back to article Chinese Avatards go mad for Pandora

The Chinese have apparently gone mad for Avatar, with eager cinemagoers queuing for hours in freezing temperatures to visit the wonderful world of Pandora. On its opening day, the movie took a record 56 million yuan (£5m), and IMAX cinemas are booked to bursting for weeks to come, the Times reports. But it's not just the 3-D …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. The Original Ash
    WTF?

    BAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

    "The blogger suggested: "I strongly advise real estate developers and urban administrative inspectors see the movie and learn from it.""

    It's the other way around, Sherlock. You're being spoon-fed an allegory of corporate "diplomacy" under the guise of a Sci-Fi movie.

    I know your local news is butchered to hell by The Powers That Be, but it can't be THAT insigtful?

  2. Thomas 4
    Thumb Down

    Oh for the love of Christ...

    ....its a freaking film about freaking aliens. It's not the second coming of the iPhone.

  3. Aaron Em

    It's not banned in China?

    Wow, there's a surprise.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge

      Not banned?

      Wait 'til next week when the party apparatchiks have had a chance to read those quotes.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Pandora is here

    Our own crappy lump of rock still HAS ITS OWN Pandora f, it's called the Amazon rain forest. In fact there are still a few Pandoras in the tropical jungles around the planet full of weird and scary wonderful creatures.

    1. Stevie

      Bah!

      So, none of these left then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordylobia

      And presumably none of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria

      Don't recall this coming up in the God Movie.

  5. captain kangaroo
    Welcome

    Hello Mum...

    I haven't seen the film, and have no comment (for once) but have sent the link to my mother who loves it.

    Hence HELLO MUM :)

  6. Elmer Phud
    Alien

    Aaaargh!

    The more I hear about it, the less I want to see it.

    Does it work without 3D or is that its only main feature?

    Titanic was total bollocks and I'm guessing that this is not much more than a poor story wrapped up in FX.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Badgers

      advice

      Elmer, either see it or stop posting on threads about it... Bear in mind that you can only really be justified in slagging something if you've actually seen it! perhaps a research trip is in order?

      yes its available in 2D - and the story is coherant and works. however it is far too cliched, and does contain Bollocks. (well the DVD version does apparantly!??) and thats from someone who has seen it.

      1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

        the story is coherant and works

        No it's not. Not even close.

        But the flick is still enjoyable as a whole; even though it's a bit long, didn't look at my watch (unlike for, say, Titanic, during which I even checked that my watched had not stopped).

  7. Jolyon Ralph
    Thumb Up

    I saw avatar in Russian

    .. when I was in Moscow.

    or ABATAP if you prefer... or "Dances with Smurfs"

    And although I didn't understand much of it, it was very pretty!

    1. Eddy Ito
      Go

      Always fun

      I also enjoy catching movies abroad, as I did avatar. In fact, I probably got to see it with some of the bloggers mentioned in the article. It was a bit odd though, most of the dialog was in english with chinese subtitles but the native na'vish (na'viese?) dialog had german subtitles... I'm almost certain it was a mostly legit copy... sort of. On the up side, I recognized enough german to get the gist of what they were saying.

  8. jai

    bad advise

    "I strongly advise real estate developers and urban administrative inspectors see the movie and learn from it."

    that seems like such a bad idea

    they'll watch the film and think "hmmm, burning down the housing and carpet bombing to clear out the resistant tennants - what a good idea!" and after all, it's not like the resident of a 'nail house' is likely to have access to weird and wonderful alien creatures to use to fight off the invading bulldozers

    1. LaeMing
      Unhappy

      Nothing to learn here.

      These strategies (or close enough) are already in use over there.

  9. ElReg!comments!Pierre

    Yeah, China, right...

    Double-guessing directors might be tricky at times, but I doubt Cameron had China in mind this time. It's clearly the Amazonian forest with maybe a hint of Africa. Not that it actually matters, as anyone paying too much attention to the plot ended up hugely disappointed, surely? It is a crossover between a Discovery Channel docu-fiction and a videogame trailer. Nicely done certainly, but hardly an example of character depth or scenario consistency, let alone political analysis.

  10. Nexox Enigma

    Just goes to show...

    That people can make popular media be 'about' anything they like. In a few minutes they'll start throwing around big words like 'Hegemony' and 'Disenfranchise' and getting masters degrees in various forms of cultural studies.

    I may have been forced to take a few classes on the topic as a requirement for my engineering degree. The classes were supposed to 'open my eyes' or some such to other cultures, but it just illustrated to me that people studying these useless topics just waste a lot of air.

    As an example, I had to have a serious discussion with someone that was writing their masters' thesis on the original Harold and Kumar movie, which was apparently about so many different forms of cultural (negativity? division? just pick some words, I'm sure they're true) it was going to take 2 years to figure it all out and write it down.

  11. Dick Emery
    Troll

    lol

    In b4 it's censored by Chinese politicos as Western propaganda.

  12. Jonathan McColl
    Boffin

    I speak for the Fuzzies!

    I see we have few SF fans writing today. who would recognise H Beam Piper's Fuzzy stories, Anne McCaffrey's Pern, Ursula le Guin's Word for World is Forest, Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers and other books, and Roger Dean's art and Chris Foss's and on and on I could go. James Cameron copied from the best and made a good job. So there.

    I didn't think Chinese oppression as I watched it, I thought Europeans dealing with Native Americans. This reminds me: for a storyline, Failblog shows a description of Disney's Pocahontas with all the names crossed out and Avatar equivalents put in their places. Pocahontas was awful, but Avatar isn't despite the neat fit.

    What about an IT angle? The 3D kit the invading forces worked with actually looked useful, unlike the oversexed crap that CSI Miami uses and pretends is nowadays stuff.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Dances with Smurfs?"

    No, it's "Pocahontas in Spaaaaaaace!" (add reverb)

    No, really. Compare the storylines.

  14. Morpho Devilpepper

    Avatards?

    I love it! Must start using this word every other sentence...

    But it's not like there's no oppression of the have-nots anywhere else in the world.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ferngully in spaaaaaace

    that is all.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Wanting Forced Eviction

    Not sure about the whole of China, but here in Anhui province people keep their fingers crossed that they get evicted. If you get evicted in my city of Wuhu, then you get about 5-6 apartments as compensation. Eg. Live in a terrible quality house, get evicted, live the life of Riley for the rest of your years renting out all your spare apartments.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like