5 reasons to be concerned about ‘Avatar’
Oh captain, my captian.
Avatar is the first motion picture to be directed by James Cameron since Titanic. Between pictures, he’s been slacking off, hanging around the house in a ratty bathrobe, moping, eating lots of cereal, and calling in to his big Venice Beach effects company, Digital Domain, to scare the tech geeks into pushing the boundaries of CG. Then, normally, he takes a nap by the pool.
Avatar is also one of the most hyped films of recent times. Not just a movie, it will revolutionize the way movies are made! It will cure cancer! Lest we forget, Avatar is, really, just another movie. I know it’s easy to forget that crusty old thing called “the past” when “the future” looks so sparkly and all, but if history shows us anything, about ourselves or Captain Cameron, it’s that we have a few perfectly legitimate reasons to be concerned.
1. Almost nothing lives up to the hype. Remember the first Batman? Hyped to the moon and then… eh. It was okay. Remember the new Batman? Again, crazy hype. And again, okay city. Blair Witch? Yawn. Remember all the hype behind Cameron’s own Titanic? “He rebuilt the freaking boat in San Pedro!” “The effects are supposed to be brilliant!” What we should be doing in our modern age is lowering expectations. That way we might actually enjoy something every now and then.
2. History has not been kind to Cameron’s movies. Check out The Terminator now. The first one. I’m not talking story, I’m talking style. Which is what made people excited about Avatar in the first place. The Terminator is as trapped in its 80’s amber as anything made by John Hughes. The name of the bar where Arny first shows up? “Tech Noir.” And the look matches the silly name. Blade Runner came two years before Terminator and it still holds up, style wise. 2001 came sixteen years before and holds up better. Compare Aliens to Alien. No, wait. There is no comparison. Granted, Aliens seemed pretty cool at the time, a fresh approach to a sequel most people feared, and rightly so. And while it may well be the best Alien sequel we have (so far), it is still, like The Terminator, trapped forever in time. And time, as we know, is a bitter foe.
3. James Cameron is a master technician. He’s not a great film artist like Stanley Kubrick, or even Steven Spielberg. In fact, the other filmmaker he most closely resembles is George Lucas, another technician. They’ve both made some iconic films that will be with us forever, but that’s not where their hearts belong. They belong to the effects companies they created, industry leaders that have advanced the art of the impossible. This will be their contribution to film history, and it’s a good one. We need visual effects (boy, do we).
4. The trailer. In some ways this was a lot like the second coming. We talked about it so much that when it actually happened, we could only be disappointed. Granted, some people, after seeing the trailer, are still excited. But a whole lot of peeps sent up their shoulders in a collective shrug heard round the web. If it’s all about the CG, that CG sure as hell better blow off some socks. I don’t see any bare toes right now.
It looks better in the theater.
5. The hype machine itself. Okay, so maybe this isn’t a complete reason unto itself. 4.5 Reasons, then. But whatever the case, it doesn’t help that websites like Total Film UK run story after story with topics like “20 Things We Know About Avatar.” Here’s their numero uno, a puzzling quagmire of nothingness, and the other 19 (yes, 19), after the jump.
1. Avatar Is Inspired By All Sorts Of Stories.
“My inspiration is every single science fiction book I read as a kid. And a few that weren’t science fiction. The Edgar Rice Burroughs books, H. Rider Haggard — the manly, jungle adventure writers. I wanted to do an old-fashioned jungle adventure, just set it on another planet, and play by those rules.”
Why This Makes Us Even More Excited
James Cameron’s returning to the books he grew up with. The last time he raided his library, Terminator happened.
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One would expect Cameron’s movies to look good, he is an art director and a money pit when he is not bullying some woman on his set.
His movies tend to go for comic book emotions. Avatar seems to look like something I have seen on the discovery channel with CGI dinosaurs or journeys to some imagined planet. You make a good point about hype and I wish that hollywood would just shut up sometimes. Hype takes all the magic out of movies with how they did it specials on TV and geek sneaks.
When I stood in line at the Egyptian for the first showing of Alien I had no idea of what was in store…the experience was mind blowing and completely unexpected and I was in line the next day.
Good points. And oh how I wish I’d been able to see “Alien” at the Egyptian! You are one lucky individual. The script of “Alien” is one of the few screenplays (”Taxi Driver” being another) that I read often.
In response to another comment. See in context »I do count myself as lucky…lots of great movies with giant screens to view them…it may seem silly now but films like Godfather, Bonnie and Clyde, Alien, Wild Bunch, Jaws, Star Wars, Patton, The Conversation, really left an impact and I certainly would love to have that feeling again…maybe Avatar? Of course you will view some of these in the future…on some little screen.
It might be worthwhile to campaign for some theatre chain to take up the challenge of screening the top 100 in proper format, even 70mm. I promise you it makes a huge difference.
In response to another comment. See in context »I’ll give you 1, 4 and 4.5 but you’re dead wrong on 2 & 3 (and it doesn’t matter anyway because all of our opinions end at the tip of our noses, right?)
and what’s so wrong with that? Would you find any literature fanatics complaining that The Illiad is trapped ca 700BC? Maybe some of us like a little 80s nostalgia now and then.
Oh, i didn’t hear you are taking over as Prez of the Academy from Tom Sherak? Personally, Terminator, Aliens and The Abyss are among my favorite sci-fi movies, ever… held far above any scifi Schpielberg has ever done. I’ve had this arguement with Joseph Childers already.
and Lucas used to be a great cinema artist with the first SW trilogy. The second was overloaded and ruined by its technical aspirations. We can only hope that the same fate doesn’t befall Cameron with Avatar. I agree the Hype only hurts things.
Andy, you make a very good point. Does it matter? Is something being inextricably linked to the time of its making a problem?
Maybe it’s a matter of taste, like so many things. While I like “Aliens,” I LOVE “Alien,” because I’m more taken by the timelessness that Scott embraced for his movie than the military industrial complex-slash-jarhead slang that Cameron brought to his. So when I watch “Alien,” I’m reminded of nothing beyond the film itself. But when I watch “Aliens,” I’m reminded of a lot of 80’s era stuff that, I guess, I don’t really want to remember!
But you could watch “Aliens” tomorrow and dig it just as much as you did when it came out. Nothing wrong with that. Thanks for the argument.
In response to another comment. See in context »Don’t get me wrong Mike,
I abhor glamorization of violence; believe me on this. But what I’m so captivated by in Cameron’s films is a unifying theme of mankind’s arrogant militant nature being constantly humbled by nature itself.
In The Terminator, an artificially intelligent computer decides that mankind is not capable of running things and sets out to cleanse the planet of homo sapiens. It had a humbling, unique premise and no end of suspense; and to this day, when I see the little Mexican boy take the picture of Sarah at the end as she is talking into her recorder professing her ‘lifetime of love in two days’ for Kyle, (as it was revealed earlier that Kyle spent his life wondering what she was thinking in that picture) I get a little lump in my throat. Call me a simpleton, but I do. Very seldom – if ever – do i see shoot ‘em up movies infused with such heart (that doesn’t seem contrived).
And I like both “Alien” and “Aliens”, but for very different reasons; I see them as two different types of films. The first is just purely classic horror/suspenseful mood/sci-fi while the second is thriller/action/comedy/sci-fi (the third was disappointing and the 4th was just pure comedy).
Since we are both Ridley Scott fans, we may have reason to celebrate as he will be returning to direct an Alien Prequel. My only hope is that he doesn’t cast his buddy, Russel Crowe.
In response to another comment. See in context »That’s a great point about the themes of Cameron’s movies.
I’m with you on the glamorization of violence. It really bothers me, and it’s getting harder and harder to avoid. Final Destination Whatever is slicing and smashing its way into theaters as we speak.
And about the new Alien movie. I was pretty stoked when I heard they dropped Carl Rinsch (the commercial director in Scott’s commercial productions stable and reportedly dating Scott’s daughter, not that there’s anything wrong with that), in favor of the original man himself. I just really hope he can tap back into the spirit of his earlier films – the slower pace, the attention to detail, etc. – and God yes, please, pretty please, no Russell Crowe.
In response to another comment. See in context »Did I see an Ewok in that trailer?
For the record, Digital Domain (in Venice) is NOT involved with the CG being used in Jim Cameron’s “Avatar” project. Though Jim Cameron was one of the founders of Digital Domain back in 1993, and first conceived of “Avatar” during the company’s start-up years, Jim has not been a stakeholder in the company since its acquisition by Wyndcrest Holdings in 2006.
Weta Digital (in New Zealand) is creating the visual effects for “Avatar” and the live action portion of the project has been filmed using a new 3D technology system developed for the project by Cameron and his “team” (including Vince Pace and Rob Legato).
Thanks for the information. This would be the company established in part by Peter Jackson when he was making “Heavenly Creatures?” They did those men made of stone or mud or whatever it was (it’s been a while), right? Those were actually super cool at the time. And of course Weta has won about a zillion Oscars for the LOTR movies, if I’m not mistaken. I apologize for not mentioning that DD and Cameron had parted ways. I actually forgot. Your clarification is much appreciated!
In response to another comment. See in context »