You may already know (or suspect) that Brian and I have somewhat divergent film preferences. We saw Avatar together a couple weeks ago and he was nice enough to invite me to write another guest post with my review of the movie, as it's, um, contrary to his. My Avatar review in 140 characters or less? "Meh." But I don't Twitter, so I have some space here to elaborate on that.
As each character was introduced, my internal monologue was "really? Really?" The abrasive military leader, the sassy female pilot, the gawky academic--all were so one-dimensional. (even though we were watching in 3D. Ha.) The plot was heavy-handed and everything was obvious, with lots of superfluous fighting, hunting, and riding dinosaurs/birds. Unobtainium? Really? Couldn't come up with any other name for this...uh...unobtainable mineral? The Na'vi people are basically blue Native Americans wearing Maasai jewelry and riding horses with six legs. The whole thing felt like James Cameron watched the PBS special on Native American history and said "Ok, that's cool. Let's just add some CGI and we'll have a blockbuster." Here's a quote from the PBS website:
"Jackson's [Giovanni Ribisi's] attitude toward Native Americans [Na'vi] was paternalistic and patronizing -- he described them as children in need of guidance and believed the removal policy was beneficial to the Indians [Na'vi]. Most white Americans thought that the United States would never extend beyond the Mississippi [into space/Pandora]. Removal would save Indian [Na'vi] people from the depredations of whites, and would resettle them in an area where they could govern themselves in peace."
See the parallels? Instead of watching Avatar, try watching We Shall Remain http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weshallremain/.
No blue people, and no glowing forests, but the same basic idea and much more interesting.
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Unobtainium was really pretty lame. It honestly pulled me out of the film for a few seconds. So the big question is what's your review? How many stars?
ReplyDeleteSarah and Brian, I agree with everything you said, however, I still thought the movie was great. I was sucked in by the visual and story, as cliched and repetitive as it was. Despite the criticism metioned by Sarah, I think Cameron's heart in the story telling was in the right place. Also, Element 111 was given the temporary name of Unununium, which isn't far of of Unobtanium.
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