Vindicated (v): to free from allegation or blame; to confirm, substantiate; to provide justification or defense for (to justify, to defend); to maintain a right to
I'm going to come right out and say it. Avatar sucked, I knew it, and I've been saying it all along. Up until now I've been unabashedly bashing it without having actually seen the movie, which I felt I had the right to do because I was so wholeheartedly convinced that it was, is, and always will be an absolute poopstain of a movie.
Thus, I feel vindicated.
On Sunday night, I watched this film for the first time on a 30 inch TV in my boyfriend's basement. Now, before all the cries of "I do protest!" begin from those who assert that my criticism is rendered invalid because I didn't see it in 3D on the BIG SCREEN, I will say that no amount of special effects or technology can make up for a crap story, crap script, crap characters, and crap acting. If a movie lacks all of these things, it defeats the point of being a movie and is thus BAD. And thus should NOT be nominated for Best Picture. Succeeding on a special effects level alone is not enough for me. If I wanted to be visually wowed, then I'd follow the example of the men who stare at goats, do some LSD, and watch a 90's screensaver. No need to make the most expensive movie ever made about oversized blue people with tails.
You've heard it before, but I'm going to say it again, mostly because it's so damn true. Avatar is just a recycled version of Pocahontas (with Dances With Wolves, Fern Gully, and a splash of cliches from just about every other fantasy movie I can think of thrown in for good measure.)
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It's been a while since I started writing this review, and I just can't seem to muster the energy to do a thorough job of finishing. Exerting my skills of film criticism would be waste in this case. I thought about posting some sample dialog from the film, just so you could see how bad the writing really is, but I would have had to copy and paste the entire "Quotes" section from imdb.com, which means this post would require a five-minute scroll just to get to the bottom of it. So I'll refrain. What I will do is highlight some particularly awful aspects that really bugged me.
1. Sigourney Weaver/her character: I haven't seen enough of Ms. Weaver's work to determine whether or not she's actually a good actress; however, she certainly didn't wow me in this film. What's more, every time she came on screen I felt thoroughly annoyed. She delivered all her lines like it was her first role in a movie and, out of sheer inexperience, was imitating every prior tough-woman role to appear on film. Clearly, this is not the case, as she is very experienced, but her performance seemed a parody at worst and self-referential at best. And maybe I especially love to hate her because she said that Kathryn Bigelow, who directed The Hurt Locker and is ironically James Cameron's ex-wife, only won the Academy Award for Best Director "because she had tits." Classy. You could probably find a like-minded excuse for anyone that's ever won ("his son had cancer", "he's never won before", "because he's black", etc.) Maybe the reason James Cameron didn't win was not, pardon my French, because he lacked tits, but because HE LACKED HAVING MADE A GOOD MOVIE.
2. A portion of "here's where we explain the plot" dialog: This is such an elementary blunder that I can't believe someone like JAMES CAMERON (who, correct me if I'm wrong, has directed a number of fairly successful films before) let it make it into his film.
Screenwriting 101: DON'T TALK ABOUT THE PLOT. Example: "I can't believe we're about to attempt a robbery on this impossibly well-secured building, owned by a man so vindictive that he will surely kill us if caught. Good thing I know exactly how to disarm the alarm system by doing X, and exactly how to pick the lock by doing Y, and exactly how to remove the 3.2 billion dollars in 4 minutes flat."
The Number One rule of screenwriting is "Show, don't tell." Film is a visual medium; save excessive wordiness for the stage.
Since it's been a couple weeks since I watched Avatar, I don't remember the specifics of the conversation I'm referring to, but the gist of it was, "Here we are coming up on Pandora (which contains this amazing resource worth gajillions of dollars, and we want it, but the planet is really dangerous and populated by huge ferocious blue people and lots of crazy wildlife, so we created these avatars piloted by marines that look just like the blue people so we can infiltrate them and talk them into moving) on your left..." Pretty subtle stuff, only not.
3. Giovanni Ribisi's performance as "Selfridge": I almost feel bad picking on him, because he's a pretty minor character and an up-and-coming actor who really didn't do that bad of a job. However, his characterization of Selfridge absolutely REEKED of Ari Gold (the iconic agent played by Jeremy Piven on Entourage), and though imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I think imitation is best left out of the dramatic arts unless you can somehow out-do he whom you imitate.
4. The creepy tail thing: If you haven't seen the movie, you won't know what I'm talking about. If you have seen the movie, and for some mysterious and disturbing reasons find the tail thing "cool", then YOU are creepy. For those of you who haven't seen it (SPOILER ALERT), the "tail thing" refers to the fact that all the blue people (excuse me, "N'avi") have long tails that have a little spout of hair on the end, much like a lion's, and they use their spouts to forge "connections" with other creatures by inserting them into these weird little tentacle-like plugs. Once their wiggly appendages have been "fused", a "bond" is formed, and the animal is calmer, more trusting, and more responsive. If you're thinking that the whole thing sounds awkward and vaguely sexual, you're right. Apparently there was originally a "sex" scene between the main dude and his blue lover in which they fused tails as a sort of love-making act. WEIRDED OUT.
5. CLICHÉS: Native American clichés, Other World clichés, Fantastical Creature clichés, Bitchy Woman clichés, Tough Woman clichés, Tough Military Officer With a Scar clichés, Impetuous and Brash Yough Military Guy clichés, Dialog clichés, Grandmother Willow clichés, Mother Earth Talk clichés, Circle of Life Talk clichés, Spirit Quest clichés, Star-Crossed Lover clichés. Name a cliché, and Avatar has it covered.
I guess I'll stop here. As my friend Jordan said, "If you took a shot every time something stupid happened in this movie, you'd be blackout drunk five minutes in." I have other better movies to review, though bashing this one has been fun. I do apologize to anyone whose tastes I've offended. Clearly, a lot of people LOVED this movie because it absolutely dominated at the box office. Whether this is because there was actually something to it that eluded me, or because Americans as a collective film audiences are idiots, I will leave to you to decide.
However, I do have to say that if this movie gave anyone that excited, "feel like a kid again" magic that movies still sometimes have the ability to do, then I respect your experience and am happy that anyone was blessed with the when-the-lights-go-down-goosebumps that I have been lucky enough to feel many times, for well-made and stupid movies alike (see top 135 list), throughout my movie-going life.
