Hanyou
didn't build that
Um...rottentomatoes shows Avatar at 83%, which means the critics overall have been quite friendly to it. Cream of the Crop is ridiculously high--95%. Critics didn't give Avatar a negative reception at all. Yes, if you look at the specifics of some of the reviews, the story is panned, but rightfully so.
A number of audience members disliked Avatar, and I was one of them. I find it to be massively overrated, mostly because everything it's praised for--special effects, story, etc.--comes up short in my opinion. Avatar is acclaimed as though it were revolutionary, but I have seen all of these tricks before, and since the movie seems intent on "wowing" me with its special effects rather than its story (which is rudimentary--I'll get to that in a second), when I was yawning about 30 minutes into the film there was a serious problem. Has CGI advanced at all since Jurassic Park? That movie still gives me chills, principally because the CGI was used at the right moments rather than being spattered on the screen as often as possible. Cameron gave us uninteresting cartoon characters that could have been more convincingly cast as real people. Why was the CGI necessary? Because these overgrown sphinx cats had four fingers (okay, okay, three and a thumb)?
Because I found the world so incredibly unpersuasive, the story already had to be amazing. But it was the world we were supposed to be sold on. In this case, special effects were absolutely integral--unlike Jurassic Park, however, they fell flat.
So what of this retelling of Dances With Wolves / Pocahontas / The Last Samurai? The template is already troublesome. It tends to be a (paridoxically) offensive stew of politically correct trash in which the eeeeeevil white man is victimizing the angelic but naive and weak native population with his machines and capitalism and weaponry. Oh my God. It takes a white savior to rescue them from these destructive ideologies/devices and send the white devils back to where they came from. These movies try to teach us something, but their underlying message is always (unintentionally) that major events turn on the actions of white men (or their surrogates), some of whom may choose to be influenced by natives when they are put in dangerous situations. Unbelievable. Admittedly, I liked The Last Samurai, so it's possible for a film to use this template to great effect without it crippling the storytelling. But let's keep in mind that this template is, at its core, a sermon. It's a sermon on greed, multiculturalism, and environmentalism, and I would rather sit myself at a World Music concert to which Al Gore hauled every presentation he has ever made than to watch a movie which pretends to entertain me. If a movie is going to present a message, it should do so in an artful, and not a clumsy, way.
Avatar is just the sermon. Peel away the special effects (if you don't, I would argue that the movie is only crippled further) and you get an incredibly simplistic "Capitalists bad, Jakesully/ natives good" scenario here. Relationships between virtually all characters are strained an nonexistent, and the only actor here who delivers any depth is the seasoned Sigourney Weaver, who miraculously doesn't look a day older than she did in Alien. A simple, preachy template is not bad in itself, nor is a derivative one. Indeed, the classic Star Wars trilogy is ridiculously derivative and preachy (even multicultural!), and those are some of my favorite films. But when we are presented with a story which is telling us a message we have heard a hundred thousand times, we look to the bonds between characters to carry us through the journey. How memorable is the bond between Jake and the nerdy scientist dude? Or the nerdy scientist dude and Sigourney Weaver? How much did you actually relate to/ feel for any of these characters? As for the romance, it wasn't bad, but it was forced. The two characters were forced together, so of course they would fall in love. It's a movie. No surprises there. This had all the substance of the Star Wars prequels in its handling of the romance. What charm was there? How many witty one-liners were exchanged? Hell, where was the wit at all in the movie? The damn thing takes itself so seriously that the only humor we could really derive from it would be from laughing at it (see the ridiculous mech with a knife). There's some degree of tension, but it's crushed when you realize that these characters are tired archetypes and nothing more. They are devoid of personality and individual identity!
I was honestly surprised. You're talking about the director of Terminator, Terminator 2, and Titanic here. Cameron's strength used to be character development. But I'm hard-pressed to remember any of these awfully neutral characters.
EDIT: Funny story. Sort of by coincidence, I saw District 9 for the first time only a day after I saw Avatar. What's funny about that is that it made me think about the contrast between two films which were actually trying to present a similar message. In District 9, the message is no less obvious, but we are shown, not told, why the filmmakers want us to think these specific evil corporations are evil. There are subtleties and nuances. The prawns, in spite of being disgusting to the point of being transgressive, become sympathetic because the movie organically demonstrates their environment. There is a difference between that and the attempt at visual pornography Cameron foisted upon us, where nothing happened for long stretches of time.
I even thought I would compare a scene from District 9 with a scene from Avatar to demonstrate the difference. Here's a scene where our "hero," Wickus, shoots an innocent prawn. Some special effects, but that's not what we're invited to watch. It is the substance--and only the substance--of what is happening here that is meant to bother the audience, and it is presented in such a convincing way, with characters which I already buy, that it made me flinch. Warning, there is language in this scene and it is graphic.
Compare this to (spoilers) the home tree scene in Avatar, an overlong demonstration for which Cameron and co. may as well be holding up a giant cuecard directing the audience to "CRY."
(sorry about the quality, but remember, it's content we should be focusing on. If anyone finds the same scene in better quality, by all means, I'll post it).
This is an incredible contrast. A one-minute sequence that probably didn't cost very much and could have been produced in a garage elicits more emotion than a 5-minute-long scene that probably cost thousands upon thousands of dollars in its own right. Says something about Cameron's storytelling philosophy, and the weakness of Avatar's plot. Obviously, the scenes are not dealing with the same subject matter, but if we took that into account, you'd expect it to work to Cameron's advantage as well (I mean, a whole tree is falling apart and hundreds of overgrown blue sphinx cats are dying!).
This is just really, really clumsy filmmaking. It took all of 5 seconds for Alderaan to blow up in Star Wars, and all we needed to understand the impact of that pivotal event was Obi-Wan's now-famous line about voices crying out and being silenced. Even Gandalf's death in Lord of the Rings didn't merit or receive this kind of ridiculous response. I was damn near insulted by the amount of spoonfeeding in this movie--it wouldn't even let me assess the impact of these characters becoming homeless. As a result of these decisions, I was actually laughing when the scene was over when (I guess) I should have been horrified. Which is true of everything else in this movie as well--it all went on and on for an eternity in a cheap attempt to elicit emotion, without anything of note actually happening for most of the ride.
Avatar is oversaturated in every sense of the word.
A number of audience members disliked Avatar, and I was one of them. I find it to be massively overrated, mostly because everything it's praised for--special effects, story, etc.--comes up short in my opinion. Avatar is acclaimed as though it were revolutionary, but I have seen all of these tricks before, and since the movie seems intent on "wowing" me with its special effects rather than its story (which is rudimentary--I'll get to that in a second), when I was yawning about 30 minutes into the film there was a serious problem. Has CGI advanced at all since Jurassic Park? That movie still gives me chills, principally because the CGI was used at the right moments rather than being spattered on the screen as often as possible. Cameron gave us uninteresting cartoon characters that could have been more convincingly cast as real people. Why was the CGI necessary? Because these overgrown sphinx cats had four fingers (okay, okay, three and a thumb)?
Because I found the world so incredibly unpersuasive, the story already had to be amazing. But it was the world we were supposed to be sold on. In this case, special effects were absolutely integral--unlike Jurassic Park, however, they fell flat.
So what of this retelling of Dances With Wolves / Pocahontas / The Last Samurai? The template is already troublesome. It tends to be a (paridoxically) offensive stew of politically correct trash in which the eeeeeevil white man is victimizing the angelic but naive and weak native population with his machines and capitalism and weaponry. Oh my God. It takes a white savior to rescue them from these destructive ideologies/devices and send the white devils back to where they came from. These movies try to teach us something, but their underlying message is always (unintentionally) that major events turn on the actions of white men (or their surrogates), some of whom may choose to be influenced by natives when they are put in dangerous situations. Unbelievable. Admittedly, I liked The Last Samurai, so it's possible for a film to use this template to great effect without it crippling the storytelling. But let's keep in mind that this template is, at its core, a sermon. It's a sermon on greed, multiculturalism, and environmentalism, and I would rather sit myself at a World Music concert to which Al Gore hauled every presentation he has ever made than to watch a movie which pretends to entertain me. If a movie is going to present a message, it should do so in an artful, and not a clumsy, way.
Avatar is just the sermon. Peel away the special effects (if you don't, I would argue that the movie is only crippled further) and you get an incredibly simplistic "Capitalists bad, Jakesully/ natives good" scenario here. Relationships between virtually all characters are strained an nonexistent, and the only actor here who delivers any depth is the seasoned Sigourney Weaver, who miraculously doesn't look a day older than she did in Alien. A simple, preachy template is not bad in itself, nor is a derivative one. Indeed, the classic Star Wars trilogy is ridiculously derivative and preachy (even multicultural!), and those are some of my favorite films. But when we are presented with a story which is telling us a message we have heard a hundred thousand times, we look to the bonds between characters to carry us through the journey. How memorable is the bond between Jake and the nerdy scientist dude? Or the nerdy scientist dude and Sigourney Weaver? How much did you actually relate to/ feel for any of these characters? As for the romance, it wasn't bad, but it was forced. The two characters were forced together, so of course they would fall in love. It's a movie. No surprises there. This had all the substance of the Star Wars prequels in its handling of the romance. What charm was there? How many witty one-liners were exchanged? Hell, where was the wit at all in the movie? The damn thing takes itself so seriously that the only humor we could really derive from it would be from laughing at it (see the ridiculous mech with a knife). There's some degree of tension, but it's crushed when you realize that these characters are tired archetypes and nothing more. They are devoid of personality and individual identity!
I was honestly surprised. You're talking about the director of Terminator, Terminator 2, and Titanic here. Cameron's strength used to be character development. But I'm hard-pressed to remember any of these awfully neutral characters.
EDIT: Funny story. Sort of by coincidence, I saw District 9 for the first time only a day after I saw Avatar. What's funny about that is that it made me think about the contrast between two films which were actually trying to present a similar message. In District 9, the message is no less obvious, but we are shown, not told, why the filmmakers want us to think these specific evil corporations are evil. There are subtleties and nuances. The prawns, in spite of being disgusting to the point of being transgressive, become sympathetic because the movie organically demonstrates their environment. There is a difference between that and the attempt at visual pornography Cameron foisted upon us, where nothing happened for long stretches of time.
I even thought I would compare a scene from District 9 with a scene from Avatar to demonstrate the difference. Here's a scene where our "hero," Wickus, shoots an innocent prawn. Some special effects, but that's not what we're invited to watch. It is the substance--and only the substance--of what is happening here that is meant to bother the audience, and it is presented in such a convincing way, with characters which I already buy, that it made me flinch. Warning, there is language in this scene and it is graphic.
Compare this to (spoilers) the home tree scene in Avatar, an overlong demonstration for which Cameron and co. may as well be holding up a giant cuecard directing the audience to "CRY."
(sorry about the quality, but remember, it's content we should be focusing on. If anyone finds the same scene in better quality, by all means, I'll post it).
This is an incredible contrast. A one-minute sequence that probably didn't cost very much and could have been produced in a garage elicits more emotion than a 5-minute-long scene that probably cost thousands upon thousands of dollars in its own right. Says something about Cameron's storytelling philosophy, and the weakness of Avatar's plot. Obviously, the scenes are not dealing with the same subject matter, but if we took that into account, you'd expect it to work to Cameron's advantage as well (I mean, a whole tree is falling apart and hundreds of overgrown blue sphinx cats are dying!).
This is just really, really clumsy filmmaking. It took all of 5 seconds for Alderaan to blow up in Star Wars, and all we needed to understand the impact of that pivotal event was Obi-Wan's now-famous line about voices crying out and being silenced. Even Gandalf's death in Lord of the Rings didn't merit or receive this kind of ridiculous response. I was damn near insulted by the amount of spoonfeeding in this movie--it wouldn't even let me assess the impact of these characters becoming homeless. As a result of these decisions, I was actually laughing when the scene was over when (I guess) I should have been horrified. Which is true of everything else in this movie as well--it all went on and on for an eternity in a cheap attempt to elicit emotion, without anything of note actually happening for most of the ride.
Avatar is oversaturated in every sense of the word.
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