An xBox Game Mistaken For Progressive Cinema

Rating: 2/10 (21 July 2010)

If computer animation/manipulation and graphic design are here forward destined to be one of the major elements - alongside writing, acting, photography and music - of cinema, then whatever. Blah. So be it. It's been a long time coming and I'm sure the best filmmakers out there will find a way to make it work for them while still making organic/human work. If nothing else, James Cameron's sci-fi blockbuster Avatar makes this animation-is-inevitable downturn a certainty.
And this is where my problems with 2009's most attention-hogging film begin. If we are to let the digital revolution re-imagine the art of cinema, then we must do so carefully - so as not to erase history or cheapen the future. What I'm saying is this: for all the money, work and time put into Avatar (a film that, to this writer at least, looks as much like an xBox game as it does a film), shouldn't it be more impressive? I'd argue that 2008's cutesy sci-fi Pixar film, Wall-E, looked better on the big screen and will certainly look twice as good on the small screen. Wall-E also had a better story and soundtrack. And eff if this little Disney children's film didn't have TWICE the edge of Avatar.
But damn. After only two weeks, Avatar had already more than Wall-E ever did. It made more than Dances With Wolves and Alien combined. But, wait, why all the money talk? We keep hearing about how Avatar had the biggest production and promotion budgets ever. In it's first 11 days the film had already brought in $641 million in worldwide ticket sales. This movie, more than any film ever released, is made for money talk.
But does ANY of that money talk matter? Not to me and, aside from inevitable corporate chatter, not to the film history books. What matters is that Cameron used new technologies and created a film that, to some at least, supposedly looks better than any other film ever made. But I call BS on that. To me, it looks like a video game. A new age-y, suburban soft-core daydream for blockbuster fanatics and haters alike. Sci-fi is a hard genre, though, right? A creepy genre. Sci-fi, by nature, is mysterious and weird and effed up; this is why it works. Even Wall-E was all these things. Not Avatar. Avatar holds your hand with it's cheesy score, always telling you how to feel, screaming "it'll be okay" even at the supposed-to-be uncertain segments of the film.
The lack of imagination here only helps further the argument that graphic designers and computer geeks don't belong working on films. Cameron, who with Avatar attempts to create his own alien world, is clearly more interested in special effects than he is telling a story. Simply, he's more interested in the technical aspects of filmmaking than he is the art of visual storytelling. There's just no arguing, a number of films (City of Lost Children, Dark City, Code 46, Brazil, even old-as-hell Blade Runner, etc.), despite having incredibly small production budgets and limited technological resources compared to Avatar, have much more interesting visual takes on the future. Even 2009's District 9, an R-rated film with 1/10th the shooting budget of Avatar, is far more fascinating.
And I focus on the look of the film because, frankly, the story blows. It's a rewrite of Dances With Wolves, at best. There are interesting bits here and there, but Cameron's ego gets in the way. For example, had a more dynamic actor (say, Ryan Gosling or ANYONE who can show at least SOME emotional depth) played the lead role, well, I may have fallen into the storyline more. And need I list the Michael Bay-like plot holes. And, sure, in sci-fi we don't discuss plot holes with too much seriousness, but here it's painful. For example: this intelligent tribe of natives let outsiders into their inner circle despite knowing that the outsiders are controlled by their enemy? Since they KNOW this, why do the humans even need to pretend to be natives? And isn't that the point of the movie? I just don't get it  Avatars? Would you let a confirmed alien enemy into your house simply because they looked like you, this while shooting the other confirmed alien enemy with a poisonous arrows?
I could go on. The color palette is suburban-soft and child-ready. (They may as well have been selling pajamas and lunch boxes outside the theater.) The look of the aliens WILL be made fun of from here until forever. The segments with the flying things - both machine and animal - shooting and flying and whatever already look just as bad as the flying things in the Star Wars movies. How is it even possible that they look so awful?!
But hey, if your three favorite movies ever are The Happening, Dances With Wolves and Alien, then James Cameron's soft-core sci-fi blockbuster is maybe for you. If you listen to all the propaganda you read on the Internet and are one to get caught up in pop-hype, then see this movie ASAP if you've not yet - do so before the tide officially turns. But if you love cinema and don't need your storytelling to feel like a roller-coaster that holds your hand and sings shallow emotions into your ear, then please, go see something else. Something with some actual acting. A film where the director is less business and mouse-click oriented and more interested in photography, storytelling and - gasp - directing. There are plenty of worthwhile films in theaters and on store shelves right now, do the right thing and see one of those instead.