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[Trippy]

I expect better from James Cameron.

Cameron didn't direct this.

[LK]

Avatar is meant to be a movie showcasing cool shit, not logical shit.

[WindupAtheist]

Cameron also directed Aliens, a movie where (under specific and extreme circumstances) a corporal could potentially call down an orbital nuclear strike.  

But more importantly, a movie where determined and well-armed humans were killed by face-ripping monsters WITHOUT the writer portraying them as flaming idiots or resorting to technobabble. You can nitpick the Colonial Marines if you really want to, but they were LEAGUES ahead of most sci-fi militaries when it came to not looking like retards. And yet they pretty much all died, without it smelling like railroaded bullshit.

I hope this movie pulls it off, but we'll see.

[Abagadro]

Aliens was back when Cameron was young and (moderately) hungry. He's fat and happy now playing with toys.

[Triforcer]

Starship Troopers still has the best sci-fi military to ever put on the uniform. 

[WindupAtheist]

Starship Troopers still has the best sci-fi military to ever put on the uniform.

 

[gryeyes]

But more importantly, a movie where determined and well-armed humans were killed by face-ripping monsters WITHOUT the writer portraying them as flaming idiots or resorting to technobabble. You can nitpick the Colonial Marines if you really want to, but they were LEAGUES ahead of most sci-fi militaries when it came to not looking like retards. And yet they pretty much all died, without it smelling like railroaded bullshit.

You mean the guys who disarmed themselves moments before the confrontation that killed 90% of them? Who knowingly entered an alien nest with a majority of them holding their dicks instead of weapons? Whose officers are completely unaware that the place they are deploying is a giant nuclear reactor?  Shit they don't even keep a backup android on the mothership just encase shit gets hectic and they need orbital support? The entire situation is as contrived and stupid as "lawl EM distortion to limit technology".

Yeah, everyone disarm you might shoot the walls! No don't return to the APC and rearm, continue onward to hand to hand it with the feral monsters who killed a few hundred colonists.

[WindupAtheist]

They thought they could get away with using just the flamethrowers in the first encounter. Didn't say they were perfect. But nobody came in packing weapons that were grossly inadequate or piloting ridiculous vehicles with glaring weaknesses, nobody threw away massive advantages for absolutely no reason, and nobody dropped their gun to pick up a sword. That in itself put them ahead of almost every military to ever show up in a sci-fi movie.

In any case, nobody gives a shit. Even I don't give a shit.

What's more interesting is that video you posted. Specifically the helicopters blowing the living shit out of everything in sight. I thought this was supposed to be a bunch of lightly-armed corporate shills unwilling to really unload on the natives for diplomatic reasons.

Of course all those helicopters were flying absurdly close to the ground and bunched together in broad daylight so that dragons could kill them in a giant pewpew set-piece battle. Unlike all the helicopter gun cam footage you see in real life, where a guy hovers miles away under cover of darkness watching some Iraqi insurgents scratch their asses obliviously, then blows them to giblets before they know what hit them.

It's going to be balls-out fighting by the end, but conducted stupidly enough for the guys with spears and animals to eek out some sort of victory. I don't know what stake you have in denying this, other than being buttsore in general.

Protip: Please don't do that thing again where you assume that every weapon requires some sort of radar lock to hit a target from miles away. It. Just. Doesn't. Work. That. Way.

[apocrypha]

You mean the guys who disarmed themselves moments before the confrontation that killed 90% of them? Who knowingly entered an alien nest with a majority of them holding their dicks instead of weapons? Whose officers are completely unaware that the place they are deploying is a giant nuclear reactor?  Shit they don't even keep a backup android on the mothership just encase shit gets hectic and they need orbital support? The entire situation is as contrived and stupid as "lawl EM distortion to limit technology".

Yeah, everyone disarm you might shoot the walls! No don't return to the APC and rearm, continue onward to hand to hand it with the feral monsters who killed a few hundred colonists.

So they made mistakes, they had the wrong gear, they had incompetent officers and their mission was poorly defined and badly executed?

Sounds pretty realistic to me 

[WindupAtheist]

Incoming variation upon "As opposed to Avatar, where stupid WUA thinks everything is supposed to work perfectly in the military!" I'm sure I will be totally unprepared for it.

[gryeyes]

They only had I believe 2-3 flamers (somehow drake ends up with one). The guys with the flame units also weren't in the "front" they were intermixed with the unarmed folks which is wonderful position for a flame thrower. There are 3-4 "armed" guys discounting the ones who cheat. Its moronic, its completely irrational and unbelievable. They dont even get swords, they get NOTHING. Yeah, being completely unarmed isn't throwing away a HUGE tactical advantage or anything. Of course nobody gives a shit most people understand how Scifi works, YOU dont give a shit because you haphazardly and randomly apply fantastic rules for what is "believable" and what is not. I'm just pointing it out.

Its readily apparent at some point the "marine" dude goes apeshit and decides to just attack regardless of the rules. And even then it appears they are firing unguided rockets. Im not sure guys with a fleet of hovercrafts and mechs are "lightly armed schills", but what THEY ARE is private security for a corporation.

The helicopter cam footage using FLIR and all sorts of electronic image enhancement/locking? Yeah, ive seen it...its like asking "why are those guys so close?", ive seen guys with rifles shooting people from miles away with only their eyeballs! Why would they EVER need to get so close!

Protip: Understand whats reliant on computer enhancement and electronic devices outside of "radar" to hit targets miles away.

Sounds pretty realistic to me

Yes, yes it does.

[Margalis]

This nerd slapfight gimmick has gotten old.

[Pennilenko]

This nerd slapfight gimmick has gotten old.

There must be a million tiny bruises by now.

[WindupAtheist]

Yeah, it has gotten old.

I'll leave it with this: If the magical background radiation were powerful enough to bork not just things like avionics and active radar, but also closed-circuit systems like a gun camera or thermal imaging, then pretty much nothing should work. They should probably just crash, and you sure as hell wouldn't see things like mech suits precisely duplicating human motion under those conditions.

The unguided rockets carried by a present-day Apache can be usefully accurate out to 6 or 7 kilometers.

Nobody really wants to talk about Aliens in this thread. At all. Harping on it just makes one look butthurt and bent on going "NOO!" to anything I say.

Peace out to your homedogs. I hope this movie is lots better than my gut is telling me. I love me some Star Wars, but I expect something a lot smarter from Cameron.

(The cheesey parts in True Lies were deliberate, dammit!)

[Rasix]

I wonder who's going to win the trip off the island. 

[rattran]

At the rate it's going, all contestants. Trippyrage is past the danger level, and still rising.

Next fucker that makes me Den a post from here gets banned.

[WindupAtheist]

I dunno, I was basically done. This isn't as much fun as it was a month ago. I think I might be nerdfought out for the moment.

[LK]

Or maybe you've finally realized how friggin' pointless it is to try and overcome suspension of disbelief in favor of everything making sense. Nobody in the Hollywood machine gives a fuck about logic or all this other shit you're trying to argue for in a special effects wonderland. They will use any means to justify the ends: do we have conflict? Can we tug at the audiences emotions? Can we make shit blow up? Etc.

I already look down on this movie because of the blatent inspirations from other literature and film. But as much as you are into the lore side and want to see good from IP's you're invested in (why invest in this new one anyway?), writers are going to carry the idiot ball from time to time to have a world meet some marketing or storyline requirement. This isn't a reality show where a scenario is setup and they just let things take their logical course.

[WindupAtheist]

Or maybe you've finally realized how friggin' pointless it is to try and overcome suspension of disbelief in favor of everything making sense.

No, it's definitely not that. 

Dissecting something, moving the pieces around to see if they add up, and then slagging it when they don't can be fun. But meh, stuff gets old and this isn't even a particularly compelling nerdfight. I'm not so much invested in the IP as I'm interested in seeing James Cameron finally start making movies again.

Man I've been posting up a storm. Fucking insomnia. I've been awake since yesterday.

[Ratman_tf]

I expect better from James Cameron.

Cameron didn't direct this.

He still got a Razzie for his work on it. You can substitute Pirhanna 2: The Spawning if you like. 
Cameron does good movies, but he still does lots of silly ridonkulous stuff to keep the story moving.
And I think Titanic was the movie where he finally snapped and became like prequel George Lucas. Avatar will be interesting if only to see if I'm right. 

[LK]

Ratman, you're right.

You're so very, very right.

[gryeyes]

Dissecting something, moving the pieces around to see if they add up, and then slagging it when they don't can be fun.

But thats the point you measure "lore" with INTERNAL consistency, not its relationship to the meat world. Dune being a prime example that is also directly applicable to this conversation. Drug addicted ninjas with teeth daggers displacing a galactic empire sounds absurd, but how the "lore" is presented and how it jives with itself is the yardstick. Not the viability of teleporting ninjas in a modern context. But yeah, horse dead.

[Lakov_Sanite]

So if I as a human tried to have sex with an 8ft tall blue girl, would she just crush my hips? I mean would I have to be in an avatar for that? Also can his avatar get blue chick pregnant? These questions are 1000x more interesting than tech discussion.

[LK]

So if I as a human tried to have sex with an 8ft tall blue girl, would she just crush my hips? I mean would I have to be in an avatar for that? Also can his avatar get blue chick pregnant? These questions are 1000x more interesting than tech discussion.

There's whole fetishes devoted to the idea of having sex with an 8 ft tall girl, a blue girl, both... etc. Cameron loves powerful women in his works which usually means that's his fetish of choice, similar to Tarantino's feet obsession or Burton's dark gothy beauties.

[Mrbloodworth]

So if I as a human tried to have sex with an 8ft tall blue girl, would she just crush my hips? I mean would I have to be in an avatar for that? Also can his avatar get blue chick pregnant? These questions are 1000x more interesting than tech discussion.

You assume parts are where you think they are.

[Ratman_tf]

So if I as a human tried to have sex with an 8ft tall blue girl, would she just crush my hips? I mean would I have to be in an avatar for that? Also can his avatar get blue chick pregnant? These questions are 1000x more interesting than tech discussion.

You assume parts are where you think they are.

Why shouldn't he? The smurfs in Avatar look closer to humans than a lot of critters on earth.

[Mrbloodworth]

So if I as a human tried to have sex with an 8ft tall blue girl, would she just crush my hips? I mean would I have to be in an avatar for that? Also can his avatar get blue chick pregnant? These questions are 1000x more interesting than tech discussion.

You assume parts are where you think they are.

Why shouldn't he? The smurfs in Avatar look closer to humans than a lot of critters on earth.

Because, you could be very wrong.

[HaemishM]

but I still have a feeling that I'm going to be asking "Wait, why didn't they just fly ten thousand feet up and missile the village to death from miles away?" when it's over.

I'm thinking any series sci-fi geek is going to be asking themselves the same question over this movie - in essence, why didn't they just nuke the motherfuckers from orbit? Rail guns don't really require any sort of post-21st century tech. If you can go from one planet to another, how hard is it to lasso an asteroid and project it from orbit onto a village of blue-skinned fuckers?

[Ratman_tf]

So if I as a human tried to have sex with an 8ft tall blue girl, would she just crush my hips? I mean would I have to be in an avatar for that? Also can his avatar get blue chick pregnant? These questions are 1000x more interesting than tech discussion.

You assume parts are where you think they are.

Why shouldn't he? The smurfs in Avatar look closer to humans than a lot of critters on earth.

Because, you could be very wrong.

Wow. An alien species that looks exactly like humans except for their bad haircuts and silly genitals. JMS didn't put bumps on their foreheads, he put bumps on their foreskins. 

[Ratman_tf]

I'm thinking any series sci-fi geek is going to be asking themselves the same question over this movie - in essence, why didn't they just nuke the motherfuckers from orbit? Rail guns don't really require any sort of post-21st century tech. If you can go from one planet to another, how hard is it to lasso an asteroid and project it from orbit onto a village of blue-skinned fuckers?

You don't even need a rail gun. Just an engine with clamps and some rudimentary robot brain. Stuff we've had since the 70's.

Anyway. We don't really know the specifics of how this is going to go down. Trailers are intentionally edited out of context for more boom boom zap pow. For all we know, those choppers were shooting at other humans, or a bunch of critters who were coming to munch on the habitat's power lines, or maybe the noble blue savages after all.

I'll reserve judgement on the tactics and strategies until I see this on DVD.

[NowhereMan]

So if I as a human tried to have sex with an 8ft tall blue girl, would she just crush my hips? I mean would I have to be in an avatar for that? Also can his avatar get blue chick pregnant? These questions are 1000x more interesting than tech discussion.

Death by Snoo Snoo for you!

[Margalis]

That's exactly where I was going to go and I'm sure I'm not alone.

[Mattemeo]

You assume parts are where you think they are.

It has tits. It is a mammal. Mammals generally tend to come with the requisite lower fun bits. Having more than the usual isn't off the cards, though. Or implicitely a good or bad thing.

[NowhereMan]

Space aliens tend to have tits if they're female whether mammal or not. Probably a combination of making it easy for the viewer to tell the difference between males and females and easier than disguising breasts/hiring men who look like flat chested women.

[Mrbloodworth]

You assume parts are where you think they are.

It has tits. It is a mammal. Mammals generally tend to come with the requisite lower fun bits. Having more than the usual isn't off the cards, though. Or implicitely a good or bad thing.

You sure that's what they are?