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Avatar Soars Into $1-Billion Territory
Suki I writes " Avatar soars into $1-billion territory. 'Strong foreign ticket sales help make the science-fiction movie the fifth in history to pass the watermark. ... One of the riskiest movies of all times is now officially one of the most successful at the box office. When Avatar opened, its solid but far from stellar results left 20th Century Fox uncertain about whether the $430 million that it and two financing partners had invested to produce and market the 3-D film would pay off.'" Given that the big alternatives were Sherlock Holmes or Alvin & the Chipmunks, I think the winner was clear.
You insensitive clod... I am a Native American!
I haven't heard anyone else say this, so maybe it's just me, but this movie had an uncanny retro quality about it that reminded me of the 1970s, when all the "hippie" crap spilled over into mainstream culture. You have peace-loving noble free-living primitives who are "one with nature", worship trees that are mystically connected to the rest of the Cosmos, and engage in ceremonies that involve hand-holding in big circles around said trees. You have mechanistic Western civilization, represented by the usual cynical Evil Corporation that is shafting the natives because their Sacred Tree is somehow located above a huge deposit of Unobtainium (yes, they actually called it that in the movie). And with inexorable Hollywood logic, the good natives win, aided by the few humans who see the spiritual superiority of the blue people.
I don't know what kind of reaction the director was trying to elicit from his audience. I kept having to repress the urge to get up and shout "group hug!" (In my most insincere manner, of course.) I found the story to be hackneyed, predictable, and embarrassingly naive. I don't see how adults could have put together such a mass of treacle. Somebody called Avatar "Dances with Smurfs"—but that's being unkind to the Kevin Costner movie, which I actually liked when I first saw it (despite disagreeing with its politics).
But wait, Avatar was about the technology, wasn't it? I remember hearing that the blue people were all computer generated. And there were indeed lots of well-done special effects (unless the producers located a venue where mountains and boulders actually float). The 3D was very good—I kept trying to move over to get out of the way of people who were walking out of the screen toward me. So yes, if you want to pay to see a good display of digital cinema technology, by all means go see the movie in 3D. Just don't go with the idea that you're going to see a good movie.
I have to add something here about the way the technology was used in Avatar. I think I've probably made clear that I didn't think much of the story; however, I also thought that the movie failed in a surprising way, considering the tech-hype: it was singularly lacking in visual appeal. Let me be plain: it was ugly. Consider the "blues": I have never seen a plainer-looking collection of individuals in a movie. The blue people of both sexes were not only completely lacking in attractiveness (and in the case of female blue persons, sex appeal), they looked positively unhealthy. Perhaps it's impossible to make white teeth look good when they are set in cyanotic gums...but they all looked like they were in sore need of orthodontistry. I understand what a lot of trouble it was to record all those actors going through the motions, then substitute CG animations for the actors...but I kept thinking, Why did they bother?—why not just use real actors with some blue makeup?. OK, it would have been hard to make real actors look like they are jumping onto the backs of CGA lizards. And I suppose it would have been even harder to find a bunch of female actors so sparsely endowed that their nipples are always covered by artfully draped hair, or holy tree fibers or whatever. Heck, maybe they don't have nipples...maybe they aren't mammals. Ah, I knew I could bring this review down to issues that are of central importance to my audience...
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Look, if you are not sophisticated that is not my or anybody else's problem, what is grating is how some people wear their ignorance about a given topic as a badge of honour.
You can google about the utter and complete lack of originality of the plot. Gosh, I have heard from "Smurfahontas" , "Dancing with Smurfs" and many other monikers that make perfectly clear how formulaic and predictable the plot is.
Many people are contradicting themselves frankly: if the plot is so unimportant and all what matters is the 3D, then for bunnies sakes, people should acknowledge that the director could have been half brave and take a risk with the damn plot: at worst most people will not care since the 3D is so gorgeous, at best you start a new era in cinema. As it is, the result is visually interesting but completely lacking in one of the pillars of cinematography: the bloody damn plot.
And yet another contradiction: lots of people are saying they went with low expectations, and when those expectations are confirmed with what was on show on screen, they get all touchy because people point out that the general low expectations were fulfilled in the plot department. So which one was it then?
Cinema may be a visual art, but people that exhibit what you identify as "fake sophistication" (it is called education old chum) know that the history of cinema revolves around a well constructed plot which is advanced by the visual imagery. Normally the better the plot the better the movie, and Avatar is no exception, its redeeming grace being the certainly astounding special effects.
If you have got nothing to say then all the 3D trickery of the world will not make your movie any better, it will just make it impressive, which are not necessarily the same things (the history of movie making is littered with the corpses of enterprises like this, of which Avatar is the most recent example).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Thinking back now, I'm glad to realize that even in 5th grade I was a bit of a film snob ;)
I don't know how to break this to you, but "snob" is a pejorative. Just because you can congregate with others of the same flaw does NOT mean that it is suddenly desirable. FYI, the same is true of 'geek', 'nerd', and 'aspie', but I digress...
Does anyone feel the urge to watch Titanic anymore? I don't really think so.
I dust it off occasionally because it helps me remember how I felt when I first watched it. The same is true of Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, and a few other of my favorite films. The story is no longer a mystery to me, that is true. Though to be fair, I was pretty sure the boat would be sunk by the end, even all those years ago.
I expect my DVD of Avatar will do the same thing. My son probably won't care for it at all, but then it won't be triggering his memories like it will my own.