Avalon: Movie that impressed me

postman · Post by **postman** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 4:23 pm

I just caught the movie Avalon last night, and it's a must see for gamers in general and also fans of the Matrix.....

It's about a virtual reality war game, and the focus is on one of the top players as she finds out more about the game and who created it. Very stylistic and symbolic while being philosophical, and reminded me a lot of the Matrix (what is reality? and questions like that). Check it out if you have a chance to see it....

Also they use terms like "experience points" and "easter egg", so you know it was written by a gamer....

Post by **Ghegs** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 4:45 pm

I've had the DVD for a few years and yeah, it's a really good watch. And the ending certainly has a nice "Wait, WTF?"-quality to it.

PaCrappa · Post by **PaCrappa** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 4:54 pm

LOL. My friend let me borrow this. It was so awful I couldn't even finish. When I tried to give the DVD back, the guy wouldn't even take it! He told me if I didn't know some other poor sucker that I should just throw it in the trash. It's now in my gigantic box of "Crap to Offload".

Diff'rent Strokes I guess...

Pa

Thunder Force · Post by **Thunder Force** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 6:24 pm

I like all of Mamoru Oshii's movies. Although some of my friends literally fall asleep trying to watch them.

Konami's impressive extended trailer for Coded Arms Assault also strongly reminds me of Avalon...

Axon · Post by **Axon** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 6:32 pm

I watched it before, but to me it was average. The atmosphere was good at first but it got annoying towards the second half of the movie.

TVG · Post by **TVG** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 2:11 am

it's like ghost in the shell, only 1000 times worse.
what was the point of the movie? during all of it, i was expecting something cool to happen, but the whole movie just made no sense. search for some hidden meaning, the movie is just a whole bunch of random crap thrown in with some cool music and atmosphere.

just like ghost in the shell was just your average anime with not much going for it.
hell, when i asked an idiot what was so "deep" and splendid about the movie, he just tried to convice me i didn't "get it" and that the end when she stands and says something about the intarweb being vast and big was like super awesome. uh...she just stands there and says that the internet is big, no shit sherlock! these movies suck.

and before everyone jumps and claims it has hidden meanings, no, you're a fool, it's unnecessarly vague and random so everyone translates it as they wish and think they understand something unique and cool. reminds me of staring at a piece of paper and seeing the universe in it.

Bingo · Post by **Bingo** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 8:26 am

Haha I love how Oshii films elicit the same responses from the most diverse groups of people. Takes anywhere between 3 and 5 replies to cover everything between reverence and terminal boredom. If I didn't know the films, that alone would get me interested.

I liked Avalon by the way, saw it during an MMORPG phase and got an extra kick out of it due to that. Plus I'm partial to the worlds Oshii creates together with Kawai's soundtracks. Sometimes that's just the lube needed to facilitate acceptance of the ostentatious onslaught of philosophy and references. I like how the aesthetic in all its artificiality underscores thoughts and feelings more than plot. The constant references can be a bit heavy-handed when Oshii can't resist the urge to verbalize them though. Judging from audience response, Avalon seems to be the least accessible of his movies.

CMoon · Post by **CMoon** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 12:18 pm

I like how all his films have to have that dog in it...

bpe · Post by **bpe** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 3:51 pm

If you watch the making of, there's a scene where they show that military helicopter do its flyby of the building for the "clan is under assault" scene.
I thought it was interesting that it looked seriously more scary in that making of than in the movie itself. Talk about stylized violence. Once you see it "for real" in that making-of clip, you realize how massive that thing is and how much firepower it packs. Kind of like when you see the concept / design artwork for the level 1 boss of DDPDOJ, you realize that it is in fact not a wussy piece of junk

Other than that, bonus points for being in polish

Oh and for another, although completely different, interesting Japanese movie, try to grab Casshern. It's not without its flaws, but it's essentially trying to make a movie out of the freaking power rangers, for an adult audience no less. And it sort of succeeds too, pretty entertaining. Also one of the very few movies that had actors in front of 100% CGI (a la Sin City). It shows you what Matrix 2's burly brawl should've been, worth watching for that one alone.

postman · Post by **postman** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 6:39 pm

I could tell when watching this it would be a movie that people would either love or hate.......

I may be one of those people who "read into it" too much, but I do that with life in general and have a different way of looking at things. I thought there was a lot of symbolism in Avalon, and my favorite feature of the film is right after Ash catches the ghost, and the whole style of dark, depressing yellow changes to real world visuals. They could have went more into how the actual game plays (though it looks like just standard military warfare).........

Glad someone mentioned the backdrop was Poland, I couldn't place the writing on the advertisements in the background..........

DirtyMonk · Post by **DirtyMonk** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 5:19 am

...and I was totally thinking of this movie.

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 1:21 pm

I saw it on the Encore Action channel like a year back, along with some other niche JP live action stuff. Too much blurring effect for my taste; I think it could've been more interesting in anime form...

Never_Scurred · Post by **Never_Scurred** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 1:49 pm

The vagrant wrote:it's like ghost in the shell, only 1000 times worse.
what was the point of the movie? during all of it, i was expecting something cool to happen, but the whole movie just made no sense. search for some hidden meaning, the movie is just a whole bunch of random crap thrown in with some cool music and atmosphere.

just like ghost in the shell was just your average anime with not much going for it.
hell, when i asked an idiot what was so "deep" and splendid about the movie, he just tried to convice me i didn't "get it" and that the end when she stands and says something about the intarweb being vast and big was like super awesome. uh...she just stands there and says that the internet is big, no shit sherlock! these movies suck.

and before everyone jumps and claims it has hidden meanings, no, you're a fool, it's unnecessarly vague and random so everyone translates it as they wish and think they understand something unique and cool. reminds me of staring at a piece of paper and seeing the universe in it.

Agreed. Pretty much sums up my hatred of the Donnie Darko and the Matrix movies. Not that I mind a movie that takes into account that its audience has a brain, but if I wanna learn something, thats what TLC and the Discovery Channel is for. I don't need a movie trying to push off new age philosphy on me when I wanna be entertained.

tiktak · Post by **tiktak** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 2:10 pm

I watched the movie twice and liked it after second watching. Maybe because at first I tried original polish voices. This movie MUST be seen with Japanese dubbing. (main character is a famous drama series star in Poland...) Besides of that the atmosphere is great and colors were well selected making the audio-visual part superb. It was especially interesting for me because Oshii made this film few streets from my house - in Wroclaw. The final scene have been taken in Warsaw all of sudden making me say"WTF?";p I heard Spielberg called this movies as a one of the best sf movies ever but what he really thought?

bpe · Post by **bpe** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 5:07 pm

So didn't you suspect something was up when, during filming, a tank rolled by ?

Post by **Ghegs** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 7:28 pm

bpe wrote:Oh and for another, although completely different, interesting Japanese movie, try to grab Casshern. It's not without its flaws, but it's essentially trying to make a movie out of the freaking power rangers, for an adult audience no less. And it sort of succeeds too, pretty entertaining. Also one of the very few movies that had actors in front of 100% CGI (a la Sin City). It shows you what Matrix 2's burly brawl should've been, worth watching for that one alone.

Now this I found to be an absolutely boring movie. Honestly, I had difficulties staying awake during it. I didn't even get any kick out of the action scenes.

tiktak · Post by **tiktak** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:43 pm

bpe wrote:So didn't you suspect something was up when, during filming, a tank rolled by ?

Suspect? Once I waited half a day to meet mr Oshii;]

BUHA · Post by **BUHA** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 1:24 am

haha that movie was recommended to me by a friend so I watched it with all of my friends shortly after, and we were all so pissed off. what a boring movie.

the videogame stuff is just silly, and the rest is just artsy fartsy, boring, or doesnt make any immediate sense.

it is now infamous in our circle of friends.

I like movies that make you think, but I sure didn't like this one. Just seemed like the longest 2 hours of my life.

shiftace · Post by **shiftace** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 3:15 am

The vagrant wrote:hell, when i asked an idiot what was so "deep" and splendid about the movie, he just tried to convice me i didn't "get it" and that the end when she stands and says something about the intarweb being vast and big was like super awesome.

Wow! Longweb sure is, er, nevermind. I don't know what you people are talking about, this is just the first thing that came to mind. Sorry.