Avatar again
Finally finished seeing the whole thing. Makes a big difference to not feel like I'm going to puke from the 3D. ;)
Yes, there is racefail. And some genderfail. I'll get to both of those in a few.
As mentioned before, yes, it's visually pretty, and the world-building is inventive. I can see how people who haven't had much experience with SF/F or video games might be blown away by what they saw. Me, I was impressed, but not fully gobsmacked. The quality of the CG was great (it was WETA Digital, so of course it was great) and I liked the art direction, but very little of it seemed fully new to me. Pandora and the Na'vi, for instance, seemed pulled directly from Alan Dean Foster's Midworld, including the six-limbed animals and the interconnected flora and fauna. And the machines-v-nature battles have been done many, many times before, especially in video games (Rise of Legends, for instance--there was much about the final battles that felt like a war between Vinci tech and Alin dragons.) Likewise, video-game visuals are plenty impressive themselves. The specific CG and mocap tech involved here is of course more advanced, but it's not revolutionary in itself. Same with the 3D. It's just a more-refined version of tech that's been around for at least a decade. Calling Avatar's CG revolutionary because it's better rendered is like calling the iPhone revolutionary because it merged several devices. It's just a natural evolution of the tech--not something brand new.
Technologically, there were also some giant holes. Are we really expected to believe that 150 years from now, we'll still be using paper money, manned military vehicles and eating from nukeable plastic bags? And the device tech is either present-day or near-future. Not that that's unusual in genre films.
As for the racefail and genderfail...
Much has already been said about the Dances with Smurfs storyline, and having seen the whole thing, I'm no less annoyed than I was before. Oh, look, the white guy is Special! He's blessed by $deity! He alone is destined to bond with the untameable beast! He gets to bang the chief's daughter! Puh-leeze. A few tiny points for at least making him defer to the real leader when making his appeal, but otherwise... Bleh.
The other racefail issue I'm not quite as upset about. Some folks have complained that it's unrealistic to expect that Earth-originating white guys will still be decimating native populations in pursuit of money 150 years from now. Me, I don't see that as unrealistic at all. We're doing plenty of it right now, and though it seems as if we're on a path away from that, all it really takes is a decade or so of cultural shift for that to change. After all, look at how xenophobic the U.S. became after 9/11. A few more events like that, and it wouldn't take much for the white guys with the big guns to start randomly wiping out brown people right and left. Half the country is still conservative enough to approve of that sort of thing, so it's not a stretch to think that we might regress. So yes, it's plausible. Depressing, but plausible.
Somewhat less plausible is the idea that PoCs would be involved in this kind of project, but then again, we have Michelle Malkin and Alan Keyes, so anything's possible.
Genderfail wise, we of course had Neytiri the Action Babe and her Mystical Mommy. Also, it was more than a little bizarre that the Na'vi were advanced enough to have female hunters and warriors, and yet there were still gender divisions in clan leadership, and men were supposed to choose a female mate. Ugh.
I give the film a lot of credit for having two female characters whose roles had jack to do with their romantic or familial relationships, and whose careers featured heavily in the plot. However, a lot of that credit gets taken away because both of those women died. Apparently the reward for being a strong woman, fighting for what you believe in, is death. Double ugh. (Also, it could be argued that Grace played a slight maternal role. So there's that.)
Overall, it's probably a 3.5 star movie for me. It could've been more by clearing up some of the groaner stuff and by having a better script, more complex characters and a plot that wasn't visible from space. Good, but not a masterpiece of revolutionary filmmaking.
Yes, there is racefail. And some genderfail. I'll get to both of those in a few.
As mentioned before, yes, it's visually pretty, and the world-building is inventive. I can see how people who haven't had much experience with SF/F or video games might be blown away by what they saw. Me, I was impressed, but not fully gobsmacked. The quality of the CG was great (it was WETA Digital, so of course it was great) and I liked the art direction, but very little of it seemed fully new to me. Pandora and the Na'vi, for instance, seemed pulled directly from Alan Dean Foster's Midworld, including the six-limbed animals and the interconnected flora and fauna. And the machines-v-nature battles have been done many, many times before, especially in video games (Rise of Legends, for instance--there was much about the final battles that felt like a war between Vinci tech and Alin dragons.) Likewise, video-game visuals are plenty impressive themselves. The specific CG and mocap tech involved here is of course more advanced, but it's not revolutionary in itself. Same with the 3D. It's just a more-refined version of tech that's been around for at least a decade. Calling Avatar's CG revolutionary because it's better rendered is like calling the iPhone revolutionary because it merged several devices. It's just a natural evolution of the tech--not something brand new.
Technologically, there were also some giant holes. Are we really expected to believe that 150 years from now, we'll still be using paper money, manned military vehicles and eating from nukeable plastic bags? And the device tech is either present-day or near-future. Not that that's unusual in genre films.
As for the racefail and genderfail...
Much has already been said about the Dances with Smurfs storyline, and having seen the whole thing, I'm no less annoyed than I was before. Oh, look, the white guy is Special! He's blessed by $deity! He alone is destined to bond with the untameable beast! He gets to bang the chief's daughter! Puh-leeze. A few tiny points for at least making him defer to the real leader when making his appeal, but otherwise... Bleh.
The other racefail issue I'm not quite as upset about. Some folks have complained that it's unrealistic to expect that Earth-originating white guys will still be decimating native populations in pursuit of money 150 years from now. Me, I don't see that as unrealistic at all. We're doing plenty of it right now, and though it seems as if we're on a path away from that, all it really takes is a decade or so of cultural shift for that to change. After all, look at how xenophobic the U.S. became after 9/11. A few more events like that, and it wouldn't take much for the white guys with the big guns to start randomly wiping out brown people right and left. Half the country is still conservative enough to approve of that sort of thing, so it's not a stretch to think that we might regress. So yes, it's plausible. Depressing, but plausible.
Somewhat less plausible is the idea that PoCs would be involved in this kind of project, but then again, we have Michelle Malkin and Alan Keyes, so anything's possible.
Genderfail wise, we of course had Neytiri the Action Babe and her Mystical Mommy. Also, it was more than a little bizarre that the Na'vi were advanced enough to have female hunters and warriors, and yet there were still gender divisions in clan leadership, and men were supposed to choose a female mate. Ugh.
I give the film a lot of credit for having two female characters whose roles had jack to do with their romantic or familial relationships, and whose careers featured heavily in the plot. However, a lot of that credit gets taken away because both of those women died. Apparently the reward for being a strong woman, fighting for what you believe in, is death. Double ugh. (Also, it could be argued that Grace played a slight maternal role. So there's that.)
Overall, it's probably a 3.5 star movie for me. It could've been more by clearing up some of the groaner stuff and by having a better script, more complex characters and a plot that wasn't visible from space. Good, but not a masterpiece of revolutionary filmmaking.