Avatar

[thegreatgonz]

I finally managed to get a chance to see Avatar (many thanks to omega697 and aardvark428 for watching Kael while we went). Regarding it as a movie, I find I really don't have a lot to add to what everyone else has said: it's visually spectacular (albeit more as a matter of craftsmanship than real artistry), and it's very competently shot and edited, with a few really spectacular moments, but it's cliched, predictable, simplistic, and poorly written, and ultimately it just didn't really grab me. I tried to keep my expectations low, but with the record-breaking box office and the avalanche of actual and predicted awards, I was sort of looking for a transformative experience, like seeing Star Wars or Fellowship of the Ring for the first time, and I just didn't get that. It didn't strike me as the beginning of a new era of moviemaking, but as another evolutionary step along a trail blazed by the Star Wars prequels, the LOTR movies, and their ilk.

A few miscellaneous thoughts:

• Much has already been said about the movie's politics, but I have to say anyone who's surprised to find that James Cameron is a hippie peacenik hasn't been paying attention to his movies. I will say, though, that for the cultural and material inheritors of those who relocated and nearly exterminated the Native Americans to turn around and rewrite that history with a happy ending for mass entertainment is a little ... unseemly.
  
• I'm not sure what's more depressing; the fact that Cameron gave us a more feminist depiction of a future military almost a quarter-century ago in Aliens (with female grunts, not just pilots and computer operators), or the fact that Avatar is still better than most action movies in that respect.
  
• Complex and sympathetic villains have never been Cameron's strong suit, but Avatar strikes me as a new low. To take an example from Aliens again, Carter Burke was a nasty piece of work, and a pretty obvious villain, but he was also charming and likeable, whereas his counterpart in Avatar, Parker Selfridge, is an obnoxious caricature from the word go (and he's the less ridiculous villain in the movie).
  
• I think this may be Cameron's least intense movie, with the possible exception of True Lies. His movies usually nail you to your seat, but this one just asks for your attention.
  

I found I had more of a reaction to Avatar as a technological artifact than as a movie per se, but that's for another post.