Avatar is a so-so movie that I highly recommend you see in as big and expensive theater as possible. My evening at Avatar cost me in the neighborhood of $30 all told, and had to be scheduled half a week in advance, like an in-demand local theater production or something. I do feel like I got my money’s worth, even though everything that everyone says about the movie is 100% true. It’s a deeply impressive visual experience tied to a deeply pedestrian script. But you don’t ride the Cyclone for the character arcs, do you? Seeing the movie in 3D on the biggest IMAX screen in New York State that isn’t for a museum seems to me the ideal way to see it. So yeah, thirty bucks well spent. Even though I very much doubt I’d even want to watch it on a television. Because here’s the problem: It’s only ever good enough.
The one thing it does inarguably well is take advantage of the 3D canvas to work with vertical scale. Worm’s-eye and bird’s-eye shots of the kind of landscapes that would simply boggle your mind were they real abound–you peer up and down floating mountains thousands of feet in the sky, you get a view of a tree the size of the Sears Tower. Fantasy and fantastic fiction generally sorely need to use their Y-axis, and Cameron gets that right, no doubt. It’s obviously the perfect use of his genuinely fantastic 3D technology. You’re not getting shit flung in your face, you’re not simulating an amusement-park ride, you’re as close to being in there, or up there, or down there, or out there, or whatever, as movies can get.
But. While they’re not as obnoxious and ridiculous as you probably thought they were when you first laid eyes on them after all the hype, those blue alien designs really are dullsville. Smurf Gollum Jar-Jar Omaha the Cat Dancer people in loincloths and dreadlocks with your basic “here’s what James Cameron synthesized from reading about tribal customs” worldbuilding undergirding them. That’s all.
(Regarding a related issue, I’m not the kind of person who’s easily offended by the supposed racial overtones of fictional races. The Gungans didn’t bother me, and neither did the Orcs. Of course, in neither of those cases did the storyline hinge on the kind of racial dynamic we’ve actually seen here in real life, with white dudes coming in and knocking an indigenous people out the box to steal their land and resources. Even still, aside from a slightly cringeworthy bit where everyone gawked at the newcomer and some silly hula-hula dancing, it didn’t really rub me the wrong way. I mean, it’s too rote to be upsetting.)
I’d been similarly skeptical about the creature designs–they all just looked like a mess of colors and limbs with very little thought to how they’d actually evolve and function. Seeing them in action makes them a lot more persuasive–nearly all the lifeforms we see, the fauna at least, look and feel like they’re part of a consistent ecosystem. Even there, though, I was frustrated by the lack of imagination. There’s a monkey species, a lion species, a dog species (that barks!), a horse species (that our main character, Jake Sully, actually calls horses!), and then some dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are my favorites, you can get away with dinosaurs, but I couldn’t help but feel like they could have done better with the rest. Meanwhile–prepare for geekiness–all of the animals have six limbs, except the Na’vi, the humanoids we’re involved with here. Are they supposed to be on an entirely separate evolutionary chain? I don’t think so–if the six-limbed monkeys, ostensibly the world’s equivalent of the primates several limbs over from us here on Earth, weren’t enough of a clue, the plotline about the interconnectedness of all life on the planet would argue against it. So you’re left drawing the conclusion that they have four limbs because it’s easier that way.
It’s sort of unfair to compare the movie to The Lord of the Rings, in that Tolkien had one of the most unique minds in literary history while James Cameron, um, doesn’t. But when you look at Peter Jackson’s film adaptations, which share with Avatar the same special effects team, you can see how weak and doughy the world of Pandora is compared to the world of Middle-earth. Watching the behind-the-scenes material on the LOTR DVDs, you see time and again Peter Jackson rejecting sketches and designs for the various creatures that inhabit that world because they’re too fanciful, they wouldn’t work. No such guiding intelligence was at the helm here, so bring on the six-winged four-eyed rainbow dinosaurs.
Alright, to heck with it, let’s compare it to Lord of the Rings. The reason those movies succeed so well as action cinema is because all the combat is so rooted in a sense of location and direction. I could sit here and describe to you the Battle of Helm’s Deep like I was transcribing it from the screen, that’s how well delineated each state of the fighting is and how clear the consequences for each major turning point are. The same is true of the attack of the Uruk-Hai at the end of Fellowship, and even the wide-open Battle of the Pelennor Fields in Return of the King. When the Rohirrim reform the line and charge the Haradrim, it’s crystal clear what’s happening and why. (The one exception in all three films is the warg fight, for which they just didn’t have time to devise an intricate fight plan, and for which they apologize on the commentary track–but since it’s the exception, that chaotic lack of choreography ends up working for it. It stands out as a frantic, nasty battle.) With Avatar you just have a bunch of swooping and charging. There’s the slightest nod to taking advantage of positioning at the very beginning of the climactic battle, and then it’s all flying around and running around and shooting around. And there’s a big ground charge where I kept waiting for what the trick or surprise would be, but was shocked to discover that there wasn’t one. It’s exactly what it looked like it would be. It’s frustrating, because think of Aliens or Terminator 2–Cameron once knew how to stage action within a visually described environment. Here he seems to be hoping the 3D will do the trick for us. It doesn’t.
Then there’s the writing. Over the past few days I’ve given some thought to how important it is to care about, flesh out, and even empathize with your villains. This is because I’m a couple eps deep into season two of True Blood, and there’s a storyline involving an evangelical megachurch pastiche that is just sooooooo boring, because you can tell that everyone involved with the show bleeds with contempt for these people and has no interest in making them interesting, appealing, or sympathetic. They’re just cardboard cutouts. They’re called The Fellowship of the Sun, which is funny, because the last time I saw TV antagonists this dull and this much a waste of my time they were called the Baltimore Sun and I was watching The Wire Season Five. Vampires and drug kingpins who’ve murdered dozens of people were painted in a much more sympathetic, and not coincidentally alluring and compelling, light than some asshole godbotherers and hack editors respectively. If the filmmakers don’t care enough to even try, why should I?
I’m almost tempted to say this about Avatar, in which the military guns-for-hire who evolve into the movie’s villains are just a faceless bunch of rapacious barbarians led by General Goony McGoonerson. One-dimensional barely cuts it. But it’s hard to get too worked up, because there’s really nothing going on with any of these characters. Everyone zigs when you expect them to zig, zags when the plot needs them to zag. People have the changes of heart you expect them to, make the heroic sacrifices you expect them to, misunderstand what you expect them to and then overcome those misunderstandings when you expect them to. Never once did I feel any attachment to anyone in the movie, or any investment in their fate, beyond whatever lizard-brain response run-of-the-mill “good vs. evil/underdog vs. empire” conflicts can muster.
The one surprise is just what a full-throated endorsement of treason the movie ends up being, and how full of visceral hatred it is for the despoiling of the environment and the invasion of small countries by big countries. I got a big kick out of all of that–it was so in-your-face it was admirable–but not enough to overcome how well it paid to expect the expected from the rest of the flick. Also, we’ve been there once before with Paul Reiser, who was funnier and sleazier and tougher to predict.
And there’s more, of course: plot holes regarding the escape of our heroes from captivity, a boring score (dammit I am so sick of that), shots that stunned but never seduced (I counted three what I would call “visually poetic” shots or cuts in the entire film–lots of gosh-wow, very little damn). On the other hand I never got bored, which given its running time and predictability was definitely a peril–it does draw you in, and I didn’t even get up to use the bathroom. Like I said, it was a good way to spend my time and money, a fun film, a demonstration of what someone with Cameron’s budget and all the CGI and 3D tech now at filmmakers’ disposal can do. I just can’t wait for someone to actually do it.
Completely agree. Avatar was a great experience, but only a half-decent, lizard brain baiting action movie. I must own up to being somewhat bothered by some of the reviews which have failed to properly make this distinction, be they positive or negative, and I find myself particular irked by those naysayers who seem to have very little to say about the power of Avatar as a movie going experience. I suppose if I had seen the film on a screen smaller than a house, or if I was less in love with the play of light over the cinema screen I might have more sympathy with their position, but, Christ, I’d hate think that there are film critics out there who aren’t passionate about that fundamental aspect of the flicks.
Agreed. It would have been so simple to give the bad guy a proper motivation for his hatred, even with a throwaway line or two. If the first wave of colonists had been slaughtered by the Smurfs, or even the first batch of marines (“they killed my men!”) the subsequent behavior of the humans would have made much more sense, with the added storytelling benefit of making the aliens into something more complex than blue hippie cat people. You couldn’t fit that in the 3-hour running time, Cameron?
Zom: I had a conversation with a couple of coworkers yesterday along these lines. One said that if it weren’t for the 3D it’d be totally unwatchable. I said well sure, but that’s not incidental. Still not a good movie, but that shouldn’t be overlooked.
COOP: Yeah, he was basically just a human Skynet. He hated the aliens Because. I can accept that for a sentient computer and its race of killer robots, but it’s a little dull for a real guy.
I forgot to mention a couple of things in the review. Pro: I liked all the material on the loving bond that can form between human and animal. Con: All the bloodless PG-13 violence neutered the battle. Did black orc blood really give Lord of the Rings as much of an edge as it seems in terms of skirting the MPAA and giving the fights some oomph?
Wait, wasn’t there basically a reason given for that guy’s personal hatred in the scene in the robot-suit locker where he talks about how he was humiliated by injury the first day he got to the planet? He was pissed enough he didn’t get the plastic surgery. That seemed pretty straight-forward to me, and actually more realistic than some of the reasons given in other movies. That goddman planet wasn’t going to break him, no sir, he’d show it who’s boss.
It was even reinforced by the nature of the carrot he places in front of Sully [shudder] — do your job kicking the planet’s ass, find yourself physically restored.
I didn’t read that bit as something that was still influencing him beyond “heh, man, THAT was a rookie mistake, but now look how badass I look because of it.” Just more blah tough-guy banter, not Ahab’s leg.
More than anything, he should have been given a little more sympathetic character arc, if only to give the final fight a little more meaning. Cameron did such a great job with the marines in Aliens, making each one an individual and giving them little character beats, it was a shame he couldn’t have done the same thing here.
Also, the lead actor was a real stiff.
I had pretty mixed feelings about the movie. On one hand, it did entertain me, and there were lots of great bits I hadn’t seen done in a film before, or at least done as well in a film before. But I don’t think it was nearly as entertaining as less “groundbreaking” movies like Iron Man or Star Trek. I have to chalk it up to character and a real lack of humor – there are a few bits of lightness, but man does Cameron take this shit too seriously. Of course, the same argument could be lobbed at much of LOTR, but I think there’s a quantifiable distinction between the attention to character and humor in LOTR versus the work Cameron did in Avatar.
Oh, and the Church of Stereotypes is the worst part of Season Two of True Blood by far. The only entertaining part of that whole bit is seeing Jason change as a character. There’s a bit of water treading the middle of the season on every front, but there are some real rewards for sticking with it. It’s all still soapy shlock, of course, but at the end you get then feeling that they’re trying to mix it up with some more unsettling stuff. I’d be interested to read your thoughts once you finish it.
The more I think about Star Trek the less I like it. It trod a fine line between accessible fun and being patronisingly stupid, and sadly stupid won.
That scene where Spock ejects Kirk from the ship was absolutely ghastly for sooooo many reasons.
ZOM: Oh, it’s dumb. So was Iron Man. But my threshold in the realm of the dumb is fairly high. I have no problem advocating my love of Plan 9 From Outer Space. I love movies, and I love movies that excite me – intellectually, viscerally, and/or emotionally. A movie doesn’t have to get it ALL right, but it does have to get one of those things right. Star Trek pushed all the right buttons with me, even with its Red Matter and time travel daftness.
ZOM: Re; Trek – Well, not *all* the right buttons…it pulled the visceral fun lever hard, and it had just terrific pacing. Not sure how much of the heavy lifting was done by our familiarity with the characters before going into the movie, but my wife dug it and she’s never watched an episode of the OS at all. I’d say it was about even with Wrath of Kahn for the dumb but fun.
Like Sean says above, I think I would have dug Avatar more if Cameron had at least seemed to give a damn about his characters as people as opposed to widgets. While he’s never been a great writer, in T2, the Abyss, Aliens and even Titanic, he at least took a few scenes to give us some character beats for no other reason than to flesh them out.
Here’s my two problem just from the suspension of disbelief standpoint
1. We concentrated so much on inventing interstellar travel that we have forgotten Horizontal/Slant Drilling technology.
2. No orbital power can lose a war to a non-orbital power. Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Are either of these things addressed in the movie? I don’t think I can handle seeing it otherwise.
Your second point is kinda addressed although not directly.
To be clear, I don’t disagree with any of the criticism around here at all, it’s just that while I was watching the film I was acutely aware of all of its faultS and I didn’t care. Is being numb to dumb a good thing? Probably not, but I’ll forgive it in this instance because it’s the first time any of us have seen this kind of movie in action and I think it would be madness not to allow ourselves to enjoy the spectacle. Avatar isn’t better than any number of action movies, but I enjoyed watching it in a totally different way.
The thing is most action movies suffer from godawful characterisation it’s just that there are more and less visible varieties. Star Trek hides much of its grusomeness beind Hollywood cliches that we’ve all become so used to we’ve forgotten that they’re actually specious fictions, and in many ways that bothers me much more than the manichean schematic embodied by the characters of Avatar.
Plus I approve of Avatar’s poltics!
Zom, a couple of things:
1) I think the spectacle could have been much better, for all the reasons I list above. I think of what Return of the King could have done with this technology and want to punch someone in the face, it would have been so much cooler. To use a favorite phrase of mine lately, Cameron won by being the first to show up. Good for him; he could have done so much better. It wasn’t THAT amazing.
2) Movies have visual virtues above and beyond, or at least separate from, all the other stuff we usually discuss, but I still care about that stuff unless those visual virtues are just so blow-down-the-doors astonishing it becomes silly to focus on picayune stuff. But this stuff isn’t picayune. (This of course would apply in the opposite direction, with exceptionally good writing overcoming boring cinematography. Or great performances overcoming obnoxious editing. But the nice 3D stuff doesn’t overcome how merely adequate almost every other aspect of the film is. It’s the Detective Comics of movies.)
3) I approve of Avatar’s politics too, but I resent the button pushing because it lets us off the hook. Put plainly, if you voted for Obama and now disapprove of him because he’s not governing far enough to the left, Avatar sends you on the way with a pat on the back, pretty much. I don’t like art where provided you have the right politics, you can sit there and look at it and say “Yeah, what’s wrong with THOSE people anyway?!”
That’s three thing, Sean. THREE THINGS!
Oh I don’t think the presentation and detail are unproblematic. It *is* a dumb movie and I would always rather my politics weren’t given the dumb treatment, but I’d rather the world be flooded with dumb messages about that stuff than the world be flooded with dumb messages about the other stuff. Neither is good, but one is a bit less ungood than the other.
Hah, the Detective Comics of movies is a good analogy. I, of course, do care about the other stuff too – I simply can’t stand most contemporary tentpole movies for that very reason – but in this instance I think it’s okay for people to gush about the experience. The fact is that Avatar is the first time many of us (I am included in that many) have been exposed to 3D filmmaking before and as such I’m happy for people to be focussed much more on the raw aesthetic of the experience than they would normally be. I *was* blown away by a number of scenes, some action orientated, some not. That said, in a couple of years time, once this tech has really had a chance to bed in, if people are still blithering excessively about the pretty floaty colours then something is seriously wrong.
What really excites me is what might be round the corner. Peter Jackson is ultimately the guy behind much of the technology that made Avatar happen, and he has something rather epic his in pocket. In slightly less good news, but some of us live in hope, the Flannelled One is almost certainly watching intently from his ranch.
It was two things when I started writing them! 🙂
Sean: That’s the second time I’ve seen you link Avatar to Detective Comics, and while your opinion of Rucka’s writing is far more downcast than mine (I think it’s solid, and not anywhere as incompetent as you seem to feel it is), I still find the comparison specious. Avatar is pretty, sure, but by your own admission Cameron’s sense of purely visual storytelling is at best formal and at worst conspicuously pedestrian in many places in Avatar. Granted, I thought some of the action worked better than you did, but I can’t deny that even Avatar’s best moments pale in comparison to some of Cameron’s earlier set-pieces. Williams III’s artwork in contrast is visually compelling, inventive, and daring – yet, most of the time, it’s always clear and adds depth and power to the story. If I were going to compare Avatar to anything, it would be more like a 90’s Image release or Batman:Hush – or maybe All-Star Batman and Robin (I kid).
And of course, none of this touches the writing, which I suspect I won’t be able to sway you on. But I will say that I find it interesting that for you, and me, we can overlook the substandard writing in Rambo or Crank and still find the movies exciting or compelling enough to warrant pretty high praise.
Re: Cameron’s tech being put to good use by more talented auteurs, I need only say two-and-a-half words: CRANK 3-D.
Sean: You’re right, I’m being unfair to ‘Tec. Williams is much better visually than Cameron is here, and even Rucka’s writing is better than what you get in Avatar. Re: Rambo or Crank, I don’t think “substandard writing” works there–for me, good-bad isn’t the relevant axis for those films, it’s interesting-dull. Both are vv interesting.
COOP: Will you marry me?
One more thing about True Blood: A separate obnoxious thing about the Fellowship of the Sun is that, well, they’re right. Almost all the vampires we’ve met so far are dangerous murdering sadists. The one real exception is Eddie, who seemed just like a nice guy. Bill’s not cruel, but he’s a vigilante. Jessica would have followed in his footsteps had he not stopped her. (I’m at episode three or four now.) The rest of them have been serial killers, or they keep people chained in their basement, or they kidnap 17-year-olds and kill them, and so on. The Fellowship is basically correct to view vampires as a dangerous threat to society. But the show stacks the deck against them by making the vampires and the vampire-friendly people a billion times more alluring and sympathetic, and by associating the Fellowship with all the noxious aspects of Christian fundamentalism, right up to homophobia going hand in hand with being anti-vampire.
It’s a lot like what Marvel did with Civil War. The pro-Registration side had a point because it really WOULD be unacceptable for “people of mass destruction” to run around extracting vigilante justice all the time. We license policemen and have a professional army, and all they’ve got is guns! But the books stacked the deck by making the leader of the anti-Registration side Captain freaking America, and by having Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic act like thickheaded patronizing douchebags at best and loathsome proto-fascist tyrants at worst (JMS).
I think this comparison also suggests that Marvel’s Civil War could have benefited from a lot more nudity.
I like the soap operatics of True Blood, and I love some of the characters, but After Sixth Feet Under I expected a bit more from Alan Ball. Not a lot more, I’m happy for him to be sinking his teeth into the lighter side of television, but the series does suffer from a case of the stupids from time to time, which benefits no-one.
Sean: I think it really does come down to what your expectations are for a film (or comic). And I don’t mean ‘expectations’ in terms of hype. I don’t count Shoot The Piano Player a failure because it doesn’t have enough explosions, nor do I consider Doomsday a failure because it lacked a lick of realism. I just go into those pictures with different standards. In most cases, its all a matter of taste – you can’t even take into consideration an artist’s intent; I’m sure Cameron thought Avatar was steeped in depth. But just as I don’t listen to Ministry expecting Leonard Cohen-lyricism, I didn’t buy my ticket for Avatar expecting Syriana. Having said that, even with those set expectations, I was kinda of stunned by just how little there was for me to latch onto in the script – in characterization, plot, or even humor. I guess Titanic should have prepared me for that.
Tom: Only if *every* character had been nude. I think the GiantMan death in particular would have had a far richer poignancy.
I’m afraid I must turn down your marriage proposal, but i will go see CRANK 3D with you and make out during the end credits.
(Why haven’t those CRANK guys been given a superhero franchise? LOBO, anyone?)
Another thing: Anne Rice should be punched in the face by Count Chocula for the total pussification of vampires in modern pop culture.