Am I the only guy who didn’t like Avatar? Is something wrong with me?: A movie review, but more importantly, a self-review
Published: January 11, 2010
Updated: January 11, 2010
Alas, your sparkly face failed to stir me... but why?! Courtesy 20th Cenutry Fox
I’m not elitist.
I swear to God I’m not elitist.
PROOF THAT I AM NOT ELITIST (In visually pleasing Pyramid list form)
-Xbox!
-I love fast food!
-Shakira and Beyoncé are great musicians!
-Hey! If you want, I’ll watch American Idol with you!
-Also, I hear Ellen DeGeneres is on American Idol now! Sweet!
~
Now that my non-elistism has been qualified, I would like to painfully admit something to you all.
I didn’t like Avatar.
I mean, it was fun, I suppose, but fun in the way getting slapped by a friend is. It’s kind of thrilling, but about 15 seconds afterwards it leaves a mark and really actually hurts. Avatar hurts.
The 3-D glasses, they hurt your face.
They are mega-huge-future glasses with small windshield sized lenses. Mind you, I already wear glasses. Having to wear two pairs of glasses for 2 hours and 42 minutes destroyed my nose bridge and left giant throbbing red marks on the backs of my ears where they had been pinched by state-of-the-art IMAX plastic.
Most of us know the story, but if not, let me catch you up to speed:
EXPLOSIONS!
Now that you are caught up to speed, let me delve into the details a bit more.
The Na’vi, a race of blue aliens with tentacles in their ponytails, live on Pandora, the planet us humans are trying to suck the precious metals out of.
What precious metal? Why, unobtanium, of course!
Now, I’m a writer. I know it can be hard coming up with names for things sometimes, but semi-puns?
Eh, I’ll forgive them.
To be honest, I am a fan of both EXPLOSIONS! and puns, so at this point in the movie I was still excited and hoping for perhaps some exploding-puns. “Hey, Roger Ebert said it reminded him of the first time he saw Star Wars!” I repeated in my head. I wanted to love the movie so badly.
ALRIGHT LADIES. SHOOT STUFF. KILL IT DEAD! OOORAH! I'M THE ANTAGONIST! Courtesty 20th Century Fox
I think it was lines like “If the Tree of Souls is destroyed, all will be lost!” and “Out there beyond that fence, every living thing that crawls, flies, or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes for Jujubes” that prevented me from being fully immersed in the movie and ultimately ruined what should’ve been the most epic thing of my life.
It’s hard to get lost in a new world when you are constantly reminded that it was indeed written by screenwriters with a severe cliché fetish.
Then there was the strange alien sex scene which caused the following internal Socratic monologue in my head:
“Do the aliens even have genitalia?
And then, if so, how do they cover them up with such tiny loincloths?
Proportionally, said genitalia would have to be pretty large, yet those loincloths are pretty tiny.
Real tiny.
Will I have to wait until the DVD comes out to see the actual sex scene?”
None of these questions ended up getting answered except for that last one.
The real difference between this movie and Star Wars is that Luke Skywalker doesn’t beat you over the head with messages about environmental issues or the nature of war, he just beats you over the head with his lightsaber.
But then this movie has lots of straight up head-beating as well! And big ol’ alien animals with sharp appendages and dragon thingies and guns and boom boom rat-tat-tat wizz pow inner-connectedness of nature! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? Why am I not human enough to enjoy Avatar?
Is it some internalized guilt I have bottled away that the movie somehow coaxes out of me?
The best part of the movie: When Michelle Rodriguez gets pissed and EXPLODES! things. Courtesy 20th Century Fox
Is it that in a forgotten past as a CEO of an Amazonian logging company, I mercilessly cleared out trees and natives and burned their tree-gods with my Mech Warrior suit too, just as the Colonel does in the film? But then, would that be a problem, or just make me awesome?
In the end, that is actually a good summation of how I really felt about Avatar. “Was it a big terrible ball of problems? Or, was it awesome?”
The one thing I’m sure of is that Michelle Rodriguez is spicy and awesome. “I didn’t sign up for this shit,” she mumbles as she deserts the human army, goes native, and paints her helicopter in tribal designs whilst blowing up things in 3-D in your face.
Sweet.
Plus, Sigourney Weaver smokes a lot. If the movie were a ten minute reel of Sigourney Weaver smoking and being sassy while Michelle Rodriguez flew around in a helicopter, the movie would be infinitely better. Unfortunately, you have to filter through 2 1/2 hours of this very polished turd of a movie to get to those good parts.
Sigh.
You are not alone, and there is nothing wrong with you. We reviewed this on our podcast at http://nowplayingpodcast.com and had problems with it as well. Of the 3 reviewers, 2 did not recommend the film, and one recommended it but in a lukewarm way. Of course, this has led to somewhat of a listener revolt as people are outraged we could not LOVE this film, saying we don’t “get it” (the last argument of those with no argument), etc.
But check out our podcast, and then stop by our forums where it seems a holy war (which we’ve dubbed Avatar-gate) has broken out between those who agree with us and those who damn us is occurring. If nothing else you may not feel SO alone…
I feel like you forgot to mention that the basic plot line of Avatar is one we’ve all seen and loved: Pocahontas. Also, are aliens just a large version of humans and every animal on an alien planet looks identical to those on earth, but with six legs?
I heard the movie kinda had the plotline of pocahantas, true?
“Unobtainium” is a humorous term used mainly in the aerospace industry to describe the perfect material for an application except for the fact that it either does not exist, is extremely expensive to make, or is required to violate the laws of physics. Its shorthand symbol is Uo.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/trivia
I thought it was a little silly too, but so much thought went into this movie that anything that seems weird like that was probably done on purpose.
“Sigourney Weaver plays a James Cameron persona for her character in this film. Sigourney stated in an interview, ‘I teased him because to me I’m playing Jim Cameron in the movie as this kind of brilliant, approach-driven, idealistic perfectionist. But that same somebody has a great heart underneath. So I have to say I was always kind of channeling him.’”
That explains her attitude & likely the smoking.
All in all, I’m not quite sure what your problem was except for the cliche characters and the occasionally cheesy dialog. I think the coolest part of the movie was the fact that it transported us to another world and the incredible depth and detail with which we were thrust into that world. The story was basically Pocahontas, and apparently that still resonates with us.
*SPOILER…kinda*
Also, when the colonel, on fire, jumps into his mech and out of an exploding spaceship. Holy fuck that was so badass. That whole scene looked a lot like a video game, and that made me love it.
yes, you are the only guy.
If you didn’t like avatar then feel free to get the FUCK out of the country……fucking Judis
@Karly Colburn
To me it seemed more like “Dances with Wolves” but with a happier ending.
We know that the humans would in fact return and nuke the place. When it comes
to getting what was it called boxofficemanium the end justifies the means.
I liked the film and admire its technical accomplishments. At least he tried for a
story of some substance. It isn’t Transformers. It could have been a lot better if
he had a realistic dramatic story that wasn’t such a set up for a crowd pleasing
happy ending.
You won’t believe how much I agree with you! …Every word!!
And I believe we might have forgiven everything – but (as you say,) the cliches really are a problem. Not just the big plot-related ones, but little things like the way the main characters are killed off and that final showdown as well. And sometimes I felt like they were deliberately trying to avoid cliches as well – such as the decision to have Sigourney Weaver end up dying, which isn’t much better than cliches (having her live in the last second), to me.
By the way, although the plot does resemble that of Pocahontas (as some have stated), I think it’s even more strikingly akin to the infinitely better The Last Samurai which also loosely shares the same basic premise as Pocohantos with the mild difference (from Avatar) of being an incomparable, original movie. I never felt the Pocahontas resemblance in that movie and never heard of someone complaining about it.
Whew – got that off my chest.
Cheers.
you must be a pinko Commie
Very funny review. Reflected my feelings pretty well. Ebert compared it to the impact of Star Wars?? Not hardly. As hokey as SW was, it really was ground-breaking in movie sci-fi. The special effects were wondrous. As were Jurassic Park’s. Avatar’s? I’m not a fan. As live-action, yes, they were advanced. But all the moves were basically standard for animation. I kept wondering if it wouldn’t have been almost as effective _as_ an animated feature. In looking over Aliens, the effects, the camera work, the editing–I felt these were far more inventive and effective than Avatar’s.
The main objection to Weaver’s smoking is that it takes the viewer out of the world Cameron’s trying to create. The audience is suddenly going “WTF? Smoking 150 years in the future? And in a lab?? What’s up with that?” Without an explanation, it takes people out of the movie.
Cameron claims the smoking was to show Weaver’s character didn’t care about her human body. Huh? As Sigourney herself will tell you, keeping a 60-year-old body that buff is not easy. Her character obviously takes VERY good care of her body. You need a movie star’s time and money to make it to the gym that much. To follow Cameron’s supposed rationale, Grace Augustine should have been obese and slovenly (a more interesting choice; she could have awoken shouting, “WHERE’S MY TWINKIE?”).
Cameron: “Movies should reflect reality”
Reality? OK, this in a movie with bird-riders and soul-trees, but still:
1. In 150 years, apparently no one smokes–EXCEPT Sigourney Weaver. Not even the military. She’s the only one in the entire movie who smokes. Unrealistic.
2. This would be a seriously atypical scientist. 44% of cigarettes are sold to the mentally ill; most smokers are poor and uneducated. Unrealistic.
3. Smoking in the tightly-controlled-atmosphere of a moon-lab is jarring to the viewer, and unrealistic in so many ways. In 50 years of space flight, there has not been a single instance of cigarette smoking–not even by the Russians. Plus, tars and nicotine in tobacco smoke get _everywhere_, including sensitive electronic equipment and closed-environment air-circulation filters. Tobacco mosaic virus is common on cigarette tobacco and can easily be transmitted from a smoker’s hands to biological samples, contaminating them. Let alone space-flight weight restrictions, storage issues, SHS regulations and coworkers’ objections. Unrealistic on a number of levels.
4. It’s certainly unrealistic to expect nicotine addiction to take _exactly_ the same form as it does today. 150 years ago, it was snuff, or smokeless, or cigars. NOT cigarettes, which were laboriously hand-rolled. 150 years from now, it’ll be orbs, or snus, or inhalers, or patches, or e-cigs, or long cigs, short cigs, fat cigs, blue cigs –you get the point. Something _else_.
In all, Weaver’s smoking is aberrant, distracting, and doesn’t makes sense realistically OR cinematically.
So why IS there smoking in Avatar?
Considering Cameron’s Titanic, in which he also reaches anachronistically (15 years into the future) to spout similar ad copy (women who smoke are independent) — it’s hard to excuse Augustine’s smoking as unconscious.
It’s propaganda, pure and simple.
Grace Augustine IS a role model. And Avatar is an ad for smoking. What it’s telling audiences is that strong, tough, independent, smart, accomplished, sassy, healthy, buff, moral, _heroic_ women smoke.
And, judging from the number of kids in the theatre, the stacks of booster seats(!) outside Avatar screenings in the multiplexes, all the reported repeat viewings, and all the prime-time TV exposure in the future–millions upon millions of kids around the world will be getting the message for decades to come.