1 What a tweeeest!

*sob*

2 Wanna-be nick stealers, the lot of them!

3 I guess it's as good a way as any of making sure noone ever watches "City of Walls and Secrets" ever again. Here we are safe. Here we are free.

4 Not watching it, not gonna watch it.  If I want to enjoy Avatar, I will watch the original version, thank you very much.

5 I'm such a glutton for punishment.  All the bad reviews paradoxically make me want to see it more. I find it hard to believe that this movie will be worse than The Happening (then again, at least The Happening had a decent rating on the unintentional comedy scale).

6 Mark, if the malicious idiots in hollywierd can't resist the temptation to screw up an adaptation like this, we really need to resist the temptation to give them money and discourage them from making more bad movies.

Did these people think Sheboygan would actually _get better_ from "The Happening" if they gave him more money?

He didn't become this bad overnight. He did "The Village" and "The Happening" and instead of losing money, he made it. So he got positive reinforcement from making bad movies.

So now he's made a worse one. Surprised?

7 Ouch. It's not really surprising that it's a stinker, if it is, given the trailers. Oh yes, and the controversy about casting a bunch of non-Chinese actors in a story clearly based on Chinese mythos.

8

pgfraering, The conventional wisdom was that Shyamalan wasn't a bad director so much as his writing was horrible and that working on someone else's story would produce better results.  Unfortunately, it looks like Shyamalan was in charge of adapting the story and writing the script for this, so his issues with stilted dialogue and awkward exposition are still coming through.  I would still be interested in seeing him direct someone else's script.  

In any case, you're point about not supporting bad movies is well taken.   It's certainly not something I'd see opening weekend (perhaps a matinee in a few weeks), but I'm still interested...

9 All we need now is another, third Avatar: a tender love story that starts at Facebook as characters get attracted to each other's avatars. That will screw up with movegoers real good.

10 ...and they're both cross-playing! yay! a trap and a reverse trap!

11 That would only work if both characters are gay, if you think about it. If chara A is M IRL with F (Trap) avatar, can only be trapped by the M (R-trap) avatar of chara B if he's gay. Same goes for B. Therefore it would only work out as a gay redemption story if both discover the real call of nature, when unmasked. Of course Hollywood would never do it.

12 I just learned The Facebook Movie was announced (it's not called Avatar though). Apparently some kinda murder horror story.

13 It wouldn't be the first time that a movie was based on a current fad. See for instance.

14 I never saw that--I did enjoy Gotcha! though.  I wonder how much that movie inspired modern paintball...

15 I'm surprised at the amount of talent involved with the facebook movie (actually called "The Social Network") - David Fincher directing, Aaron Sorkin writing, some hot young actors (I believe the kid who just got cast as the new Spider Man is starring), Trent Reznor doing the soundtrack, and so on.  That's impressive for a movie about the founding of a website, which seems like a silly premise...

16 I started watching anime mostly in order to improve my Japanese, so I never bothered to watch the animated Avatar series. But I work in a large room full of animators, and they love the animated series, to a man.

Since this movie came out their main pastime has been shouting out particularly cutting bits from reviews of the movie. In fact I think that reading reviews of the movie has directly affected out productivity- even the owner of the company is spending more time reading the reviews than he is spending animating. I know I can't get anything done when I am chortling over bon mots like "It seems that Wood is the only elements humans can't manipulate [in the Avatar world], and that's too bad, as it might have helped in directing the actors."

The reviewers have been having fun- there's nothing more fun for them than to have a movie that really deserves a savaging. I suspect that this will go down in history as the worst movie ever made by someone who had once been considered a serious director.

17

I suspect that this will go down in history as the worst movie ever made by someone who had once been considered a serious director.

No, not a chance. It can't possibly rival "1941".

18 I'll have to disagree with you there.  When it first came out, I didn't really like 1941; it felt.. disappointing.  Some years later (10+?), upon rewatch and having forgotten most of it, I found it to be completely hilarious. It's one of my favorites now.    I still am not sure why.. did I have lower expectations, or had my taste in humor changed?

19 Sdb: "No, not a chance. It can't possibly rival "1941"."

I haven't seen it yet, and I probably never will, but... I work with people masochistic enough to have gone to see this at the first midnight showing. Their reports are starting to trickle in. I think that _at best_ this will be considered equally bad. _At best._

20

No, not a chance. It can't possibly rival "1941".

Aww, but  it's not like it bombed at the box office or like Spielberg having a one hit shot and then blazing the field everywhere every time he decided to inflict the world with another of his films. =P