first off do not read this if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
went to see avatar in 3D tonight and let me preface what follows by saying that i really enjoyed the experience, the special effects were incredible, and the 3D experience lived up to the hype.
that being said, i thought it was pretty sad that cameron could create something so technically innovative and be so completely uncreative in the actual storytelling.
i mean the story was UNBELIEVABLY uncreative, almost shockingly so.
it has absolutely nothing original or creative to say, period.
it was basically “Ferngully the last rainforest 3D” and/or “the story of the native americans”.
there wasn’t a single plot twist, or any event in the movie that wasn’t completely predictable, and not even predictable in the general sense of hollywood blockbusters, its almost hard to accept that cameron gave himself a writing credit when he didn’t really write anything other then coming up with new names for characters.
you would think that he would have put an ounce of creative energy into the story for his masterpiece of innovative filmaking…i guess he figured everyone would be so overwhelmed by the 3D effects no one would care about the plot.
now before you start assuming i’m just another jaded movie snob/cynic, i wasn’t going into this expecting some amazing narrative, and while i was in the theatre i wasn’t overly bothered by the complete lack of a original plotline,
i simply enjoyed the sweet effects and 3D experience.
however after the movie ended it would be impossible to reflect on the film without wondering how on earth no one involved with the making of the movie cared so little about the fact that there wasn’t ONE SINGLE PLOT ELEMENT that had anything REMOTELY interesting/original to add to the discourse.
my comparison to “ferngully the last rainforest” was not hyperbolic in any sense, it was a literal statement, in fact if i were the producers of that movie i would seriously consider avatar to be a blatant work of plagiarism.
what i found most hilarious about the movie, was that the entire source of conflict in the movie, the catalyst for the entire plot was so LOL absurd.
let me lay a little groundwork so you can understand the ridiculousness.
the whole reason that the plot of the movie unfolds is because one clan of the indigenous people of pandora are living ontop of a huge deposit of some new element that is worth a fuckton of money on earth, and some evil corporation wants to mine it.
the people obviously don’t want to move and the corporation needs to demolish every living thing ontop of the deposit so they can mine the area.
the indigenous people are not overtly hostile to the humans, in fact they are curious and accepting of several of the scientists they just don’t like the ones who try to blow them up.
now here is the part where its hard to suspend your disbelief.
its the year 2154 and mankind has the technological abilty to travel to the far reaches of the universe to the planet pandora.
we have amazingly advanced technology both in weaponry and science and are able to create and operate the “avatars” (which i’m not going to explain as if you haven’t seen the movie you shouldn’t even be reading this).
however we have NO POSSIBLE MEANS OF MINING deposits from the earth other then demolishing everything in site ontop of the areas we want to mine.
the only possible way for us to retrieve this valuable resource is by destroying every living thing surrounding it.
basically while we have made amazing advances in every technological aspect of our existence, we still mine like we did in 1856.
the resources the corporation is expending in the movie to mine this element has to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars (hell just the budget for the military contractors they employ must be close to a billion dollars).
the people on pandora don’t seem to have any use whatsoever for the resource in question, so its pretty logical to assume that if they could somehow manage to devise a way to mine the rock they want without completely destroying the land and displacing the population they would face no opposition from the natives and could save about a billion dollars in military costs.
but instead they just decide to wage (an ultimately unsuccessful) all out war.
now i’m all for the suspension of disbelief but this was just too much even for me.
and even if i could somehow be convinced that the physics of mining resources from the earth are such that it will never be possible to do it in a way that doesn’t severely damage the immediate area to the point where that land becomes wholly uninhabitable, the plot of the movie was still insultingly uncreative.
let me sum it up for you.
bad white men come to someone else’s land looking for a natural resource that is valuable.
the natives are peaceful earth loving people who have a great respect for nature and the earth.
one of the humans starts to live among them and gains a newfound respect for their culture and realizes what is happening to them is wrong.
he also just so happens to fall in love with one of their women.
first he tries to reason with his own people but they are too greedy and don’t care about nature or other people, just money, so he has to fight to protect his new people.
at first the humans technology and weaponry is too powerful, but the native people use cunning, and above all else the WILL TO SURVIVE and protect their way of life and in the end overcome all odds and are victorious.
of course along the way the hero and his new special lady friend have a huge blow-up and it appears as though they will never love each other again, but thankfully by the end of the movie the hero is able to prove himself to her and win back her affection.
sound familiar?
now i realize that many hollywood movies are predictable and formulaic, however for the most part the writers/director attempts to put in at least a few minor suprises or plot twists.
there was not one single thing in this entire movie that had any trace or semblence of creativity, other then the special effects.
and i understand that cameron’s goal in this movie was to showcase the new technology of 3D etc, however you gotta figure he could have spent at least 10mins working on the story at some point in production, rather then just copy another story almost exactly.
i dunno, maybe he thought if he set it in the future on another planet that counted as changing the story?
if so you should be on the lookout for my awesome new sci-fi movie.
its set in the year 2256 on the planet zoltron, and its all about this huge spaceship that everyone thinks can’t crash and on its maiden voyage it hits a meteor and starts to slowly crash, however that will just be the background for the real plot focus which is a cross-class romance that is doomed from the start…oh man its gonna be a real tear-jerker.
that being said if you enjoy special effects at all you should def see it in the theatre with 3D, as you could watch the entire movie without hearing a word of dialogue and it wouldn’t make a difference.
