My Beef with Avatar
Ok, so I realize that I'm probably ranter # 382940291885 in regard to the Avatar movie, but in the off-chance (the REALLY off-chance) that there's still someone out there who hasn't thought of this yet, I feel I've gotta get this out. It annoys me, ya see, that a movie making SO much money and with SO much influence on the populous can manage to do something so horribly, horribly (and fundamentally) wrong.
So here's my beef with Avatar.
From a viewer's standpoint (that is, a member of the audience), I first want to concede that I did find it to be an exciting and entertaining movie, even in spite of all the little things it did wrong--the cliched, predictable plot points and not-so-thinly veiled message that HUMANS TOTALLY DON'T RESPECT THE EARTH AND ARE DOOMED TO BECOME A RACE OF SOULLESS MONSTERS WHO TOTALLY DESERVE WHATEVER THEY'VE GOT COMING TO THEM among the most obvious. Among the less obvious, a striking lack of detail regarding the non-culturally influenced mannerisms of an alien race (the only thing they do that we don't do is hiss? Seriously? They still smile and kiss and laugh and all that? Huh. Go figure.). But seriously, I can let all that go. I can. The scenery was breathtaking and the technology, both in CGI and 3D respects, was pretty awesome. Most of all, by the end of the movie, I really wanted what happened to Jake to happen to him.
...But it is exactly that ending that I have a problem with.
*SPOILER ALERT*
As a writer, I'm both disappointed and mildly pissed that the writers of Avatar didn't have the integrity to stick with their theme to the end. They create this world where humans are (with approximately 2.5 exceptions) the ultimate bad guy bullies of the universe. We're ruled by greed and guns, which convinces us that we have the right to go stomping around the universe, raping innocently cliched planet of beauty after innocently cliched planet of beauty of its natural resources until, what else, an unlikely (because he's a marine) and unexpected (because he's a cripple) hero steps up, gets his eyes opened by a native chick (who is, of course, also a princess), and rallies the natives to rise up and drive the bad humans away.
Awesome.
Oh, and then, because he's proven himself to be both not a total asshole AND really proficient at blending into the natives' society, he gets to essentially evolve beyond being human and live the ultimate definition of Happily Ever After.
Wait, what?
So his reward for being a human worthy of his humanity is...becoming not human?
Yes. Yes, that's exactly right.
Well, shit. No wonder this moving is depressing the hell out of people!
I'm going to set aside the fact that they were going for a really excellent (not to mention timely) theme of LET'S STOP TURNING THE EARTH TO SHIT theme and focus on this thing as a writer. The plain and simple issue here, is that easy outs just don't work. We, as humans, don't carry anything lasting away from warm and fuzzy endings, except the overwhelming sensation of "DAMN, I wanna feel/be/live/end up that way, too!"
Carol Berg, a favorite author of mine, wrote a book a few years back in which the hero makes a choice to commit himself to the greater good while a loved one is dying. At the end of the climactic battle to which he commits himself (and wins, of course), he rushes to his loved one's side and arrives just a moment too late to say goodbye. Someone asked Carol once why she did that, 'cause it was just so doggone mean. Couldn't he have just gotten there a minute earlier and said his last goodbye? Why wasn't it enough that his loved one was gonna die anyway? Carol replied, "Because there have to be consequences." And she was right.
The inevitable (a dying loved one's death, Jake's paralysis below the waist, the gulf of life and death between Isabella Swan and Edward Cullen) isn't enough to really make your audience feel, or to really get a worthwhile point across. Carol's hero had to miss the last goodbye for the decision to do the right thing to still be the hard (and right) decision to make. Jake should've had to live with his humanity. Bella and Edward should've...nevermind, there are way too many of those. Imagine instead that Charles Dickens had left the 3rd ghost (the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) out of his book, and Scrooge had only been visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present. Sure, he would've changed for a while, I'd wager, but would the impact have been as deep without him understanding the consequences yet to come? I imagine not.
See, it's not about happy ending vs. not happy ending. It's about the moments that define our lives (both in reality and in a fictional world) and how hard those moments have to be to make a real difference to us. That warm, squidgy feeling that [some] people get after reading Twilight can't hold a candle to the emotional impact of Bambie's mom dying in a meadow.
That lack of final consequences (that is, the would-be ending of Jake remaining human one way or another at the end of the film) is where the story fell short of [what should've been] its goal. The theme was lost, the message redefined at the last second, and the would-be audience of truly moved individuals reduced to a mass of confused moviegoers, all weepily lusting after Pandora for being an unattainable paradise, enormously upset at the Na'vi for reaching an unfairly unreachable level of evolution by any means short of getting transformed into one by MAGIC, and ravenously jealous of Jake Sully for getting everything anyone could ever want. Ever.
So here's my beef with Avatar.
From a viewer's standpoint (that is, a member of the audience), I first want to concede that I did find it to be an exciting and entertaining movie, even in spite of all the little things it did wrong--the cliched, predictable plot points and not-so-thinly veiled message that HUMANS TOTALLY DON'T RESPECT THE EARTH AND ARE DOOMED TO BECOME A RACE OF SOULLESS MONSTERS WHO TOTALLY DESERVE WHATEVER THEY'VE GOT COMING TO THEM among the most obvious. Among the less obvious, a striking lack of detail regarding the non-culturally influenced mannerisms of an alien race (the only thing they do that we don't do is hiss? Seriously? They still smile and kiss and laugh and all that? Huh. Go figure.). But seriously, I can let all that go. I can. The scenery was breathtaking and the technology, both in CGI and 3D respects, was pretty awesome. Most of all, by the end of the movie, I really wanted what happened to Jake to happen to him.
...But it is exactly that ending that I have a problem with.
*SPOILER ALERT*
As a writer, I'm both disappointed and mildly pissed that the writers of Avatar didn't have the integrity to stick with their theme to the end. They create this world where humans are (with approximately 2.5 exceptions) the ultimate bad guy bullies of the universe. We're ruled by greed and guns, which convinces us that we have the right to go stomping around the universe, raping innocently cliched planet of beauty after innocently cliched planet of beauty of its natural resources until, what else, an unlikely (because he's a marine) and unexpected (because he's a cripple) hero steps up, gets his eyes opened by a native chick (who is, of course, also a princess), and rallies the natives to rise up and drive the bad humans away.
Awesome.
Oh, and then, because he's proven himself to be both not a total asshole AND really proficient at blending into the natives' society, he gets to essentially evolve beyond being human and live the ultimate definition of Happily Ever After.
Wait, what?
So his reward for being a human worthy of his humanity is...becoming not human?
Yes. Yes, that's exactly right.
Well, shit. No wonder this moving is depressing the hell out of people!
I'm going to set aside the fact that they were going for a really excellent (not to mention timely) theme of LET'S STOP TURNING THE EARTH TO SHIT theme and focus on this thing as a writer. The plain and simple issue here, is that easy outs just don't work. We, as humans, don't carry anything lasting away from warm and fuzzy endings, except the overwhelming sensation of "DAMN, I wanna feel/be/live/end up that way, too!"
Carol Berg, a favorite author of mine, wrote a book a few years back in which the hero makes a choice to commit himself to the greater good while a loved one is dying. At the end of the climactic battle to which he commits himself (and wins, of course), he rushes to his loved one's side and arrives just a moment too late to say goodbye. Someone asked Carol once why she did that, 'cause it was just so doggone mean. Couldn't he have just gotten there a minute earlier and said his last goodbye? Why wasn't it enough that his loved one was gonna die anyway? Carol replied, "Because there have to be consequences." And she was right.
The inevitable (a dying loved one's death, Jake's paralysis below the waist, the gulf of life and death between Isabella Swan and Edward Cullen) isn't enough to really make your audience feel, or to really get a worthwhile point across. Carol's hero had to miss the last goodbye for the decision to do the right thing to still be the hard (and right) decision to make. Jake should've had to live with his humanity. Bella and Edward should've...nevermind, there are way too many of those. Imagine instead that Charles Dickens had left the 3rd ghost (the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) out of his book, and Scrooge had only been visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present. Sure, he would've changed for a while, I'd wager, but would the impact have been as deep without him understanding the consequences yet to come? I imagine not.
See, it's not about happy ending vs. not happy ending. It's about the moments that define our lives (both in reality and in a fictional world) and how hard those moments have to be to make a real difference to us. That warm, squidgy feeling that [some] people get after reading Twilight can't hold a candle to the emotional impact of Bambie's mom dying in a meadow.
That lack of final consequences (that is, the would-be ending of Jake remaining human one way or another at the end of the film) is where the story fell short of [what should've been] its goal. The theme was lost, the message redefined at the last second, and the would-be audience of truly moved individuals reduced to a mass of confused moviegoers, all weepily lusting after Pandora for being an unattainable paradise, enormously upset at the Na'vi for reaching an unfairly unreachable level of evolution by any means short of getting transformed into one by MAGIC, and ravenously jealous of Jake Sully for getting everything anyone could ever want. Ever.