Okay, first off, I want to say that I am proud to be probably the three-millionth person to write about Avatar. On a scale of originality, I am probably between talking about drunk college students and how dumb the iPad is.
But still. I have my opinions, and I wish to sling them out into the world where everyone (read: three people) can read them.
So I was one of the miscreants who didn't see Avatar in mind-boggling 3-D. Ya know, I do wish that I had seen it in 3-D, because everything I did like about the movie would have been made much better. Yes, I said it: I did like some parts of Avatar. Anyone who's been around me in the past 3 weeks will probably be shocked or call me a liar or throw rocks at me or something, but yes, I didn't think the movie was a complete waste of time. The thing about 3-D is that it is like the Wii: it is much easier to make a quick, very gimmicky buck with it than to actually put some decent effort into making it a respectable platform. And from what I understand, the 3-D-ness of the IMAX experience made Avatar what it set out to be. I mean really, did you see those floating mountains! Those were awesome! I WISH those mountains had been floating in front of me, popping off the screen. I would have probably been taken into the world more, which segues me nicely into my thing about Pandora:
Something that has been kinda bothering me about Avatar is the world they live on. Pandora is by all means, a beautiful, wonderfully-rendered, awesome accomplishment in film, and everyone involved with creating it needs to be given a high-five. And based on what I can hear from the positive reviews about Avatar, this is where me and the fans are in agreement. The idea of the planet being connected with the creatures inhabiting it by way of electrical impulses is pretty darn cool. Okay, do I have all of the happy out of the way? Good. The thing about Avatar's super-awesome world and the people on it is that it's nothing I haven't seen before. Giant-overmind-world aside, I felt like the planet was just adding to the preachy-ness of the movie. The overmind aspect of Pandora was just used to make more commentary on how bad man is, and if anything will frustrate me about anything, it is when you are prompted to say, "Yeah! Mankind sucks!"
Look, mankind does kind of drop the ball from time to time. In fact, I'd say mankind has dropped the ball more than the Oakland Raiders have lately. But just like my unfounded loyalty towards the silver and black, I feel that to write mankind off as washed up shells of what we once were is stupid. Which brings me to the way that the cardboard-cutout of a military was portrayed. Where, exactly, was our motivation? On looking for Unobtanium, possibly the least-thought-out name since the iPad (ba-dum-pish). Hey, awesome, so we need something that Pandora has, right? And mankind will fall without it? No? Okay then, we have researched the element and have found it to hold immense energy potential, right? No? It's just worth a lot of money. Yes, that makes sense. Because we would approve of spending a probably unheard of amount of money to build a settlement on a new freaking planet, just to look for a new rock. Did you see the Unobtanium on the executive's desk? It wasn't even shiny!! At least gold and silver, two other ways to invest your money in shiny rocks, have some luster and beauty to them. So why fight the giant cat-people to the death? Because MAN IS GREEDY AND LIKES TO FIGHT.
It's the black knight riding in to destroy all that is good. He lands a good blow on the white knight, who struggles just a little bit before he pulls himself together in time to avenge all that has been destroyed. It's a good story, if a bit (A LOT) overdone. I do have a problem with the fact that I felt like I had seen the movie before. But I have connected to much better fictional worlds than this one. Have you seen what Bioware and 2K Games did in making the Mass Effect universe and Rapture, the underwater world of Bioshock? They are beautiful, wonderful places, and, importantly, filled with atmosphere. When I played Bioshock, I wanted to (and still do) find out everything about Rapture. When I watched Avatar, I didn't care. I didn't care that the big home tree was blown to pieces. By that time, I was so tired of the Na'vi, I was kinda rooting for the humans.
So, to wrap up and hop off of my soap box. Avatar: good movie? Yes. Great world, technologically awesome, and the overmind-world thing was way cool. Movie of the year? Did you see Up? Inglorious Basterds? Those movies earned it so much more. Even if they don't win, just don't let Crapatar win (see what I did there?).
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