Joseph Conrad's Avatar is a stupendous achievement in redefining cinematic experience. Even a simple loincloth, painstakingly rendered in breathtaking 3-D, symbolically ushers in a new era of visual engineering. As the stunning savages snort with bone-pierced noses, these Pandoran primates swing effortlessly through the jungle; they are masters of nature, beautiful in their bestial forms. James Kipling immerses us in a world filled with wonder—a world of, as a friend of mine aptly put it while discussing the refreshingly childlike nature of the impetuous Na'vi, "Ewok tree villages." The beauty of the savage and strange is truly overwhelming to the mind of the rational European.
I'm fairly sure that James Cameron has some kind of ancient magic dwelling inside him, and, judging by my experience in Avatar, it's safe to assume that magic is gibbering, grass-skirt, witchdoctor voodoo of the least sensitive order. No matter how thin and uninventive the narrative, somehow his films manage to remain incredibly successful. The Terminator series, its plot full of more holes than its extras, constitutes the most complicated narrative Cameron has ever woven. Alien and its acidic progeny boil down to little more than "There's an alien!" accompanied by some vague anti-corporate anti-expansionist threads. I'll let True Lies round out this action trio with this: the climax of True Lies occurs right around the time that Tom Arnold feels his testicles after a gun fight and, finding they are still there, thanks God for His infinite blessings. Still, these movies get a pass on compelling story; they are action films. We want Sarah Connor to destroy the Terminator. We want gushing alien blood to eat away at the hull of Ripley's ship. We want Tom Arnold to grab his nuts and squeeze a little. Films like these are suspense and catharsis, and in the case of True Lies certainly not a little tongue-in-cheek.
Avatar thinks itself above all this nonsense. It isn't a simple-minded action film; it's a call to action, an environmentalist tour de force. Its visuals are polished to a dazzling sheen. But there are some things you simply can't polish. What with the blood-lusting general, the greedy corporate shill, the be-loinclothed native, the pacifist scientist, and the handicapped soldier with a heart of gold, I'm certain that to write the characters, Cameron simply cut out a few paper dolls, scribbled a sentence of description on each, went out, and made love to your spouse. While you watched. And after he finished you gave him two and a half billion dollars. Peter Griffin is a more complicated character than anyone in Avatar. His motives arise from being fat AND stupid AND obsessed with pop culture. The triple threat. If Charles Foster Kane is a fully fleshed out and clothed character, and Peter Griffin is a skeleton with a hat, the characters of Avatar are the carbon dust of exploded stars that never made it to a place where life could evolve. Allow me to take a moment while I sip some coffee pretentiously for having brought Citizen Kane into the conversation like a cheap-shotting douche. Sorry, not "like." I am an opportunist show-off of the shittiest kind.
But so is Cameron. In the height of all things "Go Green," he releases this ham-handed environmentalist circus act filled with gorgeous visuals and nothing else. That's my biggest problem with Avatar. It thinks its inept hero story, lazy characterization, lazier treatment of race, and SPOILER ALERT deus ex machina nonsense ending all come together to produce some kind of important message with subtle lines like "these humans destroyed their planet." I'm still stunned that James Cameron, dressed in a green tuxedo, doesn't pop his head into frame over that line, tip his tophat to the audience, and wink broadly while doing the charleston. Avatar's subtlety is rarer than "unobtanium." What a good burn. Reread that sentence a few times. Soak it in. Behind the smoke and mirrors, the polish, the dazzling visuals, the glow of the silver screen, the sleight of hand, the christmas lights, the bells and whistles, is a film built almost exclusively from cliches, mortared together with self-congratulatory enviro-concern that offers no useful material to the environmentalist cause.
None of this would matter were Avatar simply a useless, ineptly environmentalist, dumb fun adventure film about flying through the forest with your man Friday. Going into Avatar with that attitude is going into a movie that you not only should see, but need to see. Avatar is the beginning of a new standard in visual effects. It is a beautiful but simplistic, mindless movie. That's all well and good. We should have films like that. Enter the clamor for this movie to win Best Picture at the Oscars. Are you literally fucking me? Is that what's happening right now? Avatar should and will win Best Visual Effects, but if Avatar wins Best fucking PICTURE then movies are dead to me.
Let's give Best Picture to every visually stunning formula blockbuster turned out by directors who always seem to weave box office gold out of straw movies. The worst part is that it's more than possible. After all, Cameron won Best Picture for Titanic, which, to an admittedly lesser degree, suffers from many of the same flaws as Avatar (lazy characterization being what comes most prevalently to mind). What I can't guarantee is that The Hurt Locker will deservedly beat out Avatar at the Oscars. What I can guarantee is that, wherever I am, if Avatar wins, I'll be the first at the party to drunkenly vomit on the spread.
