A few words about Avatar

Note: contains spoilers. Namely, that Avatar is pretty much a hunk of shit. But seriously, I'm going to reveal a few plot points. Especially any that I can make fun of. Which would be most of them.

As I write this, Avatar has an 83% positive rating on Rotten Tomato's famed Tomatometer. A few days ago, it was 95% (the ratings from the "Cream of the Crop" reviewers is still 94%). For the past two weeks, every guest on The Tonight Show (whether they were in the movie or not) has raved about it. Everywhere you go, magazine articles, TV reports and the general buzz have told you this movie is so fucking amazing it will revolutionize the way we watch movies. To call it a quantum leap, indeed, would be to diminish it.

Perhaps not surprisingly, none of these things ever get around to mentioning what the movie's actually about. All the trailers indicate is that there's lot of explosions. And, uh, blue people. Oh, and that this movie is so fucking amazing it will revolutionize the way we watch movies. To call it a quantum leap would be to blah blah blah.

Sitting at home, we absorb all of these stray pieces of information (James Cameron hasn't directed a movie for a while because he's been doing this) and that makes our brain go, "hey, this thing might be a work of genius." And of course we take this into the movie and it makes us more likely to like it. It's been a truly brilliant marketing campaign, executed at the level of the best political campaigns, and someone somewhere should get a medal for it (or a punch in the face... either way).

So okay. With all that out of the way I'll say right here at the top that as spectacle -- in terms of the effects -- it's a very good movie. Top quality effects. Movie changing or even mind blowing? No. We've seen it all before. Imagine a bunch of Golems from the Lord of the Rings movies -- only blue and tall and heroic -- and that's what it is. They haven't crossed that threshold toward making it look actually real, but there's a reasonable chance they never will, so who cares?

Either way, that's not what I'm going to talk about. My issues were with the story.

We start on a spaceship that has traveled 4.3 light years to Alpha Centauri in the year 2154. Nevermind how it got there going the speed of light looking, well, like something that can't go anywhere close to the speed of light.

Does it at least come with a supercharger?

Anyway, once we arrive at Pandora, it's time for the Incredibly Obvious Metaphors to start flying around. Pandora is populated by the Na'vi (Native Americans), who use bows and arrows (um), engage in mysticism (yeah), and at one with their environment (yep).

Sadly, Pandora is rich in the hilariously named fake element unobtanium (standing in for oil), which is necessary toward solving the economic and energy crisis on Earth (a crisis you would imagine might be somewhat less severe if we hadn't spent all that cash to built spaceships that can fly at the speed of light to Alpha Centauri and hold what seems to be an almost limitless supply of helicopters, gunships and men, though of course no one asks me about these things).

Anyhow, the most concentrated source of unobtanium on the entire planet happens to be right under the home tree of the Omaticaya Clan of the Na'vi (and no, I can't believe I just typed that). Obviously, they'll have to be moved.

Or won't they? I mean, you just flew a spaceship at the speed of light part way across the galaxy, and you have the technology to establish a perfect telekenetic link with a Na'vi whose DNA has been combined with that of a human and then grown in a test tube. You can do all that, and I'm supposed to believe that you still have to strip mine this ore out of the ground like we're back in West Virginia (strip mining here standing in for strip mining)?

At the center of all this is a disabled marine named Jake Scully, whose identical twin brother was a scientist specializing in the Na'vi and who managed to get killed just before the mission (and this is really only a minor quibble, but is it really all that common for one identical twin to end up as a marine and the other identical twin to end up as a scientist who, if I remember right from the flaccid dialogue, had a few Ph. Ds?).

Anyhow, Jake's brother's specially grown Na'vi just can't go to waste, so they let Jake use it, and of course the first thing that happens on a mission after he plugs in telekenetically (and it really bears pointing out just how ludicrous the whole idea of that is), is that he gets separated from the group.

Of course he meets a Na'vi woman, of course she hates him (but not for long!), and of course he'll have a rocky introduction to Na'vi culture, but of course eventually he'll get the hang of it, and of course he'll eventually get everyone's respect and pass a ritual and marry the Na'vi woman and become part of the tribe and begin to hate his original employers and fight on their side of what's right against the imperialist blah blah blah.

I mean honestly. This movie is supposed to be so fucking amazing it will revolutionize the way we watch movies. To call it a quantum leap, indeed, would be to diminish it.

And it can't do any better than to completely rape the plot of Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai and like, 50 other movies? Give me a break. The plot, the motivations, the villains and the resolution are all totally obvious from, well... from 4.3 light years away (25 trillion miles or so). I mean, the main villain even has a bunch of scars on his head. How much more un-revolutionary can you get that to copy just about every Bond villain ever created? Did Cameron have to be physically restrained from putting an eyepatch on him, too?

Here's another example of what I mean. Late in the movie, Sigourney Weaver's character is wounded. The Na'vi tell Jake they might be able to transfer her consciousness into a Na'vi body, making her a Na'vi permanently. Only, it doesn't work. She was too wounded (big shock). Can anyone guess what will happen to Jake at the end of the movie? Will he become a Na'vi permanently?

And can anyone guess what will happen when one character says a huge flying beast has only been mastered by five Na'vi since recorded Na'vi time began? Yup, here comes Jake Scully. He's been a Na'vi for a few months. Clearly he's the best guy we have. If anyone can master the un-masterable beast, it's the guy with the funny accent who just got here a little while ago.

And you know what makes it that much worse is that there are actually serious issues at play in Avatar. Gross over-miliarization, deforestation, the Iraq war and the destruction of native peoples are real things. Many of the indigenous people of the Earth have been systematically wiped out by people in need of land and resources who were greedy enough, as one character says in the movie, to make anyone who stands in their way an enemy, and thus justifiably wiped out.

That's a real truth of history, and a hard one. And the destruction of the natural world, even for someone like me, who's far from an ecologist, is a tragic thing.

But by sticking to the most cliched of plots, the movie cheapens the issues to the point of demeaning their seriousness, rendering it, say, an open letter for peace and conservation written in crayon and filled with internet slang.

And about those robots...

1.) Was I the only one who laughed out loud at the bi-pedal robot, controlled by a human, who was carrying what looked like a huge machine gun? Carrying it in it's arms, like a human would, rather than having it as part of the design? What kind of bumblefuck would expect us to believe that?

Oh.

2.) And as bad as that was, they managed to top it by having the robot pull out a fucking knife and engage in hand-to-hand combat! I mean, a knife! Who designed this goddamn robot? Who looked at the plans and said, "yeah, this is a pretty cool robot.... but, it's missing something. Hmm. Oh, I know! It needs a two foot bowie knife and a knife sheath! Why? Because at some point, I envision this robot getting into a situation where the gun will be knocked out of it's 'hands' and it's 'hands', which are apparently just 'hands' and don't do anything, will really need to grab a knife and start stabbing something. No no, don't make the knife just come out of their hands, like Fulgore. Are you an idiot? Make it have to hold the knife, like we do. Waaaaay cooler that way!"