Ryan is the other part of 6-3DP. Aaron from 6-3DP weighed in with his “Avatar” review earlier . This is a continuation of a series of reader responses and review of the James Cameron blockbuster.
I’ll start here by conceding that my 6-3DP blogmate Aaron and the other reviewers who’ve agreed with him have been totally right about the movie’s script. The plot is borrowed from other, better movies. (The rainforest aspect has everybody naming Ferngully, but Dances With Wolves is about as good a comparison – any kind of white-man-with-a-heart-of-gold story will do, though.) The politics of the film are obscenely heavy-handed. The dialogue is badly written, especially in the all-human scenes. The acting isn’t very good, either, not that there’s much they could do with that dialogue.
My assertion is not that the visuals make that stuff seem fresh all of a sudden. My assertion is that the visuals make that stuff totally irrelevant to the absolutely mindblowing movie-watching experience that I had seeing the film. (I apologize in advance if this comes off as fanboyish – there’s probably no way to convince people who don’t know me how unlikely it is that I would be a fanboy of any movie, especially a massive smash hit James Cameron one, but I am honestly totally appalled at the suggestion. Even though it was me that suggested it.) The fact is, and this offends all my tastes as a storyteller and as a devotee of character-driven indie movies, the plot and characters are just a vehicle in which James Cameron can demonstrate this new visual style and technological ability.
For that reason, the best comparison is that it’s a Star Wars for this decade. For me, having been born in 1984 and not having seen the original Star Wars trilogy until I was 15 or 16, I have never really understood what the big deal was. But everyone who saw it when it first comes out insists there had never been anything like it. The effects that were so supposedly groundbreaking just seemed cartoonish and cheesy to me. Without the breathtaking experience of seeing something for the first time, I had lots more energy to focus on the horrible acting and so-so adventure story. I suspect that the same will be true of Avatar for kids born in 2014, who’ve seen countless movies that look just like it.
So, I’ll say that it felt like an historical experience. Against the odds, Cameron’s relentless, obnoxious self-hype was (annoyingly) completely right. I felt like I was seeing something for the first time. Virtually every single shot had some stunning visual effect that made me feel like a kid at Disneyland. Pandora was this completely realized world that was completely gorgeous and thorough enough to make exposition almost unnecessary. (Not that Cameron shied away from it.) There are scenes of genuine tragedy, and when the ashes fall from the sky (and into the theater,) it’s a profound image. There was the thrill of seeing Jake get chased through the woods by some huge, horrible but strangely-realistic looking creatures. The epic final battle. A barrage of constantly engaging scenes, where we’re filled with wonder at what we’re seeing rather than an emotional connection to the characters.
I really and honestly hate to say it – but the story didn’t matter. If there was one overarching flaw in the film, it’s that James Cameron didn’t realize that, and tried to keep on beating us over the head with a story that didn’t matter to anybody but him. The overwhelming experience of seeing the film is what made it so great. So, given all the complaints about the movie itself, I’d say that I’m sure if I saw it in 2D, I’d give it about a 2/5 and dismiss it as normal hackneyed Hollywood blow-it-up fare. With all of the immersion of the 3D, though, I give that version about a 75/5, and it was probably the best movie-viewing experience of my life.
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I guess I didn’t feel like it was a paradigm shift or whatever, and maybe that’s because you had to wait two hours for the best visual stuff (the final battle [every time I say or type that, I have to say it in Cartman's voice in my head]). Honest to goodness, I was straight bored during Jake’s “joining the tribe” phase. To throw out another Parker-Stone reference, Jim Cameron needs to learn that everything is better with a montage. Seriously though, chop an hour off the movie, and I’ll like it a lot more. At any rate, my fundamental disagreement with you seems to be the degree to which the visual goods are good.
Aaron´s last blog ..College Basketball Musings
I think the question comes down to weighing elements wrt movie quality. To me acting, narrative, and buy-in (tactile director skills) rate about x1.5 in importance while CGI rates about .30. So for me even if I score the movie a 10 visually, that is a baseline 3. The rest of the movie is not enough to push it past a 6-7 on a 10 scale. Not a terrible movie, but only memorable for the gimmicky stuff which makes it exactly like a roller coaster for me; only fun while I’m on it.
Yeah, I recognize that the visual experience was unlike anything I’ve seen. It was thrilling, particularly during the final scenes. But movies are stories, not tech demos. When you say story doesn’t matter, you’re saying you want a tech demo, which doesn’t have a story. No, the story is essential, or it wouldn’t be spoken of in these terms. I think you’re right, it’s just a matter of weighting factors. Our story factors must be weighted much more differently than I thought, because it seems like we have exactly the same take on the film, Ryan and I. Yet I find myself vehemently protesting at all this.
Perhaps the real difference is within the story factor; we like different kinds of stories. For what it’s worth, I thought Star Trek had an incredible story.
Aaron´s last blog ..College Basketball Musings
I posted a comment!
Yeah, normally I’m all about character and plot. I almost never like action movies, even the supposedly good ones. In this case, I was so overwhelmed by the visuals that I really didn’t care about the plot or characters at all. That never happens to me, and this was an exception.
I think half the reason I even get worked up about it is that it doesn’t seem like you.
Aaron´s last blog ..College Basketball Musings
It isn’t like me!