Last thing I’ll say about Avatar
Apparently there’s some Avatar backlash after it took the Golden Globe for Best Picture, Drama. In my buddies’ Chatterous room, we had an epic argument about whether or not Avatar was a good movie. Obviously we netted out that it all depends on your definition of “good,” and how you set your standards for movies. This was my “closing statement”, modified with some of my preceeding thoughts to be a complete blog post:
You can say Avatar is a thrilling action movie, like an Indiana Jones film, where you have fairly one-dimensional enemies like Belloq & the Nazis. But there’s a number of things: first off, Belloq isn’t that one-dimensional, he has a history with Jones and he has a desire for the Ark that supercedes what the Nazis want with it. Ultimately, he’s using them, he gets moments to say so, and that fills in his character.
Secondly, his antagonist role is supported by the Nazi forces which are FAR from one-dimensional; Even if you present Nazis as pure evil, all of WW II comes along with them as subtext, it’s unavoidable. James Cameron doesn’t have this “shortcut”, he’s got to paint everyone in. But instead of drawing clear groups on the Human side he drops the conflict in as entirely Human vs Na’vi, even if Jake, Grace and useless unmemorable third guy are outliers.
The bad guys in Avatar are just bad guys because they’re bad. They want money, and we never actually know what the Unobtainium is used for. Does it push the story along? Sure, if that’s all you want. The general/captain/additional unmemorable character wants nothing more to execute his orders, he doesn’t even get the benefit of being tired of being on Pandora and wanting to go home, he just loves getting to shoot crap down and revels in the destruction he creates.
And this coming from the director who got a honestly moving performance from Arnold Schwartzenegger as an unstoppable killer robot.
It’s not that the storytelling is simple — Hell, Ponyo is a simple story, but it’s also real & honest, and frankly even more imaginative and inventive than Avatar — it’s that Avatar’s storytelling is just flat-out lazy. And that, to me, is a bad movie…or at least a movie that shouldn’t be winning Best Picture awards.
