Just Shiny Enough

Avatar

Day 16

Film 15

This one was going to happen at some point in the list. The hype for Avatar before it came out was just ridiculous! Avatar was supposed to revolutionize film!

I will say this, Avatar does not do that. I will be willing to accept that it changes special effects, but that is nothing new. Effects have been slowly building on each other slowly over the last couple decades. Avatar serves as multiple steps forward in this sense but beyond that is an over exaggeration. To change film making would be to change how we tell stories at a very basic level and Avatar falls short of that on every other level.

Before I tear into Avatar I will say this: Avatar is a good film. For every one of its flaws it is still a spectacle that should be watched.

I think for this specific movie I am just going to avoid the critical analysis if only because Avatar spoon feeds the audience the message and now that we understand that to the flaws:

Do we really need another Dances With Wolves?

This is the flaw everyone is attacking, and with good reason. If a movie is meant to revolutionize film then why would it retell a story already a million times told? It feels lazy for so much money and time to be spent making a breathtaking world to throw it away on a story we already know.

The argument against this feels like a cop out. Well the technology is just so new and the world so alien that any more experimental story would cause the audience to be lost. Cameron is here to make his 500+ million dollar budget back, there is no way he could make that kind of money if he were to make a more artsy film. We lose Avatar's true potential in the dregs of rehashed goo. It is a shame, but since when has Cameron ever gone beyond a popcorn structure?

Just in case you did not know, South Park beat everyone else to the punch.

How Alien is Pandora?

This kind of tore me out of the movie again and again. This might just be something that annoys me and only me, but for a movie that is supposed to be so amazingly alien and imaginative as Avatar it does feel like we are subjected to a world that is just too much like earth.

This rant will be short, as I feel it should be stated but not relished on. Looking at the science that makes life on earth work, based on the breaking down of sugars and the beautiful relationship of CO2 H2O and O2 in this it makes me wonder. Why would a world without oxygen be anything at all like Earth? Instead of being truly alien we are engulfed by a world of tweaked creatures and plants. It drove me out of the movie again and again and again.

It could be just me, but I feel like it should be said. Why? Because if this is the future of sci fi we are going to need to get beyond our world and find an entirely new one.

Can we end this already?

Avatar was painfully long. The end dragged, carried only by the powerful scenes that led up to it. It could be that I am so tired of climactic battles that last for a half hour. It could be that we did not need the bridge between the two battles. It could be that (SPOILER) Sigourney Weaver's death was just a waste of time, even if it was the emotional climax of the film (SPOILER END.) If Avatar was a shorter film it would have been so much better.

DEUS EX!? Really? Aw come on!

This really pissed me off. It is like slapping the protagonist in the face. If you cannot make the protagonist strong enough to overcome the forces that oppose them then you should aim to make the story a tragedy or make the forces less impossible to conquer. Using the hand of God to save the day just says 'well they're fucked anyway but you know we really need a happy ending so here you go.'

I guess with all of the complaints about the story this should not be too terribly startling.

I am still annoyed.

I kind of wonder what Avatar would have been if Cameron played the military industrial complex down and instead just built the story around a coming of age archetype inside an alien world. The best scenes were the ones immersed in the beauty of a not exploding Pandora. I could have used a whole lot more of that and less of the Hippies are good and the military is bad preaching.

With that I am going to end this post. Avatar is a great movie even with all of its flaws. I would recommend it, it is worth the money to see and you will not be disappointed.