Fuck Avatar
If you haven’t seen Avatar yet you’re one of the three folks in the world who can say that. The movie, which came out just over six weeks ago, is now officially the highest grossing movie of all time, earning just under two billion dollars worldwide. What’s even crazier is that the movie is beat out for top earner, Titanic, was also directed by James Cameron, meaning he’s made nearly four billion dollars off of just two movies (well, not him personally, but you get what I mean).
But, despite the movie’s worldwide acclaim, whenever somebody mentions it, all I can think is, “Fuck Avatar.” Frankly, it’s not a very good movie. I should start by saying that no movie has ever made better use of 3D technology. James Cameron revolutionized the way people will look at utilizing 3D in the future because instead of using it to get a cheap reaction out of his audience (let’s face it, pretty much every 3D movie in history has those spots where somebody has a stick or a spear or something that they point at the audience just to make folks lean back in their seat; there’s no real reason for the shot other than to have the 3D effect [I'm looking at you, Beowulf]) and instead used it to create a realistic level of depth and presence that just hasn’t been available on screen before. So, if only for that, I am glad the movie exists.
Unfortunately, that’s about the only positive thing I can say about the movie. It’s pretty awful. It’s nearly three hours long, with huge periods of boring dead space in the middle. There’s about 45 minutes of the main character training in the middle of the movie that honestly provide nothing to the story that couldn’t have been summed up in a five minute montage. 80s skiing movies knew this, why didn’t James Cameron? The acting is also just bad. Giovanni Ribisi, who I really liked about a decade ago, is beyond awful as the businessman in charge of the humans; his lines are forced and overblown and the movie also hints that he’s reluctant to be doing what he is, but they never explore that. Guess they couldn’t fit in in the three hours, maybe it’ll be on the DVD extended cut. As much as I hate to say it, Sigourney Weaver was pretty bad too, but that probably as much a function of her completely one dimensional character as anything she did. She was there to be some kind of badass mentor but ended up just kind of being an angry bitch who smoked. Joel Moore, whose acting chops amount basically to being nerdy, wasn’t so much the problem as his character, who initially loves Sully, the main character, then hates him, then loves him, all in the span of about fifteen minutes and for no real reason. And I don’t know who decided that Sam Worthington would be a star, but they need to be shot. This guy was just awful in Terminator: Salvation, which was even worse than Avatar, and he continues the suck in this movie. He’s wooden and robotic and I was happy every time he became the avatar because the computer animated version of him was far more lifelike. Worst of all, the only actor who was actually compelling was Zoe Saldana, who didn’t even get to really be in the movie since she was one of the natives and thus just an elaborate computer animation.
Worse than the acting was the story, which was basically a bunch of rhetoric amounting to saying that Manifest Destiny is a bad idea and we should be eco-friendly. The film is so blatant and obvious in its message that it becomes a little offensive, like we’re all idiots that need these ideals spoon fed to us. Ultimately it ends up looking like these guys:
being put in this movie:
and then replacing the humans in that movie with the Marines from Aliens:
Ironically enough, in the midst of trying to get across this great message, the movie ends up being a bit racist, as the blue natives end up as a stereotypical representation of Native Americans, or Africans depending on the scene. By the end of the movie I found myself fairly offended by the representation, and not only by the natives, but by their human attackers, who were essentially a referendum against the white man and his greedy nature. Essentially, they boiled everyone down to a stereotype and pitted them against each other. Again, you’d think three hours would have been enough to really delve deeply into some issues, but I guess twenty minute scenes where Sully tries to tame a horse or a bird were more important.
As bad as all that was, nothing was worse than the name they gave to the material that caused the humans to invade in the first place: unobtainium. You know, because you can’t obtain it. It’s unobtainable. Yeah, that’s ridiculous.
Apparently James Cameron had been working on making this movie for fifteen to twenty years, so you’d have thought that in all that time he could have really fine-tuned the script and made it excellent, but I guess he was busy working on the 3D technology. He got that par right, but I would have preferred a good movie in 2D. I mean, this is the guy who wrote (and directed) The Terminator, Terminator 2 (which is the best action movie of all time), The Abyss, True Lies, and Titanic, some fairly classic movies, as well as the respectable TV shows Dark Angel and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I just don’t get how someone who’d done that much great work could make something as mediocre as Avatar. Of course, Cameron’s work history is a little strange; between 1984 and 1997 he made all of those movies I listed, with one coming out every two or three years, then did nothing (well, he did a few things, most notably several documentaries about the environment) until Avatar came out. I’m wondering if there isn’t a bit of what’s happened to George Lucas, where he’s become so isolated he has no concept of the criticism of his work, going on here. That would be fitting since Cameron said his goal with Avatar was to make the new Star Wars. If that isn’t the most arrogant thing I’ve ever heard then I don’t know what is.
In addition to that bit of arrogance, Cameron also wanted to revolutionize movies as a whole by making 3D a viable and relevant part of things. Like I said, he did an amazing job with the way he used 3D in Avatar, but still, I don’t want to wear glasses. I was pleasantly surprised when I went to see the movie and instead of the crappy cardboard glasses with the red and blue lenses I was given a pair of actually glasses that on first glance could be confused with a pair of sunglasses. I was even further pleased that the 3D didn’t hurt my eyes like with other movies I’ve seen; I still wouldn’t say it was incredibly comfortable, but the images didn’t hurt my eyes. But still, I don’t want to wear glasses. In fact, I go to the eye doctor a couple times a year and order contacts just so I don’t have to wear glasses. I pay money so I don’t have to wear glasses, I’m certainly not into the idea of paying to wear them so I can watch a movie. And what do you do if you are wearing glasses? I thought of that while I was waiting for the movie to start and watched a few people as they struggled with the question, trying the 3D glasses on both under and above their regular glasses. I don’t know what they ultimately settled on, but I’m sure they were uncomfortable for the whole three hours. This is why I don’t think the whole 3D movement is going to catch on, people don’t want to wear glasses.
And the whole 3D thing is a big part of why Avatar being nominally the highest grossing movie of all time is really just a crock. A good majority of the people who’ve seen the movie have seen it in 3D, meaning that each of them had to pay an extra three dollars for the right of wearing those goofy glasses, thus artificially inflating the movie’s total gross. This is just the first crack in the armor, because when you start looking into the actual numbers things get worse. In the US (because I can’t find the figures worldwide) the average price of a movie has more than doubled since Titanic came out, meaning that half as many people may have actually seen Avatar, maybe even closer to a third considering the extra 3D fees. In fact, when you adjust the numbers for inflation, Avatar isn’t even close to the highest grossing movie, coming in somewhere around twentieth. Nope, when you account for inflation the highest grossing movie of all time is Gone with the Wind, which came out seventy years earlier, making right around three billion dollars worldwide. Personally, I think it’s fitting that a good movie with a good story and good acting is the actual king of the box office.
So, from the terrible story to the bad acting to the stupid glasses to James Cameron’s unbelievable arrogance to the fudged numbers, there are a ton of reasons to say, “Fuck Avatar.”
One Response to “Fuck Avatar”
By 305soldat on Feb 5, 2010
Holy shit I agree with you completely. But you forgot one thing…the way it makes our military look!!! I am a combat vet and I was fucking insulted and pissed off at what this cgi sham made our military to look like. And the completely bogus part at the beggining about how “on earth they were marines out here they are mercinaries” was a complete fucking cop out excuse to try to make sure that James Cameron saves face with the whole “support our troops” (even though we really don’t give a fuck) attitude that seems to be the norm in American society today. It’s American soldiers who fought in the past (and present for that matter) who ensured the ability for James Cameron to direct a movie such as this and make what wealth he currently has. Of course it is also the complete freedom for the director to create such bull crap that myself and many others have fought for. I am just trying to ensure that people don’t lose sight of reality through a director and his gazillion dollar budget try to make out how the world is.