Avatar, and James Cameron 2.0
December 20, 2009
Just came from seeing James Cameron’s Avatar. Loved it. The movie demands to be seen on the big screen.
I won’t bore you with a review of plot points and performances; that’s what Google and Roger Ebert are for. I want to talk about the flaws of the movie, why they don’t matter … and why James Cameron is now officially in the “2.0″ phase of his career.
I came up in the same era in which Cameron was cutting his teeth as a writer/director. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched and rewatched his movies. I’m convinced that if there’s any one storyteller to study, it’s him. His movies are often dark and dystopian, packed with memorable, brilliantly-written ensemble casts. They’re perfectly contained stories, yet feel untamed, subversive. They bristle, hungry to make with the violence — and they always deliver it.
Something seemed to change within Cameron’s stories in the 1990s. The decade started strong for superfans with Terminator 2 (dystopian, violent science fiction). A few years later, he delivered True Lies, an action comedy. It’s an optimistic gunblazer, great popcorn fare. What the film lacked in brains or story, it more than compensated with action and visual effects. A rock-solid B for superfans like me.
Titanic became his obsession. Say what you will about the story (and I will, in a moment), but it was a cinematic masterpiece. Avatar is even better. Both deliver stories with the epic scope of the Truly Great films such as Gone With the Wind; seeing these things on anything less than a movie house screen is a mortal sin.
But both also represent a shift in Cameron’s writing, which in many ways disappoints superfans like me … but also showcases a breed of brilliance worthy of admiration. The man is smart, understands narrative, understands audiences — and it’s now clear that he deeply understands the business of making narratives for those audiences.
Long gone are Cameron’s days of bubblegum-and-a-prayer movie budgets. He now makes supermovies – stupefyingly expensive movies. Avatar’s budget was at least $250 million, but rumors put the pricetag as high as $350 million. That’s money that defies meaningful understanding.
Supermovies are high-risk endeavors for producers, and there are well-documented tradeoffs that come with superbudgets. Make the film PG-13 to ensure as many people as possible can see it … make stories simpler to accommodate that mass appeal … make the concepts of the story more universal as to snag the support of international markets and filmgoers … it goes on. The worst supermovies, like Transformers 2, fully embrace these compromises and treat their audiences as idiot children.
Cameron does not, though savvy superfans like me spot the compromises in what I’m calling the ”2.0″ stage of his career. Titanic’s story has been characterized as “romance on a sinking boat,” and Avatar is now getting the inevitable (if unfair) Dances With Wolves comparisons. Both parallels are completely accurate, and yet absolutely inaccurate. To keep focus on Avatar: It is not a dumb movie. It is a movie that has a simple storyline with nigh-universal theme and appeal. There isn’t much development in many of the secondary characters. And I insist that’s just fine.
Much like Titanic, the movie is gorgeous, and absolutely convincing in its execution. It’s the first film I’ve ever seen in which the extended use of CGI didn’t harm the overall product. I was spellbound throughout, dazzled and dwarfed by the world Cameron created. It’s not a perfect story, but it’s a perfect movie — it fully embraces the big screen experience.
Did I pine for scenes that better-illustrated the main character’s inner conflict, or better-explained the reasons why the villians were being so villainous? Sure. Do I think that, given the compromises a filmmaker must make when they’re $300 million in the red, the movie suffered greatly from those omissions? No way.
Avatar is a cinematic masterwork. It doesn’t hail from the uberbrainy tradition of the best science-fiction stories. (Neither did Star Wars back in 1977. And while it’s my favorite movie, Star Wars is a rather simplistic and noisy tale.) It doesn’t hail from Cameron’s dark and dystopic sci-fi roots, either. But it is absolutely beautiful, ultimately optimistic, and an absolute blast to watch.
See it. On the big screen.
Comments
22 Responses to “Avatar, and James Cameron 2.0”
Support 7th Son: Descent
Listen To The Promos
Join The Mailing List
Subscribe In iTunes
Subscribe Via RSS
I disagree. While the film was visually brilliant, the story was cliched and boring. The first 90 minutes were, “Next summer, visit the beautiful planet of PANDORA! Marvel at gorgeous forests!” and the last half was all about loud explosions and a mind-numbingly stupid romance. What little story there was, was ripped straight from every sci-fi film in the last 20 years, and yes, Dances With Wolves. The film failed on every level other than visuals. Go see it in 3D, and check your brain at the door.
In my opinion, there are two types of serious movie fans. Those who’ve seen everything and become jaded and demand “NEW!” or its “brainless” and those who’ve seen everything but look for “How is this same take on something I’ve seen before different or better than what I’ve seen”. I’m definitely the former. I can see the “its the same story as X, Y, and Z”, and sure my gf and I could predict what would happen next in each scene. But the pacing was amazing, I wasn’t bored with the story at any point, and unlike many directors, Cameron isn’t afraid to skip things that would be boring. I was dreading the inevitable 5 minutes of watching the main character wrestle the giant birdthing to allow him to combine the clans, but Cameron “knows” we’re all expert moviewatchers by now, he knows we don’t need to see that and inevitably it’d bore the audience. I bet its a deleted scene, but that, and many other scenes that he skipped, were unnecessary.
I don’t want nor am interested in something entirely different and new, its not brainless, its because I know what I like, I have thousands of movies under my belt and while sure I watch a lot of indie films, they’re crap and I wouldn’t have been happy spending 30 bucks at the theatre to watch some indie “different” crap, I’ll save those for netflix, meanwhile Avatar delivered what I wanted, which was, as JC calls it, a supermovie.
I’ve been saying it to who’ll ever listen, but I honestly believe that Cameron knew that no matter what he did with the story, it’d be second seat to the tech and visuals. Knowing that, I think he purposefully made a satire of what pop culture perceives to be modern SF tropes. Mythic super substance, ‘flux’ whatever, jaded older lady scientist, rogue woman pilot, strange alien pseudo-sex, colonel with a pocket-full of tough-guy sayings. The list goes on and on. It’s just one way of looking at it.
Even if it is just that cliched, it was fun, no matter how many times I’ve heard the story.
I have to go with JMathis on this one. I think I fall solidly into the category of “jaded” moviegoer, often making side bets on the plot twists before a show even begins (I can usuallycover the out-of-pocket cost of a bad film this way ;D).
When you go as far outside the realm of reality as Avatar does, you have to have something to anchor it, something that anyone watching the film will understand. Avatar wasn’t made for the sci-fi crowd, it was made for a much broader audience, and I think the plot (as tried and true as it may be) will be the thing that brings that audience in. If you try to go “new and innovative” with everything, well, then you get an art-film, which is going to end up interesting only to a small segment of the population (an even smaller segment than the pure sci-fi crowd even).
I think a big misconception among the general populace is that a big budget guarantees a good film, and that indie films are crap. This is simply untrue. I think people like Cameron, Michael Bay, and Roland Emmerich should be forced to make a film with a 5 million dollar budget. My guess? The films would be crap. Cameron built his career on small budget films like The Terminator. He needs to remember what that feels like.
A director has X amount of movies they can make. I don’t care if they remember their roots, they need to make as many awesome films as possible, which means not wasting their time making low budget films just to show that, oh yes, they made good movies when they had low budgets, well at least Cameron did (Alien: 4.2 million, Terminator 6.5 million). These directors made some of the most memorable movies in the last few decades, and I doubt the average indie film director would produce movies that were “good” with larger budgets, to me, the average indie film is something that is a curiosity, sort of like reading Isaac Asimov short story anthologies, something that makes you go “huh”. BUT, most indie films are crap, not a misconception, their camera angles (which doesn’t cost anything) are normally crap, their transitions are often inconsistent, and the stories often jump around incoherently. That doesn’t make them “edgy”, “interesting”, or “advanced”, that makes them crap, crap with an interesting story, sure (maybe), crap that makes you consider something from a different angle, ok often. Good? No, sort of like a fancy California restaurant with 3 ounces of colorful artful food, an interesting experience, but if you want to show me good, show me what you can do with the best quality cut of steak, I don’t have any interest in the “Survivor Man” equivelent of movie filming.
Give a professional photographer a three thousand dollar camera and you’ll get high res, awesome pictures. Give the same photog a seventy dollar point-and-shoot you’ll likely get low res, awesome pics. An amateur with the three grand camera is likely to give you very high res crap.
Cameron knows his trade, that’s for sure; Terminator was good for it time; I can only imagine Avatar is as well. Comparing indie films to supermovies seems a bit off here. The important part is that Cameron is visibly, appreciably refining his game. Even if it’s not quite in the direction superfans want, the progress is there, and consistently has been.
This whole budget argument reminds me a lot of the Susan Boyle thing earlier this year. She was a huge phenomenon, and why? Because she was frumpy, and a great singer. If she had been slim and “hot”, she wouldn’t have received NEAR as much attention. The same can be said for films. When Paranormal Activity came out, people were completely beside themselves. “This movie is great, and it was made for less than $1 million! But when a film like Avatar, with an enormous budget, has only the budget going for it, that’s all we focus on. All the reviews have been, “Oh, the film is gorgeous! It looks spectacular! Great effects!”. They seem to ignore that the story is tired and cliched. I don’t think any self-respecting film geek can tell me that they thought that Avatar was original.
@JHero: You’ll note that my take on Avatar touches on your critique re: its story. While I claimed it was a perfect movie, I also wrote: “(i)t’s not a perfect story.” In my perspective, the tale has nigh-universal appeal; its concepts are very familiar, just as Star Wars’ is, for instance.
The budget-centric discussion here in the comments seems like a digression, but I do see your point. Like you, I’ve wondered what many supermovie filmmakers would do with a $1 million budget. I suspect they would deliver world-class, yet certainly less spectacle-driven, entertainment. In fact, nearly every Great supermovie director (Cameron, Spielberg, etc.) started out in the trenches, directing movies with shoestring budgets. They’ve been there, and proven their worth. I don’t need to see what they’d do today with a low budget; I can pop in my DVD of The Sugarland Express or Aliens, for instance.
You’re well within your right to be disappointed with Avatar, and I respect your opinion. As I mentioned in my post, the story has shortcomings (as all stories do). I simply believe the brilliance of the film’s vision and execution — combined with the very real story compromises I suspect supermovie makers must make — creates an astounding emotional experience, worthy of consumers’ money to see it on the big screen.
The “supermovie” is a lie.
@J.C. Hutchins Oh, the story is fine. It’s just very cliche-ridden. The film would have been better if he hadn’t waited to make it, which brings me to my point about the budget.
What I wanted (and failed) to get across was that this film required a lot more effort. If he had not waited to make it (as he said that he did, because the effects were not yet advanced enough) the story would have received more focus than the effects. The story almost felt unnecessary, like a last-minute addition to a faux-documentary about a fictional planet. Hey, why didn’t we get THAT movie? A District 9-like approach to this planet, especially with all the political allegory, would have played SPECTACULARLY.
I will concede that the film is gorgeous. If one was to cut out everything else but those beautiful shots of Pandora and its inhabitants, I would have had a much better time. I tend to get hung up on things like acting and dialogue, and while the acting was fine, the writing was teeth-grindingly bad. “You are not in Kansas anymore.” Ugh.
I know my opinions are not widely accepted. I got the same flak when I told people that District 9 fell apart in the third act (which it totally did!). I just didn’t find the film that engaging.
Now that I think about it, the faux-documentary approach would have been really cool. Like a Dateline report about the struggles of the Na’vi and their clashes with the humans. A film that would make us side with one side or the other, and not be so biased towards the aliens. So, what, every single human is a hardass who only cares about money except for Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver? I think that James Cameron is more than capable of making that film. He has the creativity. This is the guy who came up with the robot assassin sent back through time to kill the leader of the future resistance. I just hope he spends more time on the story for his next film.
Or maybe I’ll just watch Serenity again. What’s Joss Whedon doing next?
I agree with JHero above. Avatar is nothing without the effects, which are, for the most part, spectacular (I found some of the longer shots of the Na’vi, and almost anything that involved both Na’vi and humans, to be quite unconvincing. But I think Cameron must have known that, and focussed a lot on close ups which were quite flawless).
But take that away, and you are left with nothing. Cliche after cliche surrounded by a terrible script. (Funnily enough, when I saw the first preview for it, and it had that terrible “Kansas” line in it, I thought “really? that’s how they are trying to sell this?”. It turns out it was a perfect representation of the film.)
A common review I’ve heard is “sure the story isn’t great, but the CGI is amazing! 10/10″. That’s just not good enough.
For over 10 years, Pixar have been giving us movies with groundbreaking CGI and awe inspiring story. I don’t know why we should forigive anyone, let alone James Cameron, for only being able to produce one of the two.
In 10 years time, when the technology is passe, there will be nothing in Avatar to watch. I can still watch Toy Story 1 and get chills, not because the CGI is amazing, but because the story and the characters are believable. I care about what happens to them.
Also, if a movie is going to rely solely on special effects then at least have the decency to be short.
Just like Bill and Ted plunging to their death and running out of breath to scream, after an hour and a half I was kind of over going “oooh” when they poked things at the 3D camera. But I still had an hour to go. I was bored by the battle scene. It should have been the exciting climax but instead I was thinking “You know, if the projector died right now, and they asked us to come back, I probably wouldn’t bother”.
First, let me direct you to an interesting podcast mentioning Avatar, in which Kevin Pollak interviews Robert Legato. About 90 min. into the interview, Pollak asks Legato about the film and tech involved with Cameron and Avatar. Really cool talk about the film methodology and the part technology played in the making of the film. About 111 min. into the interview, the mention of how they did facial capture and it’s contribution to preserving the performance of the actors instead of dampening it is interesting. Reference kevinpollakschatshow.com and interview with Robert Legato. You can also find it on iTunes if you don’t want to sit for the interview lasting over 2 hours.
There is a lot of back and forth regarding writing and great effects. Make it simple and be more universal vs. staying true to a higher idea and a better tale to tell. Blah, blah, blah…I won’t get mired in an argument with people, but my opinion is this. Mind blowing beautiful vision of a foreign and alien ecosystem taken from the imagination, formed and coordinated bit by bit into a visual display worthy of awards. Yes, the story was somewhat flawed by cliched dialog here and there, but jarheads don’t exactly go around quoting Shakespeare or practicing rhetoric. Yes, more people will be able to relate to the story, increasing the positive feedback. But, many forget that a story that is too complex just doesn’t work. Get people turned around and backwards in the story with too much complexity or detail and the brain will shut off and take away from the book, film, whatever. Cameron does a pretty good job of balancing the movie in terms of being visually fantastic and on the emotional level of most people. If you don’t like the dialog, take some earplugs. Just make sure you see this film in theaters. It is worth it.
@jacbrew
If the only problem with the script was the cheesiness of the jarhead comments, then I would agree, at least with that part of the sentiment. But everyone from scientists to evil corporate heads, not just the space marines, had their share of poorly delivered cheesy lines.
I also agree that a plot can be too complex. Too many times have I seen a film that has been spoiled by trying to be too complex (Primer is the first that comes into mind). However we were light years away from that being the problem here.
Despite the impression I might have given, I like a good cheesy no brain action movie. I’m one of the few people that I know that liked Hudson Hawk. The first transformers film was fine. Basically for a plot to work, regardless of whether it is simple or complex, it needs to hold together. It needs to make sense, if only at the time. It needs to ensure that that audience doesn’t at any stage, think “hang on…” because nothing smashes the fourth wall quicker than that.
I am not saying the effects weren’t groundbreaking. In fact the facial motion capture stuff was amazing. All I am saying is that a movie needs to be so much more than good visuals for it to work.
You can ignore a movie’s bad points and say how good the good points were. But I don’t think you can, fairly, call it a good movie, certainly not herald it as a new era in a film-maker’s career, when such basic elements as plot, script and acting have failed.
Surely it’s not unfair to expect more from the guy that came up with Terminator and True Lies, is it?
Not sure I’d be as positive as you, but soft thumbs up I am.
Nothing stunk. The story, the humorous touches, the pacing — everything was serviceable. And the effects…most notably, the sequences on Pandora, I dare you to watch them in 3D and not walk away with your subconscious saying, “We were there, kinda, weren’t we?”
Art house, it isn’t. But Worthington’s delivery works quite well, and it was often possible to lose yourself in the joy of his learning of the alien culture from absolute ground zero, with the inevitable wups moments.
And it was good seeing Weaver and Rodriguez again, and hearing Saldana and Studi.
[...] Avatar, and James Cameron 2.0 (jchutchins.net) [...]
I am with The Master Matt Wallace.
I have come to the conclusion, after many years of using the internet, that almost everyone is jealous.
James Cameron is one of the best directors in the world. Period. If you want to quantify it, look at his box office total. If you want to qualify it, look at his aggregate Rotten Tomatoes score. It’s pointless to make silly negative comments on the internet. What have YOU done lately?
It’s like those guys on the internet that see a picture of a gorgeous woman and say, “She’s a 6 at best!” Most of them KNOW that they wouldn’t talk to a woman like that in real life, so they make themselves feel better by tearing her down online.
It’s OK that you won’t make Avatar…really, it is…
Just relax, enjoy the movie, and focus on your own life.
One thing I’ve noticed in the real world is that successful people very rarely disparage someone else’s work, unless it is a direct competitor. This is because they UNDERSTAND how hard it is to CREATE and how easy it is to CRITIQUE. JC, not to speak for you, but something tells me that you wouldn’t disparage another podcaster’s work, because you understand how hard this stuff is.
Anyway, back to the negative internet for me. *Sigh*
@Michael Jones: I wonder if you even read the post upon which you are commenting. I proclaimed myself a superfan of Cameron’s work, and went on to celebrate the quality of Avatar — and then actively encouraged people to see it. I did not disparage Cameron or the film, as you claim.
@J.C.Hutchins I assume Michael Jones’ comments were directed towards me, or other people who weren’t overly impressed with Avatar.
I think he was pointing to you as an example of someone who wouldn’t disparage others’ work.
@Micahel Jones
I don’t think it’s accurate to describe everyone who didn’t like Avatar (and who says so) as jealous. I understand that the internet is indeed full of negativity, and by providing my comments about the film I am contributing to that negativity. But on the flip side, about Avatar in particular, I saw the internet as full of blinded happiness. A world that saw the technological marvel that it is, and were happy to call it a good movie while (and I think this is the bit that bothers me) admitting that it has very little in the way of script, story or acting.
If someone came out of that film loving every minute of it and saying that they thought the story was great, then fine. It’s those that admit that it is lacking but still give it 10 out of 10, simply because the graphics were pretty that have brought to the point where I have commented. I don’t know if you’ve seen Glee, or if I am lessening my point by referencing it, but Avatar is hairography. It’s waving something in your face (in this case excellent effects) in the hope that you don’t notice the mundanity of the rest of it.
I am not jealous of Cameron. He fully deserves to be where he is. The thing is, he got there from producing excellent stories time after time. I expected more from him on this front and was disappointed. Through twitter I found this particular blog and it is, for some reason, where my thoughts came out. I am sorry that I have made the internet all that more negative for you.
@Michael Jones
Just saying that “Haters are just jealous!” is not a way to say that a movie is good. That’s an argument that a 5-year-old would make. I should hope that I NEVER make a movie as flawed as Avatar, so how could I be jealous? When you strip away all of the “revolutionary special effects”, you are left with a weak story and an ABOMINABLE script. Cameron is indeed a great filmmaker, but he can do much, much better than this.
“If you want to quantify it, look at his box office total.”
An absurd argument. Transformers 2 was the highest grossing film of 2009 (domestically). Does that make it anything more than than the crap that it was? No. Does it make Michael Bay any better a director? No.
“Most of them KNOW that they wouldn’t talk to a woman like that in real life, so they make themselves feel better by tearing her down online.”
On the contrary, I would be very happy to tell Jim Cameron exactly why this movie sucks. I’m sure he can take it. Tearing down movies doesn’t make me feel any better about myself, just as I’m sure tearing down people who don’t like Avatar doesn’t make you feel any better. We both do it because the internet is an open forum to voice opinions, and to speak up when we disagree with someone.
“One thing I’ve noticed in the real world is that successful people very rarely disparage someone else’s work, unless it is a direct competitor.”
So, you think that film critics should not exist at all? Because they don’t know how DIFFICULT filmmaking is, so they should pander to every director working. “Well, the film wasn’t great, but hey, filmmaking is hard, so we shouldn’t be too harsh!”
“Just relax, enjoy the movie, and focus on your own life.”
Hard to enjoy a movie that’s so bad.
Closing comments on this one.