate over to 3D. Several directors agree with this, including Zack Snyder, Michael Bay and James Cameron himself. Alice didn't have these problems because Tim Burton essentially shot the movie as a 3D film using 2D cameras.

I would be interested in seeing the trailer in 3D, to see how those shots hold up. It's also important to remember that the scenes in the trailer are edited in a much more quicker pace than they probably will be seen in the movie.

I have heard rumors that post-production conversion was the intent from the beginning, and if that was the case than I would assume that Michael Apted and Cinematographer Dante Spinotti would have taken all the necessary measures to ensure their film would translate over to 3D smoothly.

If that's the case, and the decision wasn't just a studio afterthough by Fox, then I don't mind the film being released in 3D nearly as much. I still will be seeing it in 2D though.

This is sorta off topic, but still relative. A very interesting article that I ran across and thought I'd share it.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Resistance-Forms-Against-nytimes-2426303374.html?x=0&.v=1

If ever there was a strong argument in favour of VDT being in 3D - it would surely be in taking a look at the Domestic box office takings for "The Last Airbender". This is a film which got universally panned by critics, got universally panned by regular movie fans, and got not quite but almost universally panned by the pre-exisitng fanbase for "Avatar: The Last Airbender". And yet, despite of all that, the enhanced 3D ticket prices mean it has still managed to creep up towards a $130m domestic boxoffice. Truth be told its not that far off Prince Caspian's domestic total.

So if that is an indication of just how low the bar has been set - i.e. to be marginally better than the worst reviewed summer blockbuster of the last 10 years - in order for VDT to surpass PC at the US domestic boxoffice, then i'm thinking its all looking pretty good really.

I've never seen 3D yet, but it doesn't interest me. I can't imagine Avatar or even Transformers in 3D, i think my eyeballs would explode. We don't have 3D in our little city, but even then, i wouldn't consider 3D because of it's higher price.

The thing is that VDT pretty much only gets one week in 3D. Because in one month 6 different films will be coming out in 3D. There just isn't enough screens to go around.

I posted some brief information about the company who did the 3D conversion work for the teaser trailer over in the VFX Rumors thread over here: http://www.narniaweb.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1159&p=90343#p90343.

As you might have guessed, the 3D conversion for the teaser trailer was done separately to the 3D conversion for the moive, and from the sounds of it, it was perhaps also done by a separate company as well.

A VERY interesting quote popped up in the news today from director Joe Dante (Gremlins, Small Soldiers) who has a new shot-for-3D movie coming out called 'The Hole'. Anyway, he weighed in on the 3D conversion debate with the following anecdote about Michael Apted...

"A lot of directors don't necessarily want to add 3D, it's done without their consent," he tells me. "My friend Michael Apted just did a Narnia picture, and he was very upset that they insisted that his finished film be turned into 3D, because he had no intention when he was making it of doing it. He said, 'if I was gonna' do a 3D movie, I would have done it differently'. And the fact is that, when you make a 3D film -- if you're doing it correctly -- you shoot it for 3D. To just take a film that was created to be in 2D, and send it to India and have it come back in this dark, fuzzy, View-Master slide kind of 3D, is a disservice to the movies and it's frankly picking the pockets of the audience."

*Note* - The part i made in Bold is the part that the article implies (via the use of the smaller speech marks within the larger speech marks) is Joe Dante quoting what Michael Apted said to him.

http://www.herald.ie/entertainment/film ... 46128.html

I personally find that to be rather shocking to hear - that Michael Apted was "very upset" by the enforced decision to convert to 3D (perhaps that shouldn't be surprising, but i'm still kind of amazed to actually hear it) and that Michael Apted admitted it would of done the film differently if he was actually making a 3D movie from the start - though whether or not that second part is a good thing or a bad thing i'm not sure

A lot of people were complaining how Avatar was good visually but poor in content. I agree, and that should give VDT a leg up since the content(hopefully) is so amazing, and if the visuals are awesome, we'll have an all in all great 3D movie.

Icarus, that's exactly why I have been arguing about since the very beginning of this 3D craze. It frankly makes me furious when a studio goes in and alters the vision of the director. Although Fox is notorious for that sort of thing no one should be surprised.

As for him shooting the movie differently, that is absolutely the case. As I've mentioned in earlier posts throughout this thread, when shooting a movie in 3D, a director has to shoot the movies. Everything from the way shots are set up have to be altered for the medium.

People in the industry who know what they are talking about keep saying the same thing, you can't shoot a film in 2D and transfer it to 3D and expect it to look good. It doesn't matter about the amount of time it takes to convert it, its the fact that it is being converted in the first place.

I love Dante's quote and agree 110%