Posted on 12/21/2009 1:27:57 PM PST by AreaMan
Avatarocious
Another spectacle hits an iceberg and sinks.
by John Podhoretz
12/28/2009, Volume 015, Issue 15
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Avatar
Avatar, we are told, does things with cameras and computers and actors that have never been done before. Its painstaking combination of real-life action and animation has, we are told, taken cinema to a new level. It cost anywhere from $328 million to $500 million, we are told, and took four years to make. It is a breakthrough, we are told, the boldest step into the future of filmmaking, an unparalleled achievement.
What they didn't tell us is that Avatar is blitheringly stupid; indeed, it's among the dumbest movies I've ever seen. Avatar is an undigested mass of clichés nearly three hours in length taken directly from the revisionist westerns of the 1960s-the ones in which the Indians became the good guys and the Americans the bad guys. Only here the West is a planet called Pandora, the time is the 22nd century rather than the 19th, and the Indians have blue skin and tails, and are 10 feet tall.
An American soldier named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is sent to make friends with the blue people. To effect this, scientists download his consciousness into a 10-foot-tall blue body. Jake discovers that the natives are wonderful in every possible way. They are so green it's too bad their skin has to be blue. They're hunters and they kill animals, but after they do so, they cry and say it's sad. Which only demonstrates their superiority. Plus they have (I'm not kidding) fiber-optic cables coming out of their patooties that allow them to plug into animals and control them. Now, that just seems wrong-I mean, why should they get to control the pterodactyls? Why don't the pterodactyls control them? This kind of biped-centrism is just another form of imperialist racism, in my opinion.
Like the Keebler elves, the Blue People all live in a big tree together and they go to church at another big tree, under which (we learn) lives Mother Earth, only since it isn't earth, she isn't called Mother Earth, but the Great Mother or something like that. Meanwhile, back among the humans at their base camp, there's a big fight. The scruffy scientists, led by Sigourney Weaver, want to learn, learn, learn about the wonders of the planet and the people and Mother Earth and the big tree and the pterodactyls. But the scientists work for an evil corporation (natch) and the evil corporation is only there because it wants-you can write the rest; but I will, just for the sake of expedience-to exploit the planet's natural resources. In particular, it wants to exploit a mineral called (again no kidding) unobtainium. And it turns out there's a big deposit of unobtainium under the Keebler Elf Tree. They want the elves to move.
Getting them to move is Jake Sully's job. And he does earn their trust, even though the leader of their tribe says, "His alien scent offends my nose!" (The line is translated from their nonexistent language with subtitles that are designed to look like the men's room signs at an Indian casino.) The Blue People, in particular the contemptuous and lovely Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), show him their wondrous ways. But before he can discuss hiring Allied Van Lines with them, the Evil Corporation intervenes.
It is run by an evil Yuppie, and the Yuppie's security is provided by an evil Marine. And for no good reason other than to get the movie into its second act, they decide to stage a military attack on the Elf Tree, thus blowing the zillions of dollars they sank into the project of making Jake Sully into a Blue Person rather than waiting a couple of weeks.
Oy, the suffering that ensues, all for some lousy unobtainium! Oy, the destruction! You can hear writer-director James Cameron weeping over his special-effects computer as the bad humans he created commit this terrible atrocity against the Blue People who don't exist. As for me, I was reminded of Oscar Wilde's immortal crack about Charles Dickens's tears as he killed off the child heroine of his Old Curiosity Shop: "It would take a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."
The only salvation for Pandora lies with our man Jake Sully turning into the leader of the blue-skinned people, rallying them to the cause of protecting their planet against the Evil Corporation. This, too, is unacceptably paternalistic, in my view; after all, why should giant blue people have to learn these things from a shrimpy white guy who doesn't even have a tail or built-in Skype?
Eventually, it falls to Jake to plug his fiber-optic cables into a plant and ask the Great Mother to do something. And she does. She rallies the pterodactyls, not to mention some rhinoceroses and dogs, to join with an army of blue people to take down the EC. In the end, it's Jake Sully vs. the Evil Marine, who is dressed up to look like (again, not kidding) a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robot, one of those ludicrous toys from the late 1960s that gave toys a bad name.
You're going to hear a lot over the next couple of weeks about the movie's politics-about how it's a Green epic about despoiling the environment, and an attack on the war in Iraq, and so on. The conclusion does ask the audience to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency. So it is a deep expression of anti-Americanism-kind of.
The thing is, one would be giving James Cameron too much credit to take Avatar-with its mindless worship of a nature-loving tribe and the tribe's adorable pagan rituals, its hatred of the military and American institutions, and the notion that to be human is just way uncool-at all seriously as a political document. It's more interesting as an example of how deeply rooted these standard-issue counterculture clichés in Hollywood have become by now. Cameron has simply used these familiar bromides as shorthand to give his special-effects spectacular some resonance. He wrote it this way not to be controversial, but quite the opposite: He was making something he thought would be most pleasing to the greatest number of people.
Will it be? Aside from the anti-American, anti-human politics, the movie is nearly three hours long, and it doesn't have a single joke in it. There is no question that Avatar is an astonishing piece of work. It is, for about two-thirds of its running time, an animated picture that looks like it's not an animated picture.
On the other hand, who cares? It doesn't count for much that the technical skill on display makes it easier to suspend disbelief and make you think you're watching something take place on a distant planet. Getting audiences to suspend disbelief isn't the hard part; we suspend disbelief all the time. It's how we can see any movie about anything and get involved in the story. The real question is this: If Avatar were drawn like a regular cartoon, or had been made on soundstages with sets and the like, would it be interesting? Would it hold our attention? The answer is, unquestionably no. There's no chance anybody would even have put it into production, no matter that Cameron made the box-office bonanza Titanic. So the question is: Does the technical mastery on display in Avatar outweigh the unbelievably banal and idiotic plot, the excruciating dialogue, the utter lack of any quality resembling a sense of humor? And will all these qualities silence the discomfort coming from that significant segment of the American population that, we know from the box-office receipts for Iraq war movies this decade, doesn't like it when an American soldier is the bad guy? John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary,is THE WEEKLY STANDARD's movie critic. |
But do you agree with the assessment found here:
http://justinwashingtontheblogger.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/the-precious-blind-side/
Believe me, those “thousands” who are employed are the bottom of the barrel. I’ve been in that business. The reason they shoot on location so much is they can get people to work for cheap. Then they leave town and the “workers” go back on welfare. And they still ideas. Make promises they have no intention of keeping. Provide “jobs” for people who will do their bidding such as sex. And I KNOW of stars who have sold their souls. Hollywood is evil. And I decided long ago that I will no longer support evil.
Genre has nothing to with it. All I’m saying is these people want the middle class to “share” the wealth while they spends a half a billion to make a stupid movie that adds not one thing to society.
I liked the movie.
So what if the Indians finally won one. What’s wrong with that?
I enjoyed the film and didn’t mind that the natives won, either. My beef is that the film is noticeably, anti-Bush, anti-business, and anti-American military for no reason other than they’re easy, popular targets at best. Or Cameron hates the U.S. at worst.
If they had at least made the mercenaries to be more obviously a multi-national one rather than a pointedly American one, especially in their language, it would have been easier to handle.
I suggested on another thread a while back that Robert Heinlein could have written a much better screen play. One where you could side with the Na’vi but without making the bad guys such “ugly Americans.”
If you like Heinlein and science fiction, check out the his novel about a Lunar Revolution entitled _The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress_ to get an idea of what he might have done.
Word is it’ll be released first on 2D Blu-ray and then 3D Blu-ray by the end of 2010.
My reactions on it are fairly mixed. The score was awfully generic and in some places I just wished it had been better. I did like cat-like look and feel of the aliens.
If anything I think it jumps into the scenario a little too quick. I sure hope they restore the Earth scenes and add some more to it on the Blu-ray. It had a ‘Fellowship of the Ring’ quality to it for me. I liked it ok, but it didn’t feel complete. I’m hoping it’ll work out later.
Avatar is nine hours that I will never get back. Marine=bad and of course stupid. Yawn. This movie just sucked. Plot and script was horrible. I just hate the propaganda over and over. Everybody Should just stay at home.
I haven’t heard any real music since the 70’s so, no, I don’t listen to the crap. And I think this country would do just fine without the filth coming out of Hollywood. I don’t need to escape to fantasy land to enjoy life. You support them if you want. It’s your money.
The Arts aren’t important? You don’t think books, music and movies define a large part of American culture?
That Colonel character was a dreadful stereotype. A walking ‘gung ho’ cliche that cheapened what could have been a serious moral discussion of the isues involved.
I think Hollywood puts out a bunch of crap. And I think Mablethorpe put out a bunch of piss. But it’s all called art.
We saw it Sat. Matinee and all in family loved it. Hokey in many parts, but fantastic 3D imagery. The story is simplistic and juvenile, but the telling of it via visuals was great.
Loved the trailer on the Hubble repair! Beautiful shots...
Yes, unfortunately in the vast majority of cases. I am listening to: http://radiodismuke.com/
traitor..lol
Thanks for posting this.
lol -- ain't that the truth. I just got back from the theater and it is one looong, bad movie. It's a leftist propaganda fest as most reviewers have noted, but it's so dumb it almost doesn't matter. Overall a totally forgettable movie.
“Wow....this movie has all kinds of insane idiocy.”
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Sounds like it! This movie may be almost as ufpucked as...the....naaahh, it ain’t even close to bein’ as absurd as the Obama administration.
I, don’t get it.
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I don’t, get it either.
I don’t get, it either.
Avatar, we are told, is a breakthrough, the boldest step into the future of filmmaking, an unparalleled achievement.
Wow, I'll run to the nearest theater right now.
Avatar has to be the bestest movie ever made!
Of all the Elf Trees, in all the 'Great Mother',
the lovely Blue Neytiri had to climb into mine.
On second thought, my Sock Drawer needs rearranging.
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