You know what I was sick of hearing about before it even came out? Avatar. Seriously, what's the all the fuss about? I saw the movie in 3D (but not IMAX 3D--too much money) and while I'm not talking down on the visuals at all, I would like to say this: I wasn't blown away. The effects are good. I'm not disputing that. The battle at the end is among the best I've seen in film, and I like the three main characters (played by Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, and Sigourney Weaver) although the villains are over-the-top and wholly unbelievable. And I'd like to applaud James Cameron and company for showing us vistas--long, uncut shots that allow us to fully take in the visuals without the jump-cuts and fast camera work that plagues so many of today's action movies. But putting spectacle aside for a moment, I'd like to think critically about this film, particularly in how it compares to another recent release, Daybreakers. Allow me to highlight the major areas of these two movies categorically.
The Villains
I touched on this a moment ago, and now I'd like to elaborate. The actor who played Colonal Quarrich chewed the scenery horribly. Honestly, the character couldn't have been more over-the-top evil and comes off horribly silly in many sections of the movie. To his credit, he always manages to entertain, if not simply for how ridiculous he is, but all in all, I just can't see there being such a person existing in reality. Worse than that, however, is the Giovanni Ribisi character. I understand that we as the audience are not supposed to like this man. But we're at least supposed to be believe that such a man exists, and like Colonal Quarrich, I just don't see it. He suffers from the same problem--he's just plain silly in how fabulously evil he is. Throughout most of the movie I was expecting him to hold his pinky in front of his mouth a la Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies. He's that ridiculous. Now take the Sam Neill character from Daybreakers. As a corporate prick, Sam Neill is much more subtle. That man is calm and collected and doesn't burst out laughing when he hears something unbelievable occurring in an alien world (and yes, the world portrayed in Daybreakers is just as alien as Pandora is in Avatar). I understand Sam Neill's character is evil, but I get the sense that he doesn't agree with that sentiment. I can't say the same about Giovanni Ribisi. Honestly, you don't have to show a dude playing golf to illustrate how big of a corporate prick he is. Sam Neill plays a man who's afraid to get his hands dirty, but you get the feeling that in all his confidence, there's much, much more fear residing somewhere below the surface. Such subtleties are not present in Ribisi.
The Mythology
Vampires are becoming so overused it's obnoxious. However, it's not that vampires are overexposed, is how they're being exposed that bothers me. I will refrain from turning this blog into a tirade of how Stephanie Meyer handles the material, but I will say that after seeing vampires degrade from something truly dark and terrifying with a much more focused and relevant issue to communicate (I'm thinking of Anne Rice and one of my favorite quotes, "How can God allow creatures like us to exist?") into something that is, dare I say, pussy. Vampires have been pussy-fied. Daybreakers abandons this trope and goes for something more akin to Blade, i.e., badass. And while the Willem Dafoe character does, at times, reach levels of scene-chewing that almost equal the villains of Avatar, overall he adds so much to the mythos constructed by the film. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll simply say that his character provides the catalyst that allows Ethan Hawke to develop his vampire cure. The plot, while far from flawless, is still executed very well, with a realistic twist that actually caused me to smile and nod at the filmmakers' cleverness. But more on plot later. I'm here to discuss mythology.
Both of these films depict an alternate reality and provide the necessary backstory to make the flora and fauna seem real (and while I don't feel Avatar's villains seem real, Pandora certainly does). But not once did my bullshit detector go off while watching Daybreakers. Its world is well thought out and complete while Avatar needs some serious questions answered (and I'll admit, this is nitpicking on my part). First: how do mountains float? I don't recall the film ever explaining this. The topic was brought up amongst my friends while discussing the film and I managed to receive an adequate answer: Because Pandora is a moon that orbits a Jupiter-sized planet, the gravitational pull of this massive celestial body is strong enough to lift masses of land off the surface of Pandora causing them to float in a very low, atmospheric orbit. Such a phenomenon is apparently possible. One of Jupiter's moons may actually have floating mountains. However, the film never explains this, and I feel it should.
Second, I get that when a human is living in an avatar, the human body is sleeping and vise versa. But when does the human mind sleep? Our consciousness quite likely needs more rest than our bodies, and yet when Sam Worthington begins his cycle of human-to-avatar-and-back-again, we only see him sleep once (and thank God for that because otherwise my bullshit detector would have been loud enough for other theater attendees to hear). Still, it requires a degree of suspending disbelief that is a bit too unrealistic.
Lastly, the big thing I call bullshit on are the USB ports sticking out of everyone's heads. Why would so many creatures on this world evolve such a body part? Avatar attempts to ground so much of its fantasy in real science, but it's obvious that nature has intended these neural extensions to interface, and if that's true, then why are these creatures hostile towards one another? It makes no sense.
The Plot
This issue has been discussed by many other critics, so I will try to be brief. Avatar's plot is very simple. That's not a problem at all. Complex plotting is not always synonymous with good plotting. But what I want to bring to forefront, here, is Aristotle. That's right. I'm referencing his book, Poetics, which provides a hierarchy of all the important aspects of storytelling. They are the following (in order of importance): plot, character, thought, diction, melody and spectacle. Notice that spectacle is last. Again, Avatar doesn't have a bad plot, but throughout the entire movie, I never felt that it was held as the most important feature. Quite in fact, Avatar's plot takes a back seat to spectacle, and the film suffers as a result. Michelle Rodriguez has a character turn that's too sharp and too jarring to be believed and why the hell isn't she court-martialed for mutiny? Daybreakers almost has a deus ex machina towards the end and for a moment I thought, "Oh, Jesus, they're using a get-out-of-jail-free card," but when this plot device is completely reversed and turned against the protagonists it then serves to add more momentum to an already good story.
The "Message"
Here is where we encounter Avatar's greatest flaw and the reason why I argue it's a bad movie. Both of these films have something to say, and yes, what they're saying has been said before. However, Daybreakers's message is not quite as "surface-level" as Avatar's, and although it's nothing new, it's something we don't hear as often. In the case of Daybreakers, blood is used as a metaphor for oil. We're running out and we need to develop an alternative, and it's not because of environmentalism. It's more important to create renewable commodities not to save the earth, but simply because the non-renewable source is running out and our society depends on it. Furthermore, Daybreakers communicates much subtler messages about human rights, animal rights, and even the rights of the homeless, pointing out our treatment of people and creatures alike and bringing the issue more to the forefront. When was the last time you saw a movie that encouraged you to not judge the homeless so harshly? And even still, Daybreakers doesn't pound you in the face and say, "This is the way you should feel." It invites us to interpret its story ourselves.
In contrast, Avatar's message has been hammered home ad nauseum and quite frankly, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of hearing about how pollution is bad and how America is fucking the third world. Wall-e and even The Simpsons Movie discussed the issue. I get it.
Worse then that is the method by which this message is communicated. It's not enough to simply show it. Avatar has to talk down to us, treating us as infants and behaving as though we're completely inept and unable to form our own value judgements. I am not permitted to draw my own conclusions. Avatar does our thinking for us. But seriously, I can see the parallels to current events, Mr. Cameron, you don't have to shove it down our throats. You don't have to use phrases like "shock and awe" as if I'm blind. And to call the Na'vi "terrorists" ("We're gonna fight terror with terror"--actual quote) is insulting to my intelligence. The Na'vi are innocent, peaceful beings. Terrorists hijack airplanes and crash them into the second tallest buildings in the US and kill thousands of people. I have to question, is this comparison really being made? Is the film really suggesting that terrorists are innocent, peaceful creatures and we're just fucking with them? Or is it just a mistake, an erroneous interpretation that I'm drawing?
Finally, the real message of Avatar actually does have some subtlety to it. When I ask, "What is this movie about," what do you say? Do you describe dramatic action? Do you reply, "Well, it's about this marine, who's paralyzed but is given an opportunity to walk after his brother passes away" etc.? Or do you say, Avatar is about environmentalism. Or anti-imperialism. Anti-war. Anti-technology (which is ironic considering what a great technical achievement the visuals are).
If these are your answers, then I have a response. I'm gonna do what this movie tells me not to do. I'm gonna draw my own interpretation, regardless of whether or not Cameron is aware he's saying this. When it comes down to it Avatar is about misanthropy. For those of you who don't know, to be a misanthrope is to hate humans. I'm so sick of hearing about how bad we are and the evil we're capable of and the darkness within us. My favorite art movement is romantic realism, and the reason is because it celebrates our humanity. It puts us on a pedestal and says, "Look what good we're capable of. We can build particle accelerators and put people on the moon and develop medical advances that quadruple our lifespans. No other creature we know of can do this." Avatar only condemns the worst within us, and rightly so, but if we only focus on our darkness and always ignore our ingenuity, then we will never overcome that darkness.
That's not to say Avatar doesn't at least attempt to offer a solution. In fact, it offers two. One is that the only way to shed our darkness is to shed our humanity and transform into something that is alien. This is not achievable. We can be nothing other than human, at least in this lifetime.
The other solution is evacuation. Avatar shows us being so bad and so evil and so destructive and then suggests that the planet is better off without us and we should all leave. At the current point in human history we find ourselves in, this, too, is not achievable. So really, the basic message of Avatar is that the only possible way to overcome our flaws is to become extinct. This is what I get out of this film, and it's demeaning and insulting. Honestly, I wouldn't expect anything less from James Cameron. After all, he was the one who had Arnold Schwarzenegger say, "It is in your nature to destroy yourselves" (in Terminator 2). Such sentiment is a logical contradiction. If it were in our nature to destroy ourselves, we would not be able to exist, plain and simple. Yes, we are capable of horrific evils, but evil is unnatural. We are not born with it, and we can overcome it. And guess what? Daybreakers shows us how. Daybreakers shows how we can use our genius and our ingenuity to overcome our flaws and achieve peace.
And honestly, I hope that one day we will. |
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