Don't Run, Walk.

I have some very strong feelings about what has improbably become the 21st Centrury's Titanic, a film I had very high hopes and low expectations for, the Pocahontas of outer space, the one, the only, Avatar. I went to see it on opening day, waited in line for two hours for the IMAX show and was ready to experience for the first time a film that I'd hoped would like enough to watch 30+ more times. I really, desperately wanted to like this movie but I didn't expect to. What I took from it was a headache from the 3-D glasses and a slew of questions.

I've had some heated arguments about this movie to the point where people think I'm just being a snobby contrarian. Maybe they are right, I'm not self-aware enough to judge; all I can do is state my case as to why I thought that this movie was on the whole, very average. It's epic, it's ambitious, it's expensive; and it's got everything else you'd expect from a James Cameron film....other than plot, character development and realism. I know, I know, you're thinking, "Realism? Are you kidding? T-2 wasn't realistic!" No, I'm not kidding, and, yes, it was realistic. Any story has certain conditions called "The Setting" around which the characters are revolved. Where some movies fail and others succeed is how believeable the characters' behavior is within the context of that setting. T-2 is a movie with a fantastical setting, yet John Connor and his crazy mother behave relatively how we'd expect them to given the preset conditions of the film. Avatar has its own set of preconditions that I am going to assume you are familiar with for the sake of expediency. We have to accept these preconditions and hope that the characters' behavior pulls everything together and tells a compelling story. My case states that it doesn't.

The one argument I can make for this movie is that the CGI, sound effects, etc. are all mind-blasting. They basically took the technology that Peter Jackson and crew used to bring Gollum to life in Lord of the Rings and took it to the 10th power. Everything from the individual blades of grass to the expressions on the faces of the Thundercats/Na'vi felt so real that you forget you're not watching real actors. These types of special effects are definitely going to be a big part of the future of movies, and it looks as though that future could be closer than we thought. Cameron waited years to bring his story to life and the effects were well worth the wait. At the very least, this movie is revolutionary the way Star Wars Episode IV was revolutionary. For that reason alone, I highly suggest that everyone go watch it.

The story itself, however, we've seen before. Disney made Pocahontas in 1995 and it fell relatively flat compared to its other Diseny Masterpieces and The New World came out a few years ago with the epically bad Colin Farrell playing John Smith. Both films described an imperialistic society encountering a "primitive" society to obtain resources that would have had great value back home. Soon after, a guy from the invading force meets a chick from the natives, learns their ways, remembers he hasn't had sex in a LONG time, and majorly violates the Bro-Code. All-in-all, it's pretty cliche, which is fine with me. Avatar is just executed shabbily and didn't really outdo either of its predecesors from a plot/theme/character development perspective with the bar having been set fairly low.

Jake Sully's character development is the first major strike. We are barely introduced to his character before he's thrown into the Na'vi society. We know that he is an ex-marine who can't walk and he's replacing his dead brother's Avatar since they have the same DNA...fine. We are led to assume that he misses running around and this leads to his emotional transformation from human to Na'vi...understandable, right? Wrong, one of the senior members of the private military staff tells Jake that they'll fix his legs when they get back to earth. Umm, what? If his condition was reversible, why didn't he get fixed and join them as a marine? Why did he want to turn into an alien and frolic around the forest? Why was he desperate to hang onto his Avatar's ability to walk which presumably led to him betraying his species? Marines aren't typically nature lovers who wantonly break the chain of command and disobey orders. They are trained to not give a shit about anything other than "the objective." Cameron didn't even attempt to show us that Jake was capable of being more than a "dumb soldier" which is how they portrayed him from the outset of the film. His behavior was highly abnormal and it wasn't adequately explained. Did his love for his twin brother spark his desire to take up his cause? Did something happen to him when he was serving to disenchant him with the military? If he was going to go off the deep end like he did, then please give me more than a few walks in the jungle with a Thundercat to explain the reason. While "he was horny" is a believeable reason (and was the basic premise of Pocahontas) it does not exactly get deep enough to jive with the whole "nature vs. technology" theme.

Sigourney Weaver's character was also perplexing. She spends the first half of the movie playing a sarcastic scientist and the second half playing an idealistic tree-hugger. When exactly did she decide to soften-up? Furthermore, why did it take so long for her to mention that the entire planet was self-aware and that all living creatures with the ethernet-tail could communicate with each other? Isn't that the single coolest thing about the world that Cameron created? It took about two hours before that revelation was made to be more significant than a peer-to-peer bond. It's like going from having an in-home network to hooking up to the world-wide-web! That discovery is what should have awoken Jake Sully's spirit in joining the Na'vi, not some carnal need to mate combined with being able to run around (since he was fixable).

In my many arguments about this movie, people have pointed to Cameron's "creativity" in the different plant and animal species that were present on the island. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but weren't they just dinosaurs that were slightly tweaked around, or am I crazy? I don't find much creativity in that, not that it's a bad thing, but it's a lazy argument to make so STOP IT. Speaking of lazy, let's dig into a specific plot incident which might have been one of the all-time lazy storytelling moments: Michelle Rodriguez going-Green (or in Avatar's case, going-Blue). Remember that the security force she is employed-by that is imposing itself on the island is privately owned and operated. These guys (and gals) flying the jets and carrying the automatic weapons are getting paid a pretty-penny for being there; that's how mercenaries work. For her to go AWOL in the midst of an assault on the island saying, "I didn't sign-up for this," is lunacy! THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU SIGNED-UP FOR, BITCH! How was she not marooned on the nearest moon for insubordination? She subsequently went back to base and rescue the imprisoned Jake Sully so he could go back and help the Na'vi. What the hell? No one noticed her doing this? There wasn't a better way to have Sully escape and get back to his new friends? Weak.

I also find it hard to believe that whatever governing body was in charge of earth at the time of this story didn't impose itself on the situation there, and instead, left it up to a private enterprise with its own paramilitary force to sort-out. If this stuff Unobtainium (it's hard to obtain, fyi) was so valueable and the one obstacle in procuring it was that it's underneath a major city of an alien civilization, bring in the government! Also, was whoever was in charge of that company really okay with Giovanni Ribisi effectively deciding to commit a genocide on a similar level to the Holocaust? I find that somewhat hard to believe considering the shit-storm of bad press that would bring down. Since Cameron said nothing in the setting of the movie about this company and why it was allowed to do whatever it wanted, I have to question it. This would have never happened in Star Trek or Star Wars where there governing bodies specifically concerned with inter-species relations.

People have told me to just shut the hell up and enjoy the movie since it's better than most other movies out there. That is true; however, when any story is written it has an unstated goal with how serious, sad, dark, satirical, romantic or funny it's trying to be. Avatar is clearly a movie that takes itself very seriously and is attempting to make a major statement about the evils of imperialism and the power of nature, among other things. Just look at the script, there are no light moments anywhere and the human actors come across extremely grim the entire movie. Naturally, the bar we as viewers need to set for it is going to be higher than the bar we set for, say, Hot Tub Time Machine. It's impossible to rationally judge movies without thinning the field and comparing movies that are aiming to hit similar goals. In that respect, I think Avatar failed miserably. It didn't hold up sufficiently when compared to other science fiction, social commentary or romance films. Nothing was explained and the characters consistently failing to convince me that they had a good reason for behaving the way they did undermined what the movie was trying to say. That's partially their fault as actors, but mainly James Cameron's fault as the writer/director. This was basically a three-hour light show, entertaining as it may have been. Maybe I'm being too hard on it and maybe Cameron just wanted to make a cool-looking movie. I don't think it's the case especially when it's been 20-or-so years in the making and had a $500m marketing budget, but what do I know? I just think he (characteristically) shot for the stars and fell (uncharacteristically) short of his lofty goal. I hope he spends more time on his storytelling or we will surely be in store for a monstrosity of a sequel. Prosocution rests.