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What's one highly extolled piece of media that you absolutely cannot stand in any way shape or form. (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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For me if I had to pick a good contender it would be the UK version of The Office.

I know many tend to debate how Ricky Gervais really fell off and how he repugnantly acts like a whiny centrist edgelord but me personally IMO I actually don't think he was ever funny not even a little.

His big break through television was just so painful to sit through it's so charismatically boring the characters are completely generic at best (notably Tim) or straight up insufferably unlikable at worst (especially the protagonist David FUCKING Brent) and most importantly the humour is just embarrassing.

Always seemed like The Thick Of It but without the nuisance tongue in cheek and charming satire.

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[–] 14 points 4 months ago (11 children)

Utter snoozefest I didn't get the hype at all

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    When did you watch it? When it came out, it was technically impressive for the computer-generated graphics, which included a lot of highly-detailed and expansive "organic" stuff like forests.

    Here's some quotes from the Roger Ebert review from the time:

    https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/avatar-2009

    Like “Star Wars” and “LOTR,” “Avatar” employs a new generation of special effects. Cameron said it would, and many doubted him. It does. Pandora is very largely CGI. The Na’vi are embodied through motion capture techniques, convincingly. They look like specific, persuasive individuals, yet sidestep the eerie Uncanny Valley effect. And Cameron and his artists succeed at the difficult challenge of making Neytiri a blue-skinned giantess with golden eyes and a long, supple tail, and yet–I’ll be damned. Sexy.

    Cameron promised he’d unveil the next generation of 3-D in “Avatar.” I’m a notorious skeptic about this process, a needless distraction from the perfect realism of movies in 2-D. Cameron’s iteration is the best I’ve seen — and more importantly, one of the most carefully-employed. The film never uses 3-D simply because it has it, and doesn’t promiscuously violate the fourth wall.

    I mean, I remember being underwhelmed after I went to watch Avatar with a friend who was deeply impressed, but it did show off a lot of render capability for the time. I'd call it more impressive as a tech demo.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    It’s way beyond a tech demo. Each Avatar movie invented dozens of new techniques. They actually film using cameras. They do a CGI movie with cameras, filming real actors acting. And they become huge blue aliens, while being filmed on a camera. It’s truly insane. I don’t like the movies themselves, but the BTS for them is crazy.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    And that sort of thing totally DOES permeate throughout the industry. Whenever Pixar or Weta(RIP?) or Cameron or DreamWorks or whoever invent something REALLY COOL. . .

    . . .At some point we eventually get it in Blender, and I think that's neat.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    I’m pretty sure that’s Cameron’s goal. He saw the direction movies were going and wanted to guarantee a niche for artists will keep existing within it 🤷‍♂️

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  • [–] 16 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I lost all respect for the movie and the entire franchise after hearing "unobtainium" as the name of the super rare space mineral. Nearly walked out of the theater.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    I can't remember if they ever refer to it as anything else in that movie but I actually appreciated this scene in the first movie for two reasons:

    Info dumps irritate me in sci fi. He's like the main guy in charge talking to one of his lead scientists. They both absolutely fucking know why they're there. They know what it's called and what it's for. He's spelling it out for our benefit without breaking in-world character. If, in-world, someone started pedantically outlining what the rocks were for to their lead scientists, it would be the equivalent of calling them an idiot. Calling it "unobtainium" is like saying "we've had this argument before, I remember everything you said last time, you know everything I'm about to tell you, and nothing you or I do will change what's happening because you cant get it anywhere else and oh yeah it's worth a fuck load of money".

    I can't remember if they later retcon that into being the actual name, but in that moment, it didn't sound like the actual name, it sounded like slang being used informally during a semi heated discussion.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Whether or not that was the original intent I LOVE this interpretation. I like to be entertained and err on the side of "Maybe this is a deliberate choice these very smart and passionate people made to smooth out a story."

    Sometimes I feel like people get mad that they aren't just dropped into a completely fleshed out imaginary world.

    It's entertainment delivered to them as they relax in a chair, requiring zero effort on their part, and they make it a goal to nitpick whatever reminds them this slice of imagination was designed by humans, and isn't actually a fully functional parallel universe they can literally isekai into to escape the mundanity of modern existence.

    Critic culture is overrated, and I wish people would exercise their suspension of disbelief, basically. Hahaha

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago

    The plot sucks and the characters are forgettable, but that's not the point. The point is the graphics, the locations, the crazy wildlife and eywa. The neural queues and the floating islands. Its a masterclass in world building, and has been an endless source of inspiration.

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