Reviews Film / Avatar

Pretty isn't the same as interesting

Avatar reminds me of my first crush: pretty to look at but not much going on below the surface.

I went in having heard about this revolutionary work with all these daring messages on issues like war and racial oppression, but didn't see anything more sophisticated than what you'd get from watching Captain Planet. It's another of those movies about the white savior who unifies the oppressed indigenous people against the society he turns his back on. Natives who are, par for the course, portrayed as having it all figured out versus a bunch of might-makes-right assholes. The filmmakers actually named the mineral macguffin "unobtainium," and the Na'vi are literally at one with nature, able to directly plug their brains into the trees and animals of their ecosystem. I didn't say "Cool," I said "Could this be less subtle?"

Sure the CGI was impressive. I'm completely prepared to give props for that. But by the time the big action extravaganza had started I had long since given up. No amount of sleek alien pterodactyls fighting spaceships could hide how uninvolving the story leading up to it was. I wasn't cheering for Jake to open a righteous can of whoop ass on the Colonel when they faced off in their fight to the death. I didn't care when the princess called him a traitor. I didn't care about the characters the story revolved around. With how they were about the barest stereotypes imaginable, it's not surprising. They could've been interesting, but all the effort seemed to be going into creating the world rather than the people the "story" followed.

It just makes it worse that Cameron had been working on this for years waiting for the technology to catch up. As if he had been banking on the imagery to sell the movie the whole time. Sorry Jim, but if I don't give a crap about the characters or plot, all the stunning CGI tableaus in the world won't make your movie entertaining. And this was hyped way too much to be a movie where I turn my brain off and enjoy the ride.

But that's the real problem: all the hype of Avatar as this awesome movie that would change science fiction forever created a level of anticipation few movies could live up to. Without that, I probably wouldn't have seen this as anything worse than a decent if Anvilicious movie. As it is, all I can do is quote a certain critic's acidic reaction: "That's it?"