back to article Avatar kills Taiwanese man

Blockbuster movie Avatar has added to its impressive list of accomplishments - which to date include inducing suicidal despair, attracting Golden Globes, provoking civil unrest and creating a plethora of Pandoras - by killing a Taiwanese man overcome by the 3D experience. According to AFP, the 42-year-old cinemagoer, surnamed …

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  1. Paul Renault

    So watching Avatar is the equivalent of ...

    ..listening to a recitation by the Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning," where, in one noted instance, four members of of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    As a 44yo hypertensive diabetic male

    who saw the film on Saturday, I can assure you that it was probably not the film that killed him.

    1. Big-nosed Pengie

      I dunno.

      I wouldn't be at all surprised if being exposed to that many clichés in such a short space of time proved to be pretty deadly.

  3. Tim Greenwood

    Health warning

    Maybe it's time to reconsider the BBFC rating or perhaps issue a health warning to all cinemagoers.

  4. Tom Wood

    Statistics

    So how many people, worldwide, have sat in a cinema for ~3 hours to watch this film?

    Given that, I'd have thought it fairly unlikely that ALL of them would manage to escape alive.

  5. SJ Emmons
    FAIL

    I'm joking, of course but,

    you sure it wasn't the 3 packs of Butterkist and coke he ate while watching the film?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No

      It was probably just after it had sunk in how much he'd paid for those things.

  6. The Original Ash
    Black Helicopters

    Alternative Headline

    Chinese state-sponsored medical professional issues secondary evidence in support of banning Avatar from China.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Alert

      Toeing the party line there are we?

      While I welcome that interesting comment from the spokesman for the government of the People's Republic of China, I'd like to point out that in most of the rest of the world we recognise the difference between the governments of the PRC and Taiwan (Democratic Republic of China).

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. JP Sistenich
          Stop

          Actually...

          Yes. It is a Taiwanese paper.

  7. MinionZero

    Sad news

    Sorry to hear someone so young dying like that, but it sounds like he was so near the edge health wise, that doing something as simple as running upstairs or running for a bus could have killed him in the same way.

  8. LuMan
    Flame

    Ban The Film - NOW!!

    Really! We MUST get this film banned - at least here in the UK, anyway!

    If we get told not to use mobile phones at petrol stations because one caught fire once when a man just happened to be using a mobile phone*, then we have to stop watching this film because, quite obviously, it leads to death.

    </sigh>

    *Despite a rather splendid scientific experiment on Braniacs which totally disproved the theory!

    1. David Barrett
      Flame

      Actually

      Having worked at shell several years ago I can confirm that it is a fallicy that this is the only reason for the restriction...

      If you operated a filling station would you want numpties wandering around on phones:

      1. Not paying attention and getting run over.

      2. Taking bloody ages to pay holding everyone else up.

      3. Not paying attention and spilling diesel all over the place (Its bloody slippy you know!)

      Having witnessed a lot of near misses of 1 (Even when not distracted some people dont seem to be able to navigate a forecourt) and seeing 2 on a daily basis (Normally when Im trying to buy MY fuel.. I completly agree with the ban.

  9. Matthew Smith

    He died without having to watch Avatar to the end?

    Lucky man.

  10. Lickass McClippers
    Thumb Down

    <title>

    I would imagine that it was the tedious plot and atrocious acting what done for him...

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @Lickass McClippers

    "I would imagine that it was the tedious plot and atrocious acting what done for him..."

    I imagine you've been on another planet for the last year or so...

    It was obvious from the trailers that the characters are CGI. They're BLUE ffs and 12 feet tall. That means there's not so much "acting" more "animation"

    Of course, it's perfectly possible that Sigourney Weaver had plastic surgery to make her slightly taller and less pink before shooting started but I doubt it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Grenade

      Different planets

      "It was obvious from the trailers that the characters are CGI. They're BLUE ffs and 12 feet tall. That means there's not so much "acting" more "animation""

      Have YOU been on a different planet for the last year or so? Have you figured out how the CGI is animated? Or have you failed to notice it's entirely motion captured - the actors drive the motion.

      Not to mention acting isn't necessarily the physical movement. Voice actors will probably be a tad insulted.

    2. Andrew_F

      They used motion capture

      So they recorded not only the voice acting but also the actors' gestures.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Down

      Erm

      You haven't heard of motion capture technology, look it up, you may be surprised how much"acting" goes into that animation.

      1. LaeMing

        Not just motion.

        I believe facial expressions were also captured from the live performers.

    4. Lickass McClippers
      FAIL

      You Sir...

      ...are a dufus...

    5. Jerome 0

      Another planet?

      The actors were motion-captured and their movements and expressions animated onto the 12 foot tall blue guys. Acting *and* CGI, no plastic surgery required. Amazing what you can do with modern technology, eh?

  12. Elmer Phud
    Alien

    Avatards

    So there's hope for the rest of us?

    If this is the effect on one, poor innocent man then those who seem to have bought the whole fantasy bollocks* (see also Dan Brown) will, hopefully, disappear up their own fundamental wormholes.

    *I, too wish you were all physically on another planet rather than only it being your heads in that particular space. "Oooh I want to be a Naavi" yeah well, bugger off and start digging canals and building railways then.

  13. Gerard Krupa
    WTF?

    Specious reasoning

    He was watching the film when he died ergo the film killed him. He (and billions of others) were found to be breathing in the few moments before they died so I humbly suggest that we ban breathing as it constitutes a serious health hazard. There may be a minor upturn in mortality during the first few minutes after this law is enacted but it will be followed by an extremely extended period of no human deaths whatsoever.

  14. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    He run out of time

    He is now with Eywa. Alas, she did not manage to upload him back into a Na'vi body before his earthly container expired...

    Or maybe he forgot to provide a Na'vi body in the first place?

  15. bexley

    braniacs

    Yes the last bastion of pure science, a source to be trusted.

    But i agree with you none the less. The issue with mobile phones is that they dont have non conductive seals over the battery charging points.

    In other health and safety regs electrical equipment used in area's where there is likely to be flammable gas non conductive seals must be used. I guess they just highjacked that advice for mobiles. To be honest though who switches their phones off at petrol stations anyway,i never have.

    To return to topic, the labour gov do seem rather keen on banning things that they cant think of a solution for, which is a lot of things, so yeah, add movies to the list.

    From now on only rom /coms with tom hanks in should be allowed.

    Sad that this guy died the way he did but lets be honest, it was not the movie that killed him, he was ill anyway.

    1. this

      So!

      It' s the likes of you that prevents me getting to sleep at night - tormented by the sound of exploding petrol stations.

  16. Annihilator

    Everyone...

    ...dies a little inside when they see a recent Cameron film.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Obviously a Killer movie

    @Paul Renault, why did he not gnaw his own leg off ? I've read somewhere that that helps !

  18. Frumious Bandersnatch
    Coat

    cum hoc ergo propter hoc

    Coulda hadda popped his clogs any o'clock.

    Sequel to Goodbye Lenin not planned.

  19. Dan 10
    Thumb Up

    Avatar...

    ...was awesome, some people are never satisfied.

    (You lot, that is, not the unfortunate deceased)

    1. Lickass McClippers
      Grenade

      It's shit...

      Yes, it looked nice, but other than that, it's as shit as a shit thing on a particularly shitty day ... FACT ...

      1. Pigeon

        What to do?

        All this sage advice. If I don't watch it, I will miss the best film ever. If I do, then I will grumble about wasting my time, or worse, I might claw my eyes out, or die suddenly. Maybe I will watch it just to get out, since the last film I watched was "Toy Story". I liked it, especially the mum's legs.

    2. LaeMing

      I enjoyed it.

      Which isn't to say I think it was a life-changing experience, but I was entertained by it and recommend it to friends in that scope.

      Yes, the plot is a complete generic, but I thought the telling better than the 5-odd other tellings of the exact same plot Hollywood has puked up over the past few decades. The acting was no less than you would expect for this medium+genre.

      I feel a lot of the 'hating' comentards here doth complain a wee bit too much! They sound more like junior high-schoolers desperately trying to be part on an 'in' crowd. Even sadder than the people that go over-the-top in the other direction about the film.

  20. M Neligan
    Happy

    What's not to like?

    Yesterday I saw the eARTh exhibition at the Royal Academy, had a pint of Timothy Taylor and a double-decker sandwich at the Coal Hole and watched Avatar at the Imax. I found none of them life-threatening, but Avarar was the best.

  21. Sly
    Coat

    death awaits you all...

    with nasty, big, pointy, teeth.

    mine's the one with the grail in the pocket

  22. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
    FAIL

    Wow, exactly the sort of thing I expected to see

    in The Sun err.. I mean The Reg...

    As a side note, this year alone 2 of my work colleagues suffered ruptured brain aneurysms at work and notably, their browsers were open to El Reg on their workstations...

    This, if not anything else, is proof of causation. El Reg is bad for your health.

    Seriously, lol, where do you guys get this stuff?

  23. David 141
    Stop

    Your opinions are worthless

    To all the armchair movie reviewers out there:

    WE DON'T CARE.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    WRT Avatar

    Firstly, posted anon because I can't see this not getting flamed. However...

    I really enjoyed Avatar, and although I might not class it as one of the critically best movies of my life, I might class it as one of the best cinema experiences of my life. I've always enjoyed films, on an intellectual level as well as an entertainment level, and in some ways this has spoiled things for me. Since I was a kid I've been using computers, and because of this, I witnessed the transitions through graphical techniques as it went along, and the unfortunate consequence of this was that I stopped enjoying films with computer/CGI effects in the same way because they simply do not absorb me from a graphical point of view. That doesn't mean I don't like CGI movies, I did enjoy LoTR, presumably because it was a generally decent telling of what I expected already in my imagination.

    Anyway, the general point is that I remember (and this belies my young age) going to see the Back to the Future films as a young kid, or the first time I saw Star Wars and Indy, and Jurassic Park, and actually being thrilled and amazed at what I was seeing. I saved myself for Avatar, I didn't watch a 3D movie in the runup because I was waiting for something truly special, and when I went to see Avatar, for the first time in a great many years I was absorbed fully by the mixture of 3D (sorry Kermode) and quality of the CGI. This is why I forgive the story being generic (we forgive plenty of other films for the same problem) plot, it was well-told enough not to be an issue, and it is also why I forgive the (a bit above) mediocre acting, and it's not because I have a hard-on for Cameron, or because I love the Navi, it's because the film made me feel like I was a kid again, and that's a pretty amazing feeling.

    Also, I didn't notice the length at all, it flew past, the missus was holding in a pee for the last hour so she did notice it. Lastly, the only thing that even annoyed me slightly was the Horner 'danger' motif. GAH

  25. ShaggyDoggy

    Stats

    3 hours x number of people who watched it = a lot of man-hours

    The probability of someone corking during those millions of hours is 1

    in fact it's a miracle not many more have, maybe Avatar keeps you alive

  26. Evil Auditor Silver badge
    Dead Vulture

    I'd rather do other things than watching Avatar

    "It's likely that the over-excitement from watching the movie triggered his symptoms."

    I bet he hasn't had (good) sex for a while.

  27. tanujay
    Pirate

    We are all Zombies!!!

    All of us who came back alive from avatar are zombies.!!

  28. Nigel 11
    Happy

    Goody goody yum yum

    Anyone remember that man who died watching "the Goodies" many moons ago? His widow managed to quip that if he had to go, it was good that he went laughing.

    Entranced and thrilled is probably a close second. Life is a terminal medical condition.

  29. ElNumbre
    Paris Hilton

    Pictures or it didn't happen...

    I hope to pass over to the other network enjoying One night in Paris in 4D.

  30. ratfox
    FAIL

    My grandfather died in his armchair

    So you won't get me sitting in one again, nossir!

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