Avartar is really COOL! its totally hork-bajir chronicles!!! (warning: SPOILERS)

[Phoenix004]

I saw it last night and it did remind me of HBC in parts.

[martinguy]

I loved avatar i think it was a great movie!!   

[Acalio-Laron-Jaham]

hahaha you know what, I have a really huge crush on neytiri atm......

does anyone else? she's so hot and beautiful.....even though she is a CGI alien...lol xD

Something about her personality coupled with that hot, fit, tight and slender and graceful body, those long slender but fit legs, the little clothes she has on, those gorgeous eyes, and to top it all off, her animalistic characteristics when threatened - the hissing she does its so freaken hot.

So yeah.  

I'm not a weirdo. don't judge me.
.....

waheva.

[voodooqueen126]

Very noble savage/orientalism:P

[Dameg]

Acalio, if you're weirdo, so do I!
...
Wait... but I AM a weirdo

[eacortes]

I have seen the movie twice, and having read this thread, I certainly do see many paralells to HBC, although it did not occur to me when I saw it, I plan to see it a third in Imax so I can see them clearly for myself. Its got to be one of the crown gems of science fiction of the decade, and I insist every Animorphs fan check this movie out.  When I read the Animorphs books, I perceive what I read in the same grand vision as I saw in Avatar, stunning and beautiful.  I thought that many of the creatures seen in the movie could be interesting morphs! Even the Na'vi.   I also agree their quite attractive, looking somewhat like a cross between runway models and panthers.

[AniDragon]

I'm with you in the crush on Neytiri...

And yeah, I can see some parallels with HBC, and I most definietely noticed the whole "Jake with older brother named Tom" thing.

[Mr. Guy36]

Well, Horsie and I just got back from seeing this, and I totally agree on the HBC part. Horsie pointed out the Tom/Jake thing, which I totally missed. The whole time, I was thinking of Dak's line: "Be quiet, Aldrea. Tonight my people die. Be quiet, Andalite. Be quiet."

[Hylian Dan]

I saw last night and it got me thinking of The Hork-Bajir Chronicles - so it was nice to see this thread already existed. Also saw the Pocahontas parallels. And the Princess Mononoke parallels - it was essentially the Western world's version of Princess Mononoke, complete with good guys vs. bad guys, ridiculously awesome technology, and a montage sequence. I liked the movie a lot, but there were rigid formulas in place. Within the first ten minutes I already knew the second and third acts. It was a really awesome execution of a familiar formula.

I wish I could see HBC on film but there's the sad reality of the entertainment industry in the way. Lots of the people making the deci$ions feel the indu$try is more important than the entertainment. HBC would be total CGI, with lots of fantasy imagery and no human characters, which makes it a huge financial investment. Huge financial investments need to have a pretty good chance of making returns... and HBC produces some problems.

How do you market a CGI movie with three main alien races and no human characters? How do you hook the audience when the first chunk of the movie features a bunch of mouthless telepathic centaur-like aliens? And the other aliens have beaks? And after taking these huge marketing risks, how can you give such a big budget movie such a downer of an ending? Test audiences would complain. Word of mouth would scare people away: it's a leap getting people to see something so alien, they won't take the risk if they know the movie's gonna be so depressing. It might be possible if the Animorphs brand is revived and finds a HUGE following, and if other risks with film versions of the franchise pay off.

[MoppingBear]

avatar had a pretty damn depressing ending too once you realize it would be trivial for the corporation to come back with a much bigger force.

[Acalio-Laron-Jaham]

Hylian Dan alot of what you say is good about a HBC, but in regards to your points about the appeal and risk of a HBC having no human characters...well, there has been in the past quite a few theatrical films which were succesful without invivling human characters at all, for example -

a bugs life, the lion king, wall-e, the land before time, happy feet, ice age, dinosaur just to name a few. all of these movies, with the exception of the lion king and the land before time, are all CGI - which as you said, a HBC would be. And each of these movies featured no human characters at all (maybe ice-age 2 had a little baby caveman human girl or something, but thats ice age 2 i think, ice age 1 itself was successful as well).

So, all I'm saying is that its not unheard of, not impossible, for a movie to start of with non-human characters and for the rest of its duration to have no human characters at all, to be successful.

[Hylian Dan]

Anthropomorphic animals have a lot of appeal, whereas it would be tougher to get audiences invested in three unfamiliar alien races - especially a tragedy about these aliens.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but there are some very big obstacles to getting the project green-lighted, and it would take someone with a lot of passion and cleverness to get past them. And even if it is on track with a good director, test audiences could complain about the ending as they did with The Golden Compass for instance. And then the studio gets cold feet and forces the director to give it a happily ever after. The entertainment industry can be a pretty cold place. It likes formulas and track records and safe bets, so HBC would be a tough sell.

[adeon222]

I was honestly expecting it to be a future Pocahontas... And it was...

But I think that it's a movie that was a must-see for me because of how far movie technology has come, and (while it didn't remind me particularly of HBC while I was watching it) it did make me think of all the possiblilities for an Animorphs movie... That would be so incredible! And so doable with the capabilities movie-makers have today!

For the record, I thought Avatar was one of the coolest looking movies I've seen in a long time... But I'm of the opinion that the story and plotline was old and overly cliched...

Very cool movie, indicative of much cooler things to come from CGI movies...

[voodooqueen126]

Special affects were beautiful
Plot was propaganda
the theme was terribly new agey to me.

[Vanish]

haha I thought the same thing I when I watched it. There were many similarities between Avatar and HBC