Jan
18
The review scores might have fluctuated but there is something of a common consensus regarding James Cameron’s Avatar, winner of the Golden Globe for Best Picture (Drama) and member of the $1 billion club. Irrespective of ratings, critics more or less conceded that there were six simple truths about the film: firstly, that the special effects were incredible; secondly, that 3D was exciting; thirdly, that the action scenes were ambitious; fourthly, that the film is, for the most part, poorly acted; fifthly, that the story is derivate, safe and predictable; and finally, that the dialogue is some of the worst to grace a script in a number of years. How much the film was enjoyed depended entirely on how much emphasis anyone placed on each of these indisputable qualities and flaws.
The problem is that the qualities are much less likely to stand the test of time than the flaws. The special effects will be bested, that’s inevitable, while the 3D feat will be repeated until we can barely remember the strange old days of 2D cinema. That’s not to say that the better aspects of the film will soon be worthless, just that in five years time, with its sheen outshone, Avatar will simply be a film with poor dialogue, weak plot and bad performances.
Which makes its Golden Globe success and probable Oscar glory all the more worrying. Not just because there have been more deserving films released in the last 12 months, a portion of which were genre-related, but because the gold that will smother Avatar, as it did Titanic, will only make its shortcomings easier to remember. No one remembers (with the notable exception of Shaun) being wowed by Titanic’s effects; they just remember the bad dialogue, feeble story and stupid song. As sure as there will be an Avatar 2, when the hype fades those currently espousing Avatar’s virtues will soon turn on it, their crows of denial drowning out the cockerel’s own. The awards aren’t rewarding the craftsmanship of the film so much as they are highlighting its incredible commercial success, and in the long term this will only tarnish a genre that already struggles to be taken seriously.
It’s almost as if the poor plot and heavy-handed themes are being overlooked by the various academies and yaysayers because quality in these areas isn’t ever expected from a sci-fi movie. To put it another way, if a World War II drama had the level of dialogue and plodding script that Avatar does it would likely be much less favourably received. But because Avatar is a sci-fi film, who cares that it had no aspirations to be anything other than good to look at? Who cares that it has, at its heart, a nondescript character with neither depth nor personality? Who cares that it’s mechanically designed to be enjoyed by everyone and consequently relevant to no one? Who cares that every scene contained within it was more predictable than the last? The message is loud and clear: it’s sci-fi – it’s not supposed to be good.
We disagree.
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Of course the technology will become mainstream. That’s what happens – There’s always something better on the horizon. This is where it all began though. The film is being lauded because of what it has acheived NOW – not what it will look like in 15 years time. It deserves praise (albeit in the right places) for it’s bleeding edge. You can’t take that away – it has changed a lot of people’s minds in terms of what can be achieved in terms of 3D and CGI and it will ensure that the film industry (including sci fi / fantasy influenced movies) continue to make money and thereby propogate the industry and our sources of entertainment. Well done Mr Cameron and team.
I don’t agree with all of the 5 points that you seem to ascribe to as “indisputable qualities and flaws”. Just because they came from the mouths of critics doesn’t make them true to me.
Nevertheless, I think this film shouldn’t be considered sci-fi (and I’m not attacking the film – I loved it). It’s more of a fantasy film really. I don’t fault this website for covering the film, as the content of this site seems to extend to things that fans of sci-fi will probably be interested in, however the film itself felt less sci-fi to me. In the 2 hours and 40 minutes available they didn’t bother to explain how the human / avatar link worked, or how the mountains floated for example. These things were just to be accepted. I’m not saying that the label sci-fi requires full technical details about everything. I would have been fine with something like “…thanks to the neurological wave system we can communicate your thoughts to the avatar…” or something cheesy like that. Instead it was left as magic. get in the box and go to sleep, you’ll wake up as a Na’vi. I’m interested in how thoughts (or any information for that matter) could be projected over those long distances. To me it’s obviously not a satellite system, otherwise the badguys would have just hacked the satellite when they needed to stop the avatar drivers.
Anyway, my point is when you have to just accept the core technology of the film without even a made up sounding explanation, it’s not sci-fi.
Ahh who cares, I enjoyed it. It was a breath of fresh air after the turds of the summer, and so I take my hat off (and indeed my 3D specs) to James Cameron, who delivered a film that was worth the wait! I wasn’t expecting Citizen Kane, but the story was much better than Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe! Hope the sequels build on the character and story, and we could have the best trilogy since Star Wars!
Aaron you could’ve levelled the self same arguments at Terminator II nearly twenty years ago, Star Wars some thirty odd years ago and Forbidden Planet twenty sum years before that.
None of them were original in terms of plot, cliched almost, their characters were at best solidly predictable and the acting was, let’s be kind here, variable. They all broke new ground in technical areas and they’re all widely regarded as classics, give it those five years you spoke of and Avatar will probably be ranked up there with them.
Drax,
I think you missed the point here, none of the films you name won any of the serious award catogories which Avatar how some how managed to do.
Avatar deserves awards a plenty for techinical effects etc…. which as you rightly claim push film techonology to its current limits but its not a good film in any other way, i can even accept (at a push) that James Cameron deserves an award for the time, effort and acheivement of putting the film together which i am sure must have been extreme but best movie? does anyone really rank this alongside The Godfather, Citizen Kane, Double Idemnity, Casablanca, The Greatest Show on Earth. Even looking at more mainstream winners such as ET and Raiders of the Lost Ark, thay at least they have something other then effects, arghhh even the pigs in Babe (best picture award 95) had more character then Sam “worth lessening with every movie” Worthington.
I think Cameron is sleeping with the right people in the business cos titanic was rubbish too and that got serious awards too.
If major popcorn movies continue to win the real awards it will further reduce the interest movie companies have in funding other movies who need the attention awards can bring to develop ideas and inovation in ways other then behind a computer screen. I fear this development could harm the future of film much then poor Earth having no “unobtainium”.
David,
Let’s face it, the only serious competition in either of the two categories we’re talking about was The Hurt Locker, which had already beaten Avatar a couple of days earlier at the CCA. I don’t know about you but I’d rather see Avatar win than Precious (pass the barf bag) or Tarantino’s latest vanity project.
I wouldn’t rank Avatar with Citizen Kane or Casablanca (Greatest Show on Earth ? You seriously rate that ? Each to their own I guess) but I would rank it head and shoulders above Driving Miss Daisy, Forest Gump or Slumdog, all recent Best Picture winners.
Cinematic Science Fiction has been in the doldrums lately, sift out the fantasy, super-hero and spy-fi sub genres and you’re left with very little real meat. Timecrimes and Moon were probably the best we had in 2009 and they were hardly mainstream fare. I can see an argument for keeping SF “in the ghetto”, it keeps it real for those of us who will always be die hard fans. We can pat ourselves on the back repeating the mantras of “it could never be filmed and remain faithful to the book / graphic novel” or that old standby “it was ahead of its time”.
The fact is that Avatar’s heightened public profile has in turn raised the profiles of a lot of worthier SF projects, tell me that’s not a good thing then tell me you’re an SF fan.
I’m always reluctant to champion a lacklustre sci-fi film (which, in all the respects I regard as important, I consider Avatar to be) simply because it’s genre-related. I think quality should rule all; a viewpoint that encourages blind preference for a type of entertainment can surely only ever damage the kind it seeks to protect.
As a sci-fi fan, I would rather the genre be cruelly overlooked than unfairly celebrated, which is what I think has happened with Avatar. It might broaden the genre’s audience but equally it might lower a generation’s idea of what makes a sci-fi film great. For me, that isn’t solely special effects, it isn’t box office receipts and it isn’t lavish set-pieces. It is, and forever shall be, a good story, something Avatar lacks and something all of Hollywood, money men included, now (thanks in no small part to Cameron’s effort) thinks is less relevant than ever.
Avatar lacks the same “good story” as Forbidden Planet, T2 and Star Wars, none of which were in the remotest way original in their storytelling or characterisation.
This seems to be a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” argument. Cameron’s Avatar has helped take high concept science fiction to the 21st century mainstream, on the back of it predicted success we can hope for more mainstream recognition of the genre.
Would anyone prefer a world where Avatar wasn’t a mainstream success ? What would you have in its place ?
For all the dross and the inevitable clones that will follow we’ll also see a resurgence in quality SF on the screens. Tell me that’s a bad thing…
T2, Forbidden Planet and Star Wars have far superior stories to Avatar, particularly given their respective contexts. But I suppose that’s a matter of opinion that we’re trying to trade as fact, so perhaps we shouldn’t continue down this route.
I saw The Road last night. I thought it was terrific. Affecting, powerful, committed, intelligent and even innovative in its successful effort to create drama through thematic exploration. I recommend you see it if you haven’t already – Hillcoat is a real talent. And yes, I would prefer it if that was seen by as many people as had seen Avatar.
It would be foolish to totally exclude the possibility of Avatar having a positive, long-term impact on the genre but I think it’s fair to suspect that the wild success of a poor film might also be detrimental to the genre. Time will tell, I guess.
I’m kind of tired of talking about Avatar, but I just had to respond… T2 had a better story? we’re talking about the Terminator series right?
The “I sent my own father back in time to become my father” Terminator series? Seriously? At least Avatar avoided major gaps in logic. Better a simplistic story than one that makes no sense.
I value a story on how well it’s told as much as how well it’s conceived. Terminator 1 & 2 are full of intrigue, excitement and substantial plot turns, all, crucially, extremely well executed. Avatar is a three hour movie without a single surprise, its thin characters and narrative stretched beyond breaking point. It is one of the most predictable ‘original’ sci-fi movies I have ever seen.
I am genuinely surprised to hear an argument against the quality of Cameron’s Terminator movies; they are, to my mind, obviously superior to Avatar.
Even if you “value a story on how well it’s told as much as how well it’s conceived”, then that leaves Terminator only half as good as a story that’s both well told AND well conceived.
You called Avatar derivative, and I don’t disagree with that. Avatar is quite similar to “Call me Joe” by Poul Anderson as pointed out on this website, as well as “Clans of the Alphane Moon” (which takes place on a moon orbiting a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri system) by Phillip K. Dick. Why this is interesting is that Cameron also faced the threat of a lawsuit for taking his Terminator story from Harlan Ellison’s Outer Limits episodes. Terminator also shows similarities to a Phillip K. Dick story “Second Variety” that features robots creating other robots in the image of humans, and killing people after a nuclear apocolypse.
So I’m beginning to wonder if any of Cameron’s stories can be called anything but “derivative”. Still I guess if you think Terminator was told well, you’ve got that half of the argument. Personally (and I love the Terminator films too) I thought they were mostly just brainless action flicks.
Well,
Harsh comments indeed are contained within some previous contributions. Poor acting? I tend to disagree. If Avatar is the assend into further sequels, I think that there is plenty of room for character development. Given the length of this film and the sheer gravity of the situation facing pandora, I think that Mr Cameron has done an exceptional job in building a firm basis for the further trials and tribulations that pandora will face. I think some critics may have wanted too much from the first installment. Perhaps the first film should have been a character bio if we are to assume that the critics wanted more character backgrounds. This is only the beginning! Ease down critics, ease down, you’re blowing your transaxles!