Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
On 'Avatar', I learned that it's worth taking some risks and doing some weird little things with characters or having an off-joke here and there, even if it's only for 5 percent of the audience.
My mother named me after her favorite actor, Joel McCrea, and dressed and presented me as her avatar. I'm sure she wanted to be a performer, but when that was impossible, I was her next best shot.
It's time to wake up to the fact that you're just another avatar in someone else's MMO. Worse: From where they stand, all-powerful Big Data analysts that they are, you look an awful lot like a bot.
'Avatar' was incredible and totally groundbreaking, but it wasn't about utter realism. It had a great mythic fantasy to it, but the characters don't seem totally photo-real, as amazing as they are.
'Avatar' was gorgeous. There are good stories in there, but when used in other movies they're similar to those violent video games. Characters using deadly weapons. The children follow these movies.
Though we did have a few main characters in 'Avatar' who represented the non-benders of the world, most of the people we focused on were benders. However, benders are the minority in their world population.
'Avatar' imaginatively revisits the crime scene of white America's foundational act of genocide, in which entire native tribes and civilizations were wiped out by European immigrants to the American continent.
Yeah, so when 'Avatar' came out, the social media world and the idea of fan communities were very new. There were forums and you could obviously go to conventions and talk to people, but it wasn't as clear or easy.
Critics have called alien epic 'Avatar' a version of 'Dances With Wolves' because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy.
'Avatar' is the greatest, most comprehensive collection of movie cliches ever assembled, but it's put together in a brand new way with a new technology, and tremendous imagination, making it a true epic and a kind of a milestone.
In America, everyone writes but no one reads. Everyone's writing all day long - sending emails, tweets, text messages; they all think they're James Cameron's Avatar, performing in some video game for which they make up the script.
I think it's one of the coolest things especially as a young actor, actually at any time - even doing my stuff with Avatar - merchandising, video games come out and action figures and plushie toys. It really ignites the kid in you.
Nickelodeon came to us at the end of 2009 with a twelve episode 'mini-season' already green-lit for a new series. They let us do pretty much whatever we wanted with it, as long as it was in the 'Avatar' universe and featured bending.
To be honest, I found the 3D in 'Avatar' to be inconsistent and while ground breaking in many respects, sometimes I thought it overwhelmed the storytelling. Technology aside, I wish 'Avatar' had been more original in its storytelling.
To enable our vast offering of user-created play, Roblox offers a virtual construction and game-development platform where everyone has the power to make anything from avatar clothing and 3D models to virtual worlds and hardcore games.
You may have seen me in movies like 'Fast & Furious' and 'Avatar.' But I wouldn't have been able to do any of that without hard work and determination. You can accomplish anything if you just stay out of trouble and do the right things.
If you look at 'Avatar,' could you imagine if you did 'Avatar' for 50 million dollars? It would be ridiculous! You would almost be getting laughs from the audience, unless you got a real indie director to do something incredibly stylised.
'Superbetter' looks more like a social media platform or a social network than a typical video game. You know, there aren't any 3-d spaces to explore. You don't have this avatar that you're building up. It's more about thinking like a gamer.
I believe in 3D for certain kinds of films. I certainly believe in using 3D for all things in animation because animation has such clarity and so much depth of focus. It worked great with 'Avatar' because 70 percent of that film is animated.
Whether 'Avatar' is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it's undeniable that the film - like alien apartheid flick 'District 9', released earlier this year - is emphatically a fantasy about race.
Early on, many years ago when we started 'Avatar,' the executive that we were working with said to make the sad scenes sadder, the funny scenes funnier, the scary scenes scarier. That was kind of permission to do what we felt comfortable with.
The remarkable thing about 'Avatar' is the degree to which the technology is integral to the story. It is important to show Pandora and its Na'Vi natives in 3-D because 'Avatar' is fundamentally about the moral necessity of seeing other beings fully.
You don't pay the same price for a Ferrari as you do for a Honda Accord. But for some reason, for movie tickets, you're asked to pay the same price for 'Avatar' as you are for some $2 million movie, which is kind of a weird thing when you think about it.
Just mention the idea of warrantless wiretaps and expect to get hit up with a congressional investigation. But give somebody an avatar and a URL, and he can't tweet, post or hyperlink enough personal information about himself to as many people as possible.
It's funny because when I got 'Jarhead' and 'Avatar' and all those movies, 'Leprechaun' still to this day airs on BET. I was thinking, 'Will they just let it go? I finally have a body of work that can speak much better to what I can do than just Leprechaun.'
We ended up realizing that's not an economical way to create creatures, putting people in green leotards and figuring it out later. You can maybe do that if you're making 'Avatar,' but we need to know what the creatures look like before we turn on the camera.
I'm a 'Clash of the Titans'/'Star Wars' baby. I'm not a new 'Star Wars' baby. I'm not an 'Avatar' baby. That full CG doesn't work for me. I need interactivity. I need to feel the goo. I need to feel people coming out of animatronics and just interacting with props.
If a novelist had concocted a villain like Trump - a larger-than-life, over-the-top avatar of narcissism, mendacity, ignorance, prejudice, boorishness, demagoguery, and tyrannical impulses, she or he would likely be accused of extreme contrivance and implausibility.
When Nickelodeon, in 2009, told us they wanted us to come back and do another series where we could do whatever we wanted, the first thought we had was: Let's do a story about the next 'Avatar.' That was the first thought. The second thought was: Let's make it a girl.
Actors get to go to these amazing worlds. In 'Terminator,' I was a cyborg with feelings; in 'Avatar,' I lived for 15 months on a fantastical planet, and in 'Clash of the Titans,' I get to fight a scorpion the size of a dump truck. It's a bizarre job, but you explore yourself.
Whereas 'Avatar' and other movies get shocks out of their three-dimensionality, 'Gatsby' is going to be about inviting the audience into this larger-than-life drama, letting them almost be inside the room rather than looking at it through the window. I think it will really work.
The 3D thing has been abused slightly, I think. There is no question about that. 'Avatar' did it magnificently, and then, of course, there was the old 'leaping on the bandwagon' thing where there have been one or two films which, let's face it, all know look bloody awful with the 3D.
I think the biggest lesson that I take from 'Avatar' on any set that I go to is just work ethic. Working with Jim Cameron, you're used to working very, very long days and you're very meticulous about details. He's very, very picky about little details, little character-isms and things.
A lot of people say to me, 'Is this good, to do to a Shakespeare piece?' And I think, 'You know, 'West Side Story' did it very cleverly, in a different way.' But if you look at 'Bonnie and Clyde,' 'Titanic,' 'Avatar,' 'Grease,' 'Brokeback Mountain'... they're all 'Romeo and Juliet' stories.
According to the people who dearly would love to throw him out of office, Barack Obama was elected to be 'above politics.' He wasn't elected to be president, after all. He was elected as an avatar of American tolerance. His attempts to get himself reelected imply a certain, well, ingratitude.
We made too many expensive movies trying to offset the loss of the 'LOTR' income. There was a lot of pressure to re-create that franchise, which turned out to be unhealthy for us, because it's such a once-in-a-lifetime success. It would be like trying to re-create 'Avatar' over and over again.
Even if you're an optimist, there's some part of you that just tries to toughen up and be pragmatic and go, 'This isn't gonna happen. This isn't gonna happen.' I really felt that way through the process of 'Korra' because I knew 'Avatar,' and I knew how wonderful it was, and I was so terrified.
I don't have a real home. When I got 'Avatar,' I sold everything that I owned because I knew it was going to be a long journey. I've got two bags, and that was four years ago, and I've been working ever since, and I've still only got two bags - a bag of books and a bag of clothes. That's about it.
Anti-capitalism is nothing new in Hollywood. From 'Wall-E' to 'Avatar,' corporations are routinely depicted as evil. The contradiction of corporate-funded films denouncing corporations is an irony capitalism cannot just absorb, but thrive on. Yet this anti-capitalism is only allowed within limits.
Everything's changed. The technology is the big thing changing now, the way movies like 'Alice' or 'Avatar' are made. And technology on the other side, the audience side. Word spreads so fast now on a movie, with the Internet, and piracy is something coming down the line like in the music industry.
Aang is an Airbender, and he became the Avatar after the last one died. He has to realize his destiny as the Avatar by mastering all of the elements - earth, fire and air. For me, I feel like I'm mastering all the different styles or elements of MMA. It's my destiny to become the Avatar of this game.
I think Trump is so dangerous because the people that he appeals to the most have this sense of despair and oppression that has become a central defining characteristic of their lives. And they feel like only he is their avatar; only he will fight for them; only he will keep the wolf from the proverbial door.
In the James Cameron blockbuster 'Avatar,' 3-D cinematography is the real star. The bugs and crawling creatures seem to slither into the theater seats. The floating mountains of the planet Pandora hover gloriously overhead. And the Na'Vi, Pandora's 10-foot-tall, blue-skinned natives, come convincingly to life.
Look at 'Avatar:' the foreign ticket sales were over twice the domestic returns. The mind boggles at those kinds of numbers, but that's what you get when you effectively reach out to a global audience. If that kind of thing came to comics, it would undoubtedly change how people perceive the mainstream industry.
From the inception of this series, Mike and I were very interested in exploring the theme of tradition versus progress. We always like the struggle for balance to be a central theme of our stories, so as we introduce all of these changes to the 'Avatar' world, we get to see how people react and try to realign themselves.
I listen to a lot of what my sister Rhea says. I give her a lot of credit for my stuff. When people give me credit for my fashion choices, it's my sister who creates them. This whole fashionable avatar has been created by her. It's her brainchild. It's not me at all. Rhea really takes care of me, though I am older than her.
You need virtual reality to understand high level science or high level math. It's very helpful to explain third and fourth dimensional things that people are constantly addressing in quantum physics. But, as soon as you're creating an avatar, and you can live and you can start to feel sensations on VR, that has gone too far.
You look at science fiction and look how often it talks about being alien, being alienated about the other. Look at the number of blue people - 'Avatar,' I'm looking at you. And it is now easier to find people of color in science-fiction literature and media, but the issues of representation are still really, really troubling.
You don't need a digital David Petraeus or a President Bush avatar to distract you from the truth. You don't need to wait decades to have disinformation beamed into your head. You just need a constant stream of misleading information, half truths, and fictions to be promoted, pushed, and peddled until they are accepted as fact.
The only sci-fi movie that I've ever been offered that, had circumstances been different, I would have definitely done, was 'Avatar.' And I literally couldn't do it because of my schedule. But listening to James Cameron talk about 'Avatar' was so fascinating. Because he literally invented the world in his mind - and it literally existed.