The Thing with Avatar

I'm going to step outside the traditional editorial purview of this blog today because I didn't like Avatar. You might say this just proves I have an axe to grind; I would add that this is the only blog I have, so, where else am I supposed to grind my axe? And hey, Miles, maybe you'll disagree. After all, we call this blog You're Wrong About Everything, not just sports.

It's pretty well established that James Cameron spent a lot of time and (the studio's) money to produce this movie over a period of about ten years. He invented new software which, we are told, is going to change the way action movies are made. That certainly does sound important, and it is very clearly true that the blue people in Avatar are much more fully realized, and tolerable than some of the CGI characters of recent memory (we're looking at you, Jar Jar Binks.) This is a major accomplishment and should not be overlooked. Ok.

So I went and saw the movie, which I'm more or less required to like, and here's the thing: it's not a very good movie. All right, I'll back up: it's visually extremely beautiful. The big lush forests, the floating islands in the sky, the Alice-in-Wonderland-ish creatures that roam across the screen. And I did appreciate that, I really did. But it's not, to my eye, as lovely as the stunning landscapes of New Zealand all over the Lord of the Rings movies; nor the forests of Terence Malik's The New World (not that anyone bothered to see it), which, incidentally, tells the same Pocahontas story so lazily adapted by Cameron for his blockbuster.

Which brings me to the main point. Although the movie is visually spectacular, the software newly minted, and the budget even larger than the Yankees' payroll, the movie falls short in almost every other imaginable capacity.

Tell me: when was the last time you saw Sigourney Weaver looking this wooden? It's almost as if, like the title character, she's re-learning to act before our eyes. Her gruff persona seems to come from nowhere, and disappears at the convenience of the story. Truth be told, she has very little to do--it's hard to fault her for that.

The other actors? Giovanni Ribisi is his strange and uncoachable self. I appreciated him. But the generic leading man (Sam Worthington), despite giving an intermittent voiceover, manages to conjure almost no internal conflict or pathos. The angry Colonel Quaritch gives an almost ingeniously one-note performance; his scarred head and unflinching demeanor are the stuff of comic books. "Hello, viewer," he seems to say, "I'm crazy and angry and I will be your villain tonight." He belongs in Spider-man, or GI Joe, not a movie as ostensibly cerebral as this one.

"Cerebral" may be the watchword for the problems here. Why--oh, why?--has James Cameron encumbered this movie with a political critique? This has got to be the least useful bit of Hollywood politicking since The Day After Tomorrow. And that's saying something. I mean, seriously--did I really hear a character describe the villain's military strategy with the words "shock and awe"? Interpreting the movie's message as anything more detailed or thoughtful than "the Iraq war is bad" would be generous; but also probably tedious and uncalled for. Several critics have noted the irony that Cameron's Transcendentalist vision arrives in the form of a fabulously expensive big-budget movie, complete with plastic-wrapped 3D glasses and marked-up tickets. The movie only uses the absurdly-named element "unobtainium" as a macguffin, but I suspect that if it were real, you'd need a lot of it to make Avatar.

All right, where was I. The story: sloppy, generic, totally predictable. I defy you to name a single surprising thing that happens. Or better yet, name anything less certain to happen than the climax of Cameron's last movie. Why even bother? If it took Cameron ten years to produce the software, raise the money, and film the movie, could he not have spared an extra month somewhere to revise the script?

Am I crazy? The characters are short on motivation. The dialogue wants for detail, subtlety, and emotion. The movie's alleged scientific experts: do not even get me started. This is a separate essay all its own.

Hey, look--I'm not trying to ruin the party. I didn't *hate* this movie, I'm just a little disappointed in our standards for what makes an instant classic. I'm not looking for Citizen Kane, here, but give me Jaws, Jurassic Park, The Matrix. All three are better on almost every count I've mentioned. Am I wrong? If the emperor isn't completely unclothed here, he's showing a lot more thigh than I'd like.

MILES:

Does this mean I can now post my review of Did You Hear About The Morgans? I haven't been that disappointed in a film since Music and Lyrics. I mean, what happened to Hugh Grant, besides the hooker and Sandra Bullock? I re-watched Four Weddings and a Funeral (again), and he was just delightful. Such a shame.

Seriously, though, I have no problem with your post. Just as I have no intention of seeing Avatar, or James Cameron's next magnum opus, for that matter. Let the record show, I still haven't seen Titanic or Terminator 3 either-- although I did enjoy The Abyss and, in the interest of full disclosure, True Lies. Otherwise, Cameron, more specifically, Cameron's films never really did much for me. Beautifully shot, yes; but also emotionally hollow, like the hull of the ship that killed Leo. You're probably right on the money about his latest effort, which looks even more jejune than Dancing with Wolves. I'd rather spend the time watching The Hurt Locker, which, from what I've read, says more about the war in Iraq in one scene than Cameron could apparently muster with a billion-dollar budget and a warehouse full of new technologies. 

Since we both seem to be on the same page about Cameron, I would be remiss if I didn't share with you Dana Goodyear's description of the man, which appeared in The New Yorker a few weeks back.

The director James Cameron is six feet two and fair, with paper-white hair and turbid blue-green eyes. He is a screamer—righteous, withering, aggrieved. “Do you want Paul Verhoeven to finish this motherfucker?” he shouted, an inch from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face, after the actor went AWOL from the set of “True Lies,” a James Bond spoof that Cameron was shooting in Washington, D.C. (Schwarzenegger had been giving the other actors a tour of the Capitol.) Cameron has mastered every job on set, and has even been known to grab a brush out of a makeup artist’s hand. “I always do makeup touch-ups myself, especially for blood, wounds, and dirt,” he says. “It saves so much time.” His evaluations of others’ abilities are colorful riddles. “Hiring you is like firing two good men,” he says, or “Watching him light is like watching two monkeys fuck a football.” A small, loyal band of cast and crew works with him repeatedly; they call the dark side of his personality Mij—Jim backward.

Cameron might very well be good at what he does, but that kind of Strum und Drang approach to filmmaking is usually reserved for directors of a higher ilk: Orson Welles, William Friedkin, Stanley Kubrick. Cameron, despite his box office success, has no business in such company. 

BEN:

No, you may not review Did You Hear About the Morgans, unless you plan on explaining to me what the hell anyone was thinking when they made it. To be honest, I probably shouldn't have reviewed Avatar--it's thoroughly inconsistent with everything we've built over here in these several months of occasional low-intensity labor. But, it needed saying, so I said it.

I do not, in principle, have a problem with James Cameron. His Aliens and Terminator movies are canonical; and I'm not one of those people who gushes over Titanic, but it's pretty tough to argue with. That profile of him, though, is about as damning as it could be. Anyone as successful as he is should be prepared for a good lambasting. I'm just glad there are a few good souls out there willing to deliver it.