Avatar: A Tragic Revolution

Rating: 5/10 (22 January 2010)

So let's say you go to a friend's birthday party. While there, you meet this stunning young woman, just with the most utterly radiant brown hair, bright green eyes and a truly immaculate smile. This girl is, in layman's terms, a 'knock-out'. The two of you get to talking, and in your visually stunned stupor you are wholly infatuated. For some unknown cosmic reason, this girl likes you as well. The two of you proceed through the niceties of courtship and before long at all you are official. The most beautiful girl you have met to date in your life is yours. About a week into that initial infatuation things start falling apart. No, you aren't fighting, nothing like that—you have just really started getting to know her. What little there is to know, at least; I mean, this girl is just utterly devoid of personality. Any conversation you attempt to make with her is an exercise in extreme patience and being with her is merely condemning yourself to the throes of boredom. By the end of week two you realize this is not going to work.
I am alluding to a revolutionary film. However, I do not believe this is a healthy revolution. I speak of Avatar: the film that has the potential to change the face of film-making as we know it. Sure, we have seen these big-budget, eye-popping blockbusters before, but Avatar offers a whole new saccharine visual experience. The revolution I speak of is the paradigm shift from the 'greats' of this century being the truly well written films to being those that can bring us the most "shock and awe", which phrase was so unabashedly and poignantly spoken in the film.
Please, don't mistake me, this was an entertaining movie. It was truly a sight to see. It also had mounds of potential; it's the great, age-old 'star-crossed lover' story. However, when using an age-old story you must refrain from making it cliché. Or at the very least refrain from using every single text book cliché; an attempt James Cameron so clearly refused to make. We had the short lived 'fight' between the lovers (complete with the no-problem make up!), the perfectly melodramatic "'I love you' 'I love you too scene" (At least they had the decency to mix it up a wee bit), and were even able to indulge in seeing the outsider leave behind his whole life with no struggle whatsoever! And of course, every single Native American stereotype was running rampant. The 'brother' character that never accepts our protagonist until the final battle? Check. The loving mother figure who always had faith in the protagonist? Oh, yes. Archaic-minded beings who can't think for, let alone protect themselves? Absolutely! Now I suppose it's high time I speak of the omnipresent cookie cutter dialogue. It's all the same stuff we used in that script we wrote in fourth grade and shining to its heavily adolescent fullest. "Jake, what the he** are you doing?" "I didn't sign up for this sh**!" and "He tried to stop them!" are all just a small taste of what the script offers us. Cliché lines abound and never do we hear a truly interesting conversation. It's all the same "A leads to B, and B leads to C" dialogue that is so tired, and never was acceptable in the first place. With this lack of interesting and meaningful dialogue, we seem lost as to what was really going on in Jake's head. Never does he show any desire to help the Na'vi until a last minute, split second decision to save them and kill the humans. How are we supposed to buy this? Are we expected to believe that this character we are supposed to identify with is so selfish and dense that he has no thoughts of impeding the momentum he has put into place to destroy these beings' home? We see a clear split in his actions; him loving the Na'vi when he is in control of his avatar and him having every desire to help the humans when he is possessing his human body. We never know what his motivations are or where his ethics stand. We can only assume he is chasing his libido and desire for legs simultaneously, without considering any consequences. And frankly, I'm calling bu** sh**.
The movie ends up feeling like nothing more than 90 minutes of awesome jungle scenery, 30 minutes of a wholesome environmental message, and 30 minutes of gunfire. One walks away with feeling that they just watched a commercial advertisement for a new world in computer graphics imaging. The 3D effects and innovation displayed in the filming is masterfully done, and we must commend James Cameron and the graphics team for what they have accomplished. Most of the time the 3D was never too in-your-face, and was nicely subtle, with some notable sights being an absolutely epic thing to rest your eyes on. However, this leaves a bad taste in one's mouth when leaving the theater. We need to open up our minds and ask ourselves: Is this what we are going to allow Hollywood to resort to? What will it take for us to realize what is happening to so beautiful a medium as film, and realize this movie is not what it is made out to be. This is a revolution we need to stop before it gets too out of hand.