| Avatar |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|09:35 am] |
I sure was glad that one of the friends I saw Avatar with last night ordered an extra large popcorn, because I needed a puke bucket to sit through that movie.
Also, it was in 3D, which made me a little dizzy.
Avatar is a nineteen-hour long film about a stupid ex-Marine who is employed by one of those The Companys one often hears about in science fiction movies to infiltrate the native American Indian/blue panther population of a planet because all the good stuff—a propertyless mineral called unobtanium (haw haw, I write scripts and look at the Internet!)—is under their giant tree. The Marine, who was injured and without the use of his legs in his human body, is named Sully (because he is SULLYING a natural world) and there is a careful scientist named Grace (because she is not exploitive and horrible and can be said to live in a state of GRACE) and an old soldier in charge of blowing things up whose name I didn't catch, but it was probably something like Colonel McEarthrape. (Because he likes to RAPE the EARTH, even when he isn't on it!)
The central conceit of the movie is that Sully and others can "drive" avatars that look just like the Big Blue Indian inhabitants, and that way can communicate and ultimately gain the trust of the indigenous population. Sully doesn't know a word of the native language, doesn't know anything of the local flora or fauna, and has no experience in his new body (voted Sexiest Space Gay at Furcon 2154's art show!) but he's American! Fuck Yeah! So it all works out for him. Despite satellite and radio technology, The Company has no way of tracking the location of the avatars either...well, not in the first act. Later on, they flip the avatars on and off at precisely the right dramatic moment. "I came here to tell you—" *thud*
Avatar does represent a step forward in science fiction film in that it is only forty years behind science fiction literature rather than the usual fifty years. The filmmakers were clearly terribly worried that Stupid American audiences wouldn't get their opus—I'll sum it up for you right now, it's Dances With Ewoks—that they gave Sully an extended voice over explaining most everything occurring on-screen. The choice of Sam Worthington, whose Tony Danzaesque voice grates at the best of times, to do the voice over is just one of those things filmmakers do to show that they are just as stupid as the audience. So don't feel bad, youse guys, that you got laid off the week before Christmas and this cartoon cost $350,000,000 to make. ($75,000,000 alone was for Sigourney Weaver's Botox treatments. The woman was born in ninteen forty-nine, people! I believe the rest was spent on sleeveless T-shirts for Michelle Rodriguez. Which is strange, because I'm sure she has plenty at home.)
There are also lines like this: upon entering the bio lab, "This is the bio lab." A great predatory bird, we are told, is called Last Shadow. "Because it's the last shadow you'll ever see," Sully figures out and explains to the audience. "Gee, thanks Einstein," the audience responds. When there's a fight, people say, "Let's dance!" The stupid guy is told, "Don't do anything exceptionally stupid," by a smart person—sadly nobody followed this bit of advice. The Weasely Company Dude calls the natives "savages" because he didn't get either the HR or the PR department reports on Respecting Others, plus that way we'll know he's bad! McEarthrape says, "We'll fight terror with terror," I suppose because saying, "I'M EEEEEEVIL! EEEEVIL I TELL YOU AND I LOVE TO RAPE...THE EARTH!" would have been considered too realistically gritty. When I wandered into the lobby for a few minutes just to look at the carpeting and came back I was still able to predict every line of dialogue despite surely missing a very important tree or something. The natives have their own language too. It sounds like this: "Ook Ta Lo lo Shvan." Just to make sure acting was as difficult as possible. Also, they are Pernesque dragon riders!
Anyway, Sully meets an Indian princess who senses his pure heart because some dandelion fluff falls on him. She takes him home and everyone inexplicably agrees to teach this young and extremely stupid warrior all the ways of their clan. These secret ways involve traversing video game landscapes and carefully looking at leaves because, as they explain in every title at the metaphysical bookstore at the end of my block here in Berkeley, Everything Is Connected. (Sully had never heard such a thing!) Then there is some furry CGI sex—the audience laughed—and the stupid stupid Indians wake up all surprised that the bulldozers are coming to tear down their Home Tree.
Our little Keeblers, you see, just don't comprehend the "sky people" despite having learned English and such. Like those primitive but noble American Indians, they are childlike and foolish as they try to use their arrows against attack copters (which only works in the third act, not the second), but they have a great wisdom and thus Sully decides to become their leader. His battle plan is, as of course it must be, GO FOR IT! Then it's a nine-hour long battle of Endor. Also, Michelle Rodriguez dies. I knew that was going to happen because she was in the movie.
Much has been made of Avatar's stunning visual sense, generally from people who never flipped through an issue of Heavy Metal in their lives. The night exteriors look more like those black light posters people used to hang in their dorm rooms in the 1970s. You know, back before the invention of fun in 1987. Everything's glowing because, as it turns out, Everything Is Connected. Despite the many native clans (Horse clans! Just like Indians! Clans that live by the sea! Just like Indians! Clans that live in a single giant tree! Just like...oh.) banding together under the leadership of Vinny Barbarino and all the hardware The Company has its command, the war is settled by a one-on-one karate fight between McEarthrape (in one of those robosuits from Aliens) and Sully. Just like King Philip's War in American history actually. Too bad nobody taught King Philip karate, eh, eh? Sucker!
Anyway, there's a second magic tree and it is made out of that fiberoptic stuff and it is also God and so all the CGI creatures we saw in the first act come back and kill all the helicopters and stuff and Sully gets permanently avatared and gets to have blue furry sex with Uhura from Star Trek forever. The funny thing is that the filmmakers probably thought they were making a kick-ass movie about the depredations of capitalism (you know, like the BUDGET of this monster!) and the horrors of genocide, but they really just made one about how Hollywood liberals are the most obnoxious assholes in the world. Anyway, I hope everyone involved in his movie contracts mouth cancer so they can no longer say things like, "Yes, I agree to work on Avatar II: Avat Tarrer" except for Michelle Rodriguez, whose lips I'll protect from free radicals by covering them with my lips always and forever.
I suppose I'll mention a few positives. An early scene in zero-G is interesting. The crazy CGI spaceships and labs are treated as everyday objects—indeed we don't get our first character telling us to be impressed by going, "wwwoooww" until the scientists show up at some floating mountains. (It's a "flux vortex"! A what? A SHUT UP JUST SHUT UP AND LOOK AT THE FLOATING MOUNTAINS!) There's a bit in the second act where we see Sully in his wheelchair and they CGIed his legs to look a bit skinnier then they had before—he's not been exercising at all because he is spending too much time in his avatar body. They then ruin this subtle and clever bit of filmmaking by having him put on shaving cream while staring forlornly into a broken mirror.
Avatar is as stupid as Transformers 2 and for those with a brain in their heads is twice as offensive. I'm not easily offended; I even think the White Guy Becomes An Indian thing can be done well on rare occasions—Howard Waldrop's Them Bones comes to mind—but this movie was just awful. How awful? I left as soon as the credits started to roll, but even as I ran for the lobby I heard a snippet of lyrics from the end credits theme. Here's the first verse:
Walking through a dream, I see you
My light and darkness breathing hope of new life
Now I live through you and you through me, enchanted
I pray in my heart that this dream never ends
Now imagine your school days, and someone handing you these lyrics in the form of a note. And when you open up the note to read it, they start crying because they just love you so much and wanted to share their feelings for you through poetry. Wouldn't it be better if aliens just came down and killed us all? See, I knew you'd see what I mean. |
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