Now that Avatar has won a Golden Globe for best movie and it has been nominated for an Oscar for best movie, I feel I should explain why it sucks. And, my God, are there a lot of reasons. And don’t even get me started on Avatar being nominated for best screenplay by the Writer's Guild. I have no respect for my fellow writers after that move.
Avatar is a movie that makes you feel exactly the same leaving the theater as when you arrive. It’s like a roller coaster but with out the roller and the coaster part. It’s more like a picture of a roller coaster. Basically, it’s like looking at a pretty picture that keeps saying stupid shit.
Hey, it starts well. Some poor son of a bitch can’t move his legs and he is given the opportunity to implant his brain into an alien body and cruise around a planet full of pretty things. Not a bad gig for a no-walk guy. Unfortunately, that’s about the biggest risk Jimmy Cameron took on this bad boy. After that, it’s a story you’ve seen a million times, except now it’s on an alien planet full of tall blue dudes who ride featherless birds. Booya.
Did you watch Battlestar Galactica? Remember when they found a new planet to live on and then the Cylons came and took that shit over? The BSG writers created their own analogy of the Iraq War, with the humans as guerilla warriors. That was the smart version. Avatar is the Smurf version of the Iraq War. Cameron’s version of subtlety is to ram something up your ass while screaming, “Hey, I put something in your ass!” The only way this movie could have been less obvious and subtle would have been if Cameron had popped in the lower corner of the screen and yelled, “Now, this is a metaphor for the green house effect” when Sigourney Weaver explained how all the plants were connected on a network. Snoooorrrre.
The great thing about Avatar is how it slowly becomes more mind numbing and predictable with each passing minute. If you don’t like to think, it’s the movie for you. Or, if you like to think, “Hey, I’ve already seen Pocahontas,” it’s really the movie for you. Yes, someone tries to push their ways on an indigenous people and guess what? Doesn’t go that well. I know, I was as shocked as you are.
The aliens accept no leg guy in his fake alien body. He gets all up in their business and learns the ways. Then, you are not going to believe this, but he is accepted as one of them. Then, you are not going to believe this, but his original motives are revealed and they feel betrayed, especially his new blue lady. Damn, yo. Same shit, different planet, you know what I’m saying? Thankfully, he ends up saving the day…with the help of a magic tree. Did I just write “magic tree”? God damn right I did.
Avatar does look amazing. It is one hell of a cartoon. Dude knows how to bring the blue, you dig? He made a world that was interesting to look at and topped it over and over. There were crazy flying creatures, little creepy alien dog like things, huge trees, floating islands and did I mention…blue guys? Oh, and the aliens see everything in blue light. Wow! Too bad they don’t have any Pink Floyd posters and some weed, which means it’s pretty much wasted. But still, for a movie, it’s pretty great visually. As a video game player, part of me felt like I had seen a lot of it before, just not in 3-D. As a writer, it made me want to drop a nuke on Hollywood.
The plot is pathetic for a movie doing so much visually. The characters seem to have been sent over from the hack part warehouse at 20th Century Fox. The plot is so obvious and predictable a child could figure out the ending. It is an achievement of simplistic storytelling.
Oh, and there’s a magic tree that saves the day. A magic fucking tree.
Screw you, James Cameron. Titanic sucked, too. Enjoy your Oscar.
--Dave Anthony