James Cameron's Avatarrrrr

The American movie has come a long way since the days when the Klan were the only people bankrolling a studio. Nowadays we have animated pandas, Mel Gibson and annual Academy slapfights over which movie is most pretentious enough to deserve Best Picture.

Into this morass steps James Cameron, last seen mugging for the camera in 1998 (or 1997?) at the Oscars. The former king of the world turned hermit, going underwater for some documentary about (what else) the Titanic, and then sitting in his lab, concocting what he does or does not consider his magnum opus: Avatar.

This movie has been hyped enough that I don't really need to go on any further. It recently limped onto the screen all over the place, except in Australia (they get everything late except for Peter Jackson films and dingo derby video games), to mostly wild reviews. But so far the box office has not been earth-shattering.

As you may know, I don't play the box office game, so I could care less if it makes money or not... unless it is a truly offensive film. Yes, if a film is bad, then it really deserves to lose money as a sort of stick upside the head of Hollywood's collective Jewdom to stop doing that. That's a naughty Hollywood. Bad! You left this Transformers all over the rug!!

So let's get on with it. Is Avatar a goodfilm or badfilm?

3D or not 3D? Virtually every reviewer agreed that the film pushed the limits of gra-- erm, computer animation to new heights. You see that Bryan Fury fellow on the right? No, you twat, your RIGHT. THE OTHER RIGHT. Yes, that's an actual actor, not a computer-generated character. What's the deal? If you watch Avatar, you'll find it difficult to really tell the difference between him and the blue-skinned Na'vi at the center of this film.

Yes, the gra-- hm, the CGI is that good. The scenery is exquisite and, I guess, realistic (or plausible. Yes, that's a better word. Yes...), but the real achievement comes in the animations of the faces. It's true that the Na'vi "actors"s are motion-capped, but clearly a lot of attention went into their faces so as to not make them wooden or retard-like (no offense to Mr. Rooney). That was actually something I was worried about them fucking up, and thankfully they did not.

Why is this being mentioned first? Because most of the time I feel like getting the bad news first. I'm a "maverick" that way. I "shoot from the hip." But in this case, I'm getting the good news out first. So in that sense, I'm a real "maverick."

Yes, the g-- CGI is the only really redeemable part of the film. Unfortunately, it is not a game-changer. It's not even a dealbreaker, or a doorbuster, or a sexhaver. And believe me, I know all about sexhavering, and this movie is not sex. Though it has sex in it. A bit. It's actually somewhat creepy. Details to follow.

And as alluded to earlier, the movie is available in 3D. That's three-dimensions, not tit expectations. And I did see it in non-red-blue 3D, "like it's supposed to be seen," according to everyone. The 3D effects are not bad or distracting (instead of one very amusing shot of a 2D photograph that actually had fields of depth in it). But 3D itself doesn't impress me. No, not since 3D World Runner have I got the appeal of 3D. I mean yeah, the objects appear to be coming out at you. So what? That's the gimmick right there, summed up in a sentence. The next step of 3D is holograms, and this movie is not a hologram, so it is not the next step. It's a very nice step but not the next step.

Many reviewers contend that the visuals alone are stunning enough to carry the film. No. No no no. As someone who lived through the Console Wars, I know that anyone saying something like this is either a shill or a fucking retard Genesis player (you fucking trogs). It's hokum. And it's a bad sign.

An out of this world space aventure!! Is the tagline of the film. I think. Well that's what it should be, because it is a cliche, a bad one. Misspelled. Hackneyed. And true.

The plot of the movie stinks. It stinks, says Jay Sherman, and for once he's right, as usual. Many reviewers tried to gloss over this by saying that everything else was cool. That's like saying that, aside from all the dough, the doughnut tasted great! No, if the dough sucks, the doughnut sucks. It's crap. Not even sprinkles can save it, and Cameron piled a lot of sprinkles on this.

And yes, it is "doughnut," not "donut" you illiterate bottomfeeders.

"But, but, but our handsome and very admirable host, film is primarily a visual medium!" Yes, but it's a film, as in a piece of art that involves a story. It's not like a fucking flipbook of a man waving his arms up and down. It has to have a story, and the story is integral. Unless you want to argue that Avatar is a 160-minute music video or something, which it isn't because I didn't hear any Meatloaf.

Shit goddamn now I'm hungry.

Anyway, yeah, there's not much going for this film in the story department. Quick recap: Earth is environmentally fucked, Jake Sully goes to Pandora, a moon in Alpha Centauri, to become an Avatar to communicate with these Na'vi people. EVILCORP wants to mine MCGUFFINIUM from under the Na'vi WORLD TREE, and Sully's job is to spy on them and shit. Which he does. Then EVILCORP blows up the WORLD TREE, Sully gets sad, then decides to lead the Na'vi into battle against EVILCORP. At first they're losing, and then they win because Pandora attacks EVILCORP and WINS. Then Sully becomes a literal Na'vi. Eyes open cue theme song FIN.

By the way, the previous paragraph may or may not have been a spoiler.

That's a very slapdash summary but it captures the essence of the film. "Well what's the matter?" you might ask. "Weren't the Terminator films simple at their core? Wasn't Aliens?" Well, if you nitpick and reduce any film enough, yeah, but you don't have to work hard to do that for Avatar. This is a story that makes no bones about the fact that it's on autopilot. Calling it "paint by numbers" is an insult to my favorite type of coloring book, and this one uses all the bland hues. Yes, it's nothing but blue. Literally. Almost literally. The whole blue section of the color wheel in the most predictable film since The Hangover (hint: it's a film about a hangover. BIG SURPRISE GUYS).

Still, most critics defend the movie saying that the action and the CGI make it top notch, and you get lost in the film. Well I had the opposite reaction. The film lost me because it was a story so dumb and, perhaps worse, so shallow that I constantly found myself stepping out (not literally) and asking questions. "Why is every animal on this planet an echo of our animal species but with an extra pair of legs? Why are there very large animals in the middle of a thick jungle? Where is the water for the waterfalls from the floating mountains coming from? And why are those mountains floating in the first place? What is earth like, other than saying that it's an environmental nightmare? How does Sully react to spending five years of his life sleeping on a spaceship?"

And more. And more. Cameron does a good job of painting a picture, but there are so many details in the film that go unexplained. And some of them are rather important. For instance, it's never made clear if the Na'vi are aware of how avatars work, precisely. Because when Sully is done being an avatar for the day, he wakes up in his own body and then hangs out with everyone else and eats and whatnot. But he also has to have some kind of regular sleep cycle because otherwise his mind would be constantly active, which would at least drive him insane within a month. So basically, either he is really awake 100% of the time, which would require an explanation, or he has to take a supplemental nap while his avatar is also asleep, which would mean that his avatar stays asleep longer than normal. Do the other Na'vi think that he's just a really really heavy sleeper? Nobody knows.

Yes I realize that that's a very confusing way of putting it but trust me, if you see the film and think about it, the paradox will become clear.

I'm not asking for an exposition explosion, but the plot is perfectly set up with Sully as the newby curious to learn how the world works and people around to explain it. But nothing is explained. Why is unobtainium so valuable? Because there's a critical supply of floating rocks? Humanity needs them to construct real-life Super Mario Bros. stages? There are supplementary explanations floating around the Internet, but like the whole Harry Potter tertiary shit, it doesn't count if it isn't in the story, and no explanations are given. I could go on and on but without seeing it I'm wasting my time.

Well, surely it has character? Yes, just like porcupine has fur. The movie is filled with characters, most of them... wait, no, all of them pretty much torn from the same cliche-ridden book. Nobody really stands out except perhaps the main Na'vi bitch, Netiri. Excuse me, Neytiri,

Let's see, there's stone-faced grunt curiousman protagonist, sarcastic scientist den mother, ultra-greedy corporate stooge, nail-eating psychopath military guy, milquetoast scientist dude, voluptious exotic one-with-the-earth gaiagirl, Native American spirit warrior chief, angry jealous brooding boyfriend, prickly Hispanic warrior amazon lady, and last but not least, Jamaican witch doctress.

That last paragraph would've worked better if this were a TV show and I could flash you an image of the characters on-screen. Well fuck it, let's move on.

Yes, the ensemble is basically this gang. While I can't complain about the acting, I can complain about how virtually nobody in the movie changes from beginning to end. Our main protagonist is a complete lunkhead, incurious and accident-prone, except when the script calls on him to be magnificent on the battlefield in wrangling flying monsters or putting it to the No. 1 Na'vi sexpot. For a cripple he's surprisingly... adept.

A lot of people complained that Sam Worthington had no charisma as Sully. Well yeah, it's hard to have charisma when you're puking lines that are cringe-inducing under any circumstances. Humphrey Bogart could've been Jake Sully and it would still have been disastrous.

Neytiri, while Sade-like in exoticness, has no real personality to speak of. She's vaguely environmental and spiritual, but we have no idea of how she was before meeting Sully. We can assume that she's a goddamned flake because she falls head-over-heels for him in like four months, it's ridiculous. Her entire purpose of the movie is to tsundere out, and you can set your watch by her mood swings.

Then there's her boyfriend, whose name I forget because he is the epitome of forgettable character. Her NA'VI boyfriend is the son of the chief or whatever. He's supposed to be a great warrior but naturally he gets his ass kicked by a rookie Na'vi in Jake Sully in a duel over Neytiri's honor. Then he spends the rest of the film sulking like a baby.

The direct analogue, you could say, is that he's like Billy Zane's character in Titanic, except that's completely unfair. Zane's character actually had depth, and we actually saw him in his element, being a prick and all that. You could form an opinion about him. You can't do it with this jealous boyfriend cut-up because he's on screen for like two minutes, then he dies, and nobody gives a shit. Nobody. Not even the character himself, probably.

The only character with any real umph in him is Col. Quattrich, the aforementioned Bryan Fury guy. His character is one-dimensional as shit but at least he makes a great villain in theory. In practice, he's wasted on this film. Quattrich is the kind of guy who probably eats things just to see if his teeth and intestines can handle them. He wants to fight everything, and so in that way he's your stereotypical meathead soldier boy. But he's designed so intriguingly, and the actor (Stephen Lang) does a good job of making him snarl and be priggish.

But he's not a very good villain overall because he's dog stupid. And he has no ambition other than to KILL KILL KILL. He'd make a great henchman to a more capable villain. It looks like Cameron wasted all of his creative juices, and there weren't that many to begin with.

I take it you didn't like it then. No shit? I tried to be generous and give it 2.5/5, a C grade if there ever was one, but that's only because of the 3D effects. Without 3D, it's at most a 2/5. 40%. In most public schools, that's an A. But here, it's a C- and you better believe Cameron's parents are going to hear about this at parent/teacher night. Oh yes. And I can see you giving me the finger under your desk, now you can clean up the work room after school.

Like Titanic, Cameron expects his film's wow-factor to, well, wow everyone over, like a cloak of stupid being pulled over the audience's eyes. In Titanic's case, it was a grandiose plot and a very strong dash of pretentiousness, plus Bill Paxton's dreamy eyes, that made Titanic seem "big." Of course, it was probably Leo DiCaprio who actually brought in the money, but that's not something Cameron would probably like to admit.

But while Titanic was piled up with flaws, it at least pulled itself together for a somewhat compelling third act. Avatar also has a somewhat compelling third act, but by then I was bored with it. I knew what was going to happen even moreso than with Titanic (although admittedly, the ship sinking was a good twist). I mean, the action sequence is fine and all, but by then I felt the movie had pretty much offered up its best shot. And of course, the bad guys lose because Mother Nature (or Mother Pandora, I guess) literally unleashes all of the planet's wildkin on the bad guys and she wins and the bad guys lose because they're bad. So really it was a pointless exercise.

And that's ultimately the film's fatal flaw: There's nothing going on. Cameron is probably thinking he's making a profound statement, but he's not. It'd be like if Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech by dribbling his lips with his finger. And not even as funny. This film is a very shiny, very neat pile of expendible. $500 million worth of expendible.

When directors fail with a big-budget film, they usually fail in cringe-inducing ways, like the excerable Transformers 2 or G.I. Joe, or Peter Jackson's King Kong. Those are films so bad that you feel an overwhelming sense of embarrassment for everyone involved. With Avatar, at least you can say that it was just a piss-poor attempt by a has-been director. You pretend it's not a serious effort. It's Cameron just playing around like a baby and we're all just supposed to stand back and make sure he doesn't hurt himself/anyone else. And every once in a while go, "Oh yes, Jimmy, that's a nice bucket you got there, that's a good boy!!"

The only question left is, is it worse than Titanic? That's a damn good question. Titanic was terrible because it was shocking. How could the guy who made Alien, Aliens and the Terminators cough up such a putrid, cloying, nonsensical lump of a film? It's like walking in on your girlfriend screwing a bear. A grizzly bear. You just don't know how to handle it. I mean, if it was with a great brown bear that'd be one thing, but really honey? A grizzly?

But with Avatar, we walk in and, oh yes, there's that bear again, doffing the love of your life. Just try not to make so much noise, okay? The shock is over. I expected this from Cameron and, by golly, there it is. And don't think I came into the movie trying to hate on it. The film is so flawed that I had to scold myself to not hate on it. I had to tip the scales, and really, when you find yourself doing that, is it worth it in the first place?

But yeah, I think Avatar and Titanic are the same film, really. But at least now we've reached the acceptance stage with Cameron and, like Lucas, understand that he has passed on and we're just left with his retarded shadow of his former self. Unfortunately, we may soon have to say the same thing about Spielberg, but that's for another day.

So yeah. Don't see Avatar unless you are on serious drugs or something. Or if you're a furry. And if you're a fucking furry then you better tell me now because, hey, I no longer have anything left to lose by knowing how crapped up you are.