what-I say-what in Avatarnation Don't I Get?

James Cameron’s AVATAR has a few problems. The first is that it’s fucking retarded.


JUST KIDDING! I know some think I’m contrarian or negative about everything. But, alas, just because a film takes 5 years to make, just because new technology had to be invented to make it, just because it’s in 3D, and just because it cost you eighteen dollars to see it doesn’t mean it’s a great film. Have more respect for your own intellect than to cave to such flimsy syllogism, for the love of Christ.

No, AVATAR is not great. AVATAR is not particularly good. But AVATAR is okay; it isn’t the abortion that it’s garish design and are-you-kidding-me trailers seemed to suggest it would be. I’m glad I saw it, I wouldn’t NOT recommend it to an action movie fan, but then again I wish I had seen THE HURT LOCKER in 2D instead. Sorry, various friends who think I hate every movie and who for some reason take it personally when I do: I ain’t buying what AVATAR is selling.


Which includes both Big Macs and a new frontier for movie-dom: a three dimension one. The 3D in AVATAR is the most advanced I’ve ever seen, but then again to me it didn’t feel so far beyond what I saw in UP last year or in NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS 3D three years ago. The problem with 3D is that it’s such a strange sensory phenomenon that it sorts of wrecks havoc on our objective sense – think of the thrill of the MAGIC EYE books when that image finally pops (“I see it!”); or think of how amazing the foreground knife-stabbing of FRIDAY the 13th Part 3-D must have seemed to its 1982 audience. It’s so utterly clever and here so cloyingly pretty that it’s as hard not to like as it is to love. I would never go as far as Ivan Reitman who bitterly declares “I hate 3D” (not merely because it’s denying what is an inevitable change for theatrical- and soon home-entertainment), but I resist the temptation to be awed by it simply because it’s so damn expensive. Then again, roused by Cameron’s use of space and clever diagonals, the 3D is mostly how I managed to stay awake during this three hour film. I’d say 3D saved AVATAR but just barely. I wonder how DVD sales will be; I can’t imagine ever seeing this film again.

Essentially it’s Pocahontas. This was Adam’s observation but the man is right, and James Cameron and umpteen thousand bloggers are saying the same (“Pocahontas in Space” or “Pocahontas with Blue People”…I’d go with “Pocahontas with Worse Music” which is saying something). The beats: a warrior infiltrates a native population, his specious attempt to “learn their ways” is really a cover for some militaristic operation to steal their valuable land. But, as these things tend to happen, he falls in love. That love redeems him, reprograms him, opens his eyes. (“I see you, Pocahontas”…”I see you, John Smith”). The agenda changes, the colonists are the villains; they are the ones who cannot See All The Colors of the Wind/Hear All the Voices of the Jungle! THEM! It’s all actually a pretty fertile and accessible framework for the story, and I don’t begrudge Cameron the cleverness to bring this classic story of colonization to the Space Age. But then I also recall that Pocahontas didn't make a very good movie – and the religious hokum seems as Disney-ified here as it did in the animated film. The environmental message may be more timely, but it also isn't very complex -- and taking almost three hours to croak out-- feels both reiterative and reductionist. Essentially, thematically, AVATAR is telling us the same thing that POCAHONTAS did; that WALL-E did; that FREE WILLY did; that HAPPY FEET did; that SOYLENT GREEN did; that AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH veraciously did: human greed blinds us towards the larger world and the connection between species as we all try to survive. Thematically, it’s dull. Which shouldn’t matter, because it’s a “popcorn movie” and just supposed to be just a lotta fun, right? Maybe that would be true if I suspected James Cameron didn’t take his own super-enlightenment so damn seriously.

I was surprised to find how essentially anti-human AVATAR manages to be, especially when TERMINATOR and TITANTIC were such thoroughly Humanist films. Maybe it’s a reflection of how long James Cameron has been in Hollywood or the growing cynicism that accompanies age: but AVATAR is not a film about mankind’s resistance in the face of disaster or tragedy, AVATAR is not about alien species learning to LIVE AND LET LIVE and appreciate difference, AVATAR is not about cooperation. In the end of AVATAR, Jake becomes Nav’i. He chooses them because them are not THEM – the colonists, the ones who can’t see. Colored with Cray-pas and posited as a Happy Ending, I think the reverberations of this ending and its real message never really play out for most of the audience who think popcorn movies should not be weighed on such mopey and over-serious theoretical grounds.

Which is probably why, while anyone with half a brain sees it and knows it’s there, the Iraq-connection (which is really what AVATAR is about) is kept pretty under the surface. It’s basically more of a tenet of the films premise than something that keeps harassing the films situational politics (although I think “we’ll fight terrorism with terrorism” is actually a line in the script). Smart of Cameron, because I wonder if the film’s Ohio audience would really be all that keen to set aside that cool, clean glass of Petroleum and reach for some frosty Pagan-Gods-in-a-glass if Cameron spelled out what “going Nav’i” really means. I don’t mean to pander, and I don’t accuse anyone of “not getting it,” but the truth is that Cameron tones down his politics and doesn’t ask us to equate the “Sky People” with Americans and the Nav’i with the Iraqi. But, like, we can if we want.

You know, it’s not a bad flick. Cameron is really brilliant as a film technician AND as a director (some of details – a soldier getting his hat blown off in the background, the whipping blades of grass when a Helicopter lands -- are awesome). He’s also a really capable and intelligent screenwriter, which is what I want to talk about here. Love it or hate it, The script of AVATAR is extremely succinct, well-wrought, internally cohesive. It makes sense as a script which may not really mean anything but it something that people in my line of employment say when a screenplay has that ineffable quality that makes it work. The characters are diverse, they arch, they change. Scenes double back on each other logically (I wondered for a second why they would waste all that screen time on Sigourney Weaver’s weird, tribal demise… then I quickly figured out it was to set up the film’s finale with Jake becoming Nav’i). Action sequences are organic to the plot, if a bit overlong. This screenplay is almost good.

But I don’t believe it quite gets there. It’s not the “stupid” lines people warned me about (“who’s bad?” -- a weird, intergalactic MJ reference) or even the fact that the space mineral is called Unobtainium that soured me. It’s more about how easily the pieces seem to fit together, how approachable Cameron makes the whole thing. From soup to nuts, AVATAR is an easy movie to sit through, to admire from afar, to enjoy. But easy doesn’t mean good. By rendering so many polygons, smoothing so many edges, making that screenplay click so completely, Cameron makes a movie that’s eminently digestible, that's easy to swallow. Fine. Good. But like so many gelatinous films before it, AVATAR reminds me that being easy to swallow often leaves something wanting for texture. And for a movie that's touted as bringing moviedom into the third dimension (and for a film with that color palate, and set on that terrain) being left wanting more texture feels like being left with blue balls.

I wish the story were a bit more complicated – not by a new and even bigger snarl-tooth beast, but by something nuanced and psychological. I would have loved to hear from (or even see) Earth, to ground us in Earth’s future reality, to hear the political discourse surrounding the Unobtainum issue. I would have loved a bit of a toned down “learning to fly” sequence, even though I guess I expected it given Cameron’s penchant for high-speed awe. I would have loved less anthropomorphic and more original habits and habitations from the Nav’i…apparently they kiss too; they live, mate, work, emote, fight, and mourn just like us. Finally, Cameron could have confronted his theoretical stance with the film, his repudiation of Jake’s humanity to be more like the Nav’i. When the evil corporal asks Jake what it feels like to betray his own species, Jake just snarls at him like the Nav’i do. It’s a succinct, even clever moment but it underscores AVATAR’s refusal to complicate its neat little plot with messy emotions, contradictions, open-ended quandaries. In short, I didn’t care about the characters, and so it didn’t work.

I wish I loved every movie I saw, I wish I could pay $18 and be assured every last dollar was worth it. But that’s not how I watch movies, and it’s not how I want to. It’s very hard to make films and nigh-impossible to make a good one, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate when a film gets it right or acknowledge when it gets it wrong. And I do like movies I see (this year, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, UP, THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX, A SERIOUS MAN) all the time...and I like them that much more for being rare and special...an Unobtainium worth the many dollars I waste on lesser films. I may not be able to paint with ALL the colors of the wind, but the ones with which I do are vivid enough to be, for me, enough.