My Avatar Review
IT SUCKED SO HORRIBLY AND OFFENDED ME AS A POTENTIAL FUTURE FILMMAKER.
Oh my God, I cannot express my hatred for this movie enough.
The story was completely recycled. The CGI was not believable and looked completely fake, even animated. The 3-D was completely unnecessary and made me nauseous/unstable, not allowing me to be grounded anywhere in time or space. And it's not the fact that I'm not smart enough to "get it," which someone suggested on a film blog comment section; I have an I.Q. of 166, thank you very much. I think it's the fact that I'm not stupid enough, not willing enough to let my mind go blank for long enough to enjoy crapfest movies like Transformers and Avatar.
But seriously, the story was a ridiculous after-thought! It was literally just Dances with Wolves/Pocahontas/Ferngully/The Last Samurai in space! John Smith Jake Sully meets the Indian native princess, Pocahontas Natiyri and learns the ways of the natives through contrived montages and song lyrics like, "How high does the sycamore grow? / If you cut it down, then you'll never know" - sound similar? Sounds like the East India Trading Company raping the Native Americans of its natural resources to me, or in Avatar, the humans taking the Na'vi's natural Unobtanium (unambiguous name much?) deposits under their Hometree. Then, when he realizes he loves the Natives and don't want to be the exploitative British anymore, he defends them against the invaders and is incarcerated by his original people, but ends up helping the Natives defeat the British anyway. This comparison is found much more concisely here. Personally, I prefer Pocahontas - at least I wasn't laughing during the final battle when the Na'vi manage to attack the humans, who have amassed like 8000 pounds worth of bombs simply by flying on those pterodactyl things...
=
Every moment of the plot was laughable. I literally was sitting there giggling with my mom while Sigourney Weaver's character died - WHO CARES?!?! The basics to any passable plot is character sympathy and with the Avatar cast, there was none. The main guy was completely uncharismatic and I didn't know anything about him except that he was disabled (which I'm guessing was a ploy to make me feel bad for him?). The native girl was scary and sounded retarded, not "native." The Michelle Rodriguez character basically was just her reprising her role as Ana Lucia in Lost - no original characteristics whatsoever. The evil guys were just stereotypes - like iBankers and militant deviants with no personal characteristics, just a goal and a body.
The Oscar talk is making me thoroughly depressed. If anything, it should be nominated in the Animated category, since the entire thing was cartoon-y and made up with graphics people.
And the fact that James Cameron wrote the screenplay like 12 years ago thinking it was such an incredibly groundbreaking story that the technology wasn't even invented yet to fully bring it to life. What a pompous asshole!
The fact that people think it was such an "environmentalist" movie makes no sense when you think about the fact that the entire universe, the entire "natural world of Pandora" was made my machines and computers, essentially just a series of 0's and 1's. If you want to make a movie about the beautiful unspoiled nature of the earth, it might help to actually use at least one shot of the real earth.
To those who say it must be great if it's making a billion dollars, I laugh in your faces. To those who just say, "But it was an amazing cinematic experience," you need to witness some actual amazing movie brilliance -- watch entertainment like Singin' in the Rain, drame like 8 1/2, Taxi Driver, or The Godfather or some old Hitchcock classics like Psycho, even better Sci-Fi films like District 9, which was made with like 1/10th of the budget of Avatar but 10000x as inventive, original and entertaining...
End of rant.
Oh my God, I cannot express my hatred for this movie enough.
The story was completely recycled. The CGI was not believable and looked completely fake, even animated. The 3-D was completely unnecessary and made me nauseous/unstable, not allowing me to be grounded anywhere in time or space. And it's not the fact that I'm not smart enough to "get it," which someone suggested on a film blog comment section; I have an I.Q. of 166, thank you very much. I think it's the fact that I'm not stupid enough, not willing enough to let my mind go blank for long enough to enjoy crapfest movies like Transformers and Avatar.
But seriously, the story was a ridiculous after-thought! It was literally just Dances with Wolves/Pocahontas/Ferngully/The Last Samurai in space! John Smith Jake Sully meets the Indian native princess, Pocahontas Natiyri and learns the ways of the natives through contrived montages and song lyrics like, "How high does the sycamore grow? / If you cut it down, then you'll never know" - sound similar? Sounds like the East India Trading Company raping the Native Americans of its natural resources to me, or in Avatar, the humans taking the Na'vi's natural Unobtanium (unambiguous name much?) deposits under their Hometree. Then, when he realizes he loves the Natives and don't want to be the exploitative British anymore, he defends them against the invaders and is incarcerated by his original people, but ends up helping the Natives defeat the British anyway. This comparison is found much more concisely here. Personally, I prefer Pocahontas - at least I wasn't laughing during the final battle when the Na'vi manage to attack the humans, who have amassed like 8000 pounds worth of bombs simply by flying on those pterodactyl things...
=
Every moment of the plot was laughable. I literally was sitting there giggling with my mom while Sigourney Weaver's character died - WHO CARES?!?! The basics to any passable plot is character sympathy and with the Avatar cast, there was none. The main guy was completely uncharismatic and I didn't know anything about him except that he was disabled (which I'm guessing was a ploy to make me feel bad for him?). The native girl was scary and sounded retarded, not "native." The Michelle Rodriguez character basically was just her reprising her role as Ana Lucia in Lost - no original characteristics whatsoever. The evil guys were just stereotypes - like iBankers and militant deviants with no personal characteristics, just a goal and a body.
The Oscar talk is making me thoroughly depressed. If anything, it should be nominated in the Animated category, since the entire thing was cartoon-y and made up with graphics people.
And the fact that James Cameron wrote the screenplay like 12 years ago thinking it was such an incredibly groundbreaking story that the technology wasn't even invented yet to fully bring it to life. What a pompous asshole!
The fact that people think it was such an "environmentalist" movie makes no sense when you think about the fact that the entire universe, the entire "natural world of Pandora" was made my machines and computers, essentially just a series of 0's and 1's. If you want to make a movie about the beautiful unspoiled nature of the earth, it might help to actually use at least one shot of the real earth.
To those who say it must be great if it's making a billion dollars, I laugh in your faces. To those who just say, "But it was an amazing cinematic experience," you need to witness some actual amazing movie brilliance -- watch entertainment like Singin' in the Rain, drame like 8 1/2, Taxi Driver, or The Godfather or some old Hitchcock classics like Psycho, even better Sci-Fi films like District 9, which was made with like 1/10th of the budget of Avatar but 10000x as inventive, original and entertaining...
End of rant.