What follows are my next-day thoughts on Avatar. Minor spoilers abound.
Somewhere near the middle of James Cameron’s three-hour long sci-fi spectacle, Avatar, I had to pee. The “medium” Diet Pepsi I’d been nursing was making its presence known in my bladder and the matter was just becoming too urgent to ignore. So I waited until I perceived a relative lull in the narrative, took off my 3-D glasses and exited the theater for the men’s room. In the fluorescent glare of the bathroom it occurred to me that I was experiencing a little meta-moment at the movies. The film is in large part about a guy (our hero) who uses fancy technology to enter a different world and experience things unlike the things he’s used to experiencing. In the course of the film he goes into and out of that new world by connecting to or being disconnected from that technology. And here I was, under the bright men’s room light, having been disconnected from my own fantastic world by disconnecting from technology — my 3-D glasses. The real world (while also technically in 3-D) was vastly less exciting and exotic than the one playing out in the room down the hall from me at that moment. After relieving myself, I went back and reconnected myself to the technology and hence to the virtual experience of the film, making a mental note about this insight so I could blog about it later in yet another virtual world.
[Full review after the jump.]
This insight about the various layers of reality at play in the modern cinema-going experience may be about as deep an analysis as it’s possible to get out of Avatar. For while the film is at heart a morality play with political and moral messages central to its plot, the politics are overly simplistic and the morals are black and white.
Indeed, this is the primary criticism I’ve seen of the film so far — that it’s messages are trite and it’s characters and politics are simplistic. This is true, but so what? Compare the morality play in Avatar to the one at work in, say, Star Wars. Compare Avatar’s political messages to the ones at work in District 9. Does Avatar fare better or worse in those comparisons? Then look at the rest of Cameron’s oeuvre. The Terminator films, Aliens, The Abyss, True Lies, Titanic. We should know what to expect from this guy by now and it’s not deep, meaningful message-films.
Let’s be honest. Cameron isn’t Lars Von Trier. He’s a director of big budget, Hollywood action-adventure sci-fi films, but of course he’s much more than that too.
I’m reminded of that scene at the end of Die Hard when Holly Gennaro McClane realizes that the “terrorists” were really just in it for the money and she says to Hans Gruber, “you’re nothing but a common thief,” and Gruber crawls over to her and spitefully hisses, “I am an exceptional thief, Mrs. McClane!”
Well James Cameron isn’t just your common director of big budget, Hollywood action-adventure sci-fi films, he’s an exceptional director of big budget, Hollywood action-adventure sci-fi films.
On the level of storytelling, narrative exposition, yarn spinning, whatever you want to all it, Avatar is quite simply a masterpiece. Cameron has built a complete world — the moon of Pandora — and populated it with a dense and deeply interconnected system of flora and fauna and an indigenous culture that seems real (if a pastiche of various tribal Earth-born cultures). He’s also introduced human characters in a sci-fi setting with backstories and a world of their own (a world, it’s worth noting, that seems almost indistinguishable from the one that the Aliens characters inhabited in terms of technology and corporate/military relationships). A lesser filmmaker could not have gotten the audience hooked into the story of the film without a metric ton of clunky exposition and information-dumps. That Cameron was able to get us to care about the characters and stakes and still spend the last act on a giant action set-piece is simply amazing in this light. Leaving Avatar, I had learned a tremendous amount of information about a completely alien world and I never once became awkwardly aware of story exposition.
In hindsight, I can see that Cameron took all of the standard expository shortcuts — he told the story of Avatar through the eyes of an untrained n00b so the audience learned about the world along with the main character (both the world of the human science/military project and the world of Pandora). He used voiceover narration in the form of a video log that said n00b was required to keep, thereby allowing Cameron to tell us things about the world rather than having to show us, which takes more time. He used a time-compressing montage during which we understand our hero to be developing his skills as a Na’vi hunter as well as developing his relationship with Neytiri. Again, in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, these tropes would have seemed obvious and clichéd. But Cameron is a master storyteller, and as a result, we audience members don’t even notice the enormous amount of exposition going on constantly throughout the film.
Cameron also lets his actors really inhabit their roles. As stated earlier, the material in Avatar is pretty two-dimensional. The only moral ambiguity present in any of the characters exists in space of their waffling over whether to choose the just and moral path or the craven and evil one. There is no middle road for any of these characters to tread. Some are unambiguously good (Jake, the scientists, and pretty much all of the Na’vi), some are unambiguously evil (Col. Quaritch) and some just need to make up their minds about it (company man Selfridge, marine pilot Chacon). Given such limited constraints on the characters, it’s impressive how real they seem for the most part. Giovanni Ribisi, for example, does a great job of playing the role of the Half Ted company man. Without many lines, he’s able to convey his moral quandary admirably well.
There are a couple of sour notes that are worth noting because they’re just so bad. The mineral that the humans are looking to obtain from Pandora (the mining of which is the cause of the central conflict in Avatar) is called… wait for it… “unobtainium.” Unobtainium is a word historically used “for any extremely rare, costly, or physically impossible material needed to fulfill a given design for a given application.” Okay, so why not just call it “Macguffinite?” Seriously, why not just make Pandora rich in gold? Why make up a mineral?
And while Avatar is much closer to Aliens than it is to Titanic in form, Cameron decided to use a James Horner-composed theme song (ala My Heart Will Go On from Titanic), crooned by Celine Dion imposter Leona Lewis, for the end credits. The Celine Dion song was easily the worst thing about Titanic but at least it sort of fit the material a bit. Here such a song is totally out of place.
It’s too bad that Cameron needs to reinvent filmmaking and outspend the GDPs of most of the world’s nations in order to come out with a film. He’s quite skilled at making these sci-fi adventures. It would be nice to see him do it more often.
[x-posted at Candleblog.]
I think “James” is Cameron.
Cameron turned me off when he accepted his Academy Award by bellowing “I’m king of the world!” in a fantastic display of douche. “Avatar” just seems to be the most ultimate display of hubris in film-making. Although I dig Cameron’s movies, there is something about this film that completely makes me want to punch walls. Waiting for On Demand.
I really enjoyed it, warts and all, and agree with almost everything in your review.
I’m just surprised I haven’t seen more “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” comparisons yet.
Chris,
You know the “king of the world” thing was a line from Titanic, right? Leo DiCaprio says it when he stands on the bow of Titanic with the wind in his hair — a small moment of personal joy for the character. In that context, I think Cameron’s quoting the line at the Oscars was totally fine and widely misunderstood by people who just assumed he was being an arrogant ass. He may be an arrogant ass, but that line isn’t evidence of it.
Do not wait for on-demand. Put on some soft gloves (for when you need to punch some walls) and see it in digital 3-D. You’ll thank me for making you do it. So go do it.
You have to see it in 3D. Bill is right.
I may do my own review (although, as soon as I type that I diminish the odds of this outcome by at least 70 percent) that will look at the glaringly obvious (and incredibly righteous, IMO) political messages in the movie.
“We will blast a crater in their racial memory so deep they won’t come within a thousand clicks of here ever again!”
Cameron has clearly read “The Shock Doctrine.” And I love the fact that e got millions of American mouth-breathers to watch his progressive polemic cuz it’s got purdy three diemenshuns!
“Compare Avatar’s political messages to the ones at work in District 9. Does Avatar fare better or worse in those comparisons?”
How about neither? Does the political messages of STAR WARS, DISTRICT 9 or any other film have to “work” at the same level as that of “AVATAR”? I don’t think so.
Each filmmaker has his or her own style at getting whatever message that is important to him/her across. It’s a pity that many filmgoers are incapable of appreciating the differences and insist that a political message has to presented in one certain way.
Bill: Trust me, I knew it came from the movie – I saw it five times in the theaters and even got into a shoving match by some guy in line who heard me say “the boat sinking looked so real!” He got mad and said I gave away the ending. Hmmmm.
It was still douchy. And Cameron himself has gone on record saying that it was unnecessary (common man’s talk: douchy).
Give me Roberto Benigni’s “I want to make love to all of you!” speech over Cameron’s – it was much more entertaining.
I’ll watch Avatar at home – 3D doesn’t do it for me. I want good story-telling in films, not “in your face” experiences – I’m married and don’t need any more “in your face” experiences than I already get.
Or, I’ll read “A General History of Virginia” by John Smith, but use GI Joe’s as the colonists and Smurfs as the Native Americans to act it out, and get the same story.
You know, not been a movie theater go-er for years… not seen this film, but lots of people have told me to go watch it, NOT for the political message, but for the “…awesome 3d…”.
I think you all over estimate the level of intellect of the average movie patron, this is a farty more used to ‘blip verts’, and having their mind controlled, than allowing themselves to explore concepts beyond the ‘herd’… regardless of how simple the genius.
To me Cameron has tried to recapture the glory of StarWars, but you can’t my friend, back then simple times demanded fairy tales that peeked imagination, you just made a social commentary on how dumb people are today, and what you see as the future.
Don’t let all the shiny bells & whistles fool you… I’ve seen this happening in the games industry, they’re making content for the, “I’ll buy/want that coz it’s pink” brigade… SHALLOW consumers. They pray on our weaker instincts.
I conceded a while ago that ‘gateway’ products are good, well not good but useful to allow folk to, maybe, be exposed to deeper products… BUT what’s happening in my gaming world worries me for all other art forms, gamers for the last 5 years have been dumbed down, and had there expectations raised by the same people who promote other shoddy mass marketed clap trap.
The other reason I don’t do movies theater’s is well tbh gaming.
I love movies I really do but video games allow me a freedom of expression that a film simply doesn’t give room for.
Film allows me to transmute myself into the role I am given. Gaming allows (almost) complete control of the narrative… I make my own stories.
The dumber they make the masses, the dumber the content we all get.
Turn the smegging Auto-Aim OFF… we’re not all dumb bovine.
Good review. I generally make it a practice to go out of my way – way out of my way – to hate James Cameron, but you’re right, he does what he’s good at. I won’t be seeing Avatar though, I just can’t.