MOVIE REVIEW: “Avatar” (2009) [SPOILER LITE]

I'm not sure he thinks he is. I mean, he's making movies, he obviously likes the movies he makes, but I've never really heard him claim that he's making anything other than the cinematic equivalent of a good meal at a Sioux City Steakhouse (BTW, their Salmon is really good. Get it with the little onion crispies on it, and the sauce. It's great!)

I mean, yeah, he's making movies, and movies are art, but he knows full well he isn't making Citizen Kane, as far as I'm aware.

Here's what I think it is: I think it's people who like his schlocky movies who claim it's art in order to justify their own lack of taste. "Well, at least it's about something" or "You just don't understand it - the killer cyborg from the future represents...uhm...man's fundamental...uhm...implacable....uhm, look, it's about global warming, dammit! Everything is always about global warming!"

I've seen this before. When Batman came out in 1988, normally rational adults went to see the movie over and over again, despite the fact that it really wasn't very good, and if you raised an eyebrow at 'em, then these selfsame otherwise-respectable investment bankers and gym coaches would rattle off something about the "Briliant Wagnerian complexity" involved in the film and its "Dualistic nature," all of which, presumably, they'd read on a bathroom wall somewhere because clearly they didn't know what any of that means.

The bottom line is they liked the movie, people made fun of them for it, so they pretended (to themselves and others) that the film was something more than it actually was.

"In every field of art there will always be a place for fun, enjoyable schlock. And it will often make more money and be seen by more people than "serious art". So why pretend it's something else?"

I don't know. Ask the people like Cameron who actually think they're making art.

In the interest of full-disclosure I must admit that I have not seen "Avatar". My comment here is related to the reviews I have seen and the word I have heard on the street. People, even some of the ones who liked the movie, seem surprised that Cameron would put out such a light-weight movie (visuals aside).

Why does that surprise anyone? Cameron has been the King of Schlock for almost three decades now. The first movie of his I remember seeing was "Terminator". I thought it was one of the funniest movies I had ever seen and couldn't believe it when I talked to friends who regarded it as some sort of serious movie--possibly even one with a statement.

"Terminator 2"? "The Abyss"? "Dark Angel"? (!?!?!) Even "Titanic". Cameron, to me, has always just been Roger Corman with a budget. I do not mean this as a put-down. In every field of art there will always be a place for fun, enjoyable schlock. And it will often make more money and be seen by more people than "serious art". So why pretend it's something else?

Never read it. The "Listening to the trees" thing did remind me of the aliens from "Speaker For the Dead," however, who turned into trees when they died, and retained a portion of their memories. It was a caterpillar-into-butterfly kind of thing.

"Seriously, these folks are perfect. They live in tune with nature, they have a perfectly orderly existence, they all worship the same god, they know their place in the grand scheme of things, they’re nonviolent unless attacked, they’re allegedly quite wise, beautiful, they’re a species of Adams and Eves living in a blissful utopia that is, like all utopias, pretty damn boring. We get no sense of these people’s inner lives, their hopes, their dreams, their petty annoyances..."

See, I've been unconsciously addressing this problem all along in my own work. It's not because utopias annoy me, although they do -- perfection in characters irritates me because it makes for a boring story. The alien society I've invented in my novel-in-progress does have some advantages over human society, but not too many; they have their fair share of senile eccentrics, foolhardy hunters, and bitchy teenage girls, and my protagonists are pushed to the outer limits of their physical and mental endurance trying to save the life of one of their own. They're not perfect by any means, just "a little less fallen", as my narrator puts it.

I recently re-read the collected Deathworld stories about a year ago and as far as I can remember yes, the plants and animals were all overly aggressive because of some low level linkage, but I don't think it was advanced like a hive mind type of network that R3 described here. But I know that I have read several other scifi books that had similar World Wide Weed (i like that one) style in their biology, so the ultimate root (sorry) of that trope is obscure. (I was gonna throw a "fruit" reference in there too, but i restrained myself.)

Great review, as always R3. You really get deep into the causes and underlying symbolism of everything, when I usually just gloss over that sort of stuff when watching. But then I enjoy watching a wider range of movies than you because I don't try to make more out of them than they might deserve.

Sorry I miss read Upsidaisium I should have remembered it. Here is something I just did remember, it has been years since I read them but were not all the plants and animals linked in Harry Harrison’s DeathWorld trilogy is Cameron pulling a Lucas and stealing as many good sci fi ideas he can get away with.

...that those countries are poor. The US is rich, Brazil is poor, ergo you can't talk trash about Brazil because then you're picking on poor people, and that makes you a bad person. On the other hand, everyone knows that rich people couldn't have gotten that way honestly, therefore it's ok to attack them. This is how they think.

The floating mountains weren't made of "Unobtainium." Their levitation was never explained at all in the movie, I said in my review that they were full of "Upsidaisium" which is the fictional mineral from Rocky & Bullwinkle that made the floating mountain in that series float. ("Upsy-Daisy-um") I was just trying to be funny. Or if you prefer, it could be "Cavorite" from HG Well's "First Men in the Moon."

Just one point that jumped out at me from your review you said that a floating mountain was made out of the magic mineral. So why did they have to go after the alien home tree if a mountain of the stuff was just floating in the air. It makes no logical sense to attack the alien village if the stuff is all over the place on this moon.

The left in this country for some reason has decided to heap all the blame of the European colonial period on Americans and the Europeans are happy to let us take on their sins. Sure America has things in its past that are bad but it was Europe not the United States that raped the world. We did not even have the whole of the continental U.S. when the British fought a war with China so they could run drugs into that country or when the Spanish damn near wiped out the whole native population in Central and South America. I do not mind when the sins in our past are pointed out but do not make us the bad guys for the things that happened in Africa, Asia and South America the Europeans need to own up to there sins before they demand that we atone for our sins.