Leave AVATAR alone!

Okay. I've kept my mouth shut for, what, three weeks now. And, for the record, that's a very long time for me to keep my mouth shut about a movie. As week four comes along, though, I'm boiling over. I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna say something!

Leave Avatar alone!

Yeah, so the plot is not original. Neither is the plot to Dances With Wolves, Shrek, or Romeo & Juliet. Or Pyramus and Thisby, for that matter. Cameron has already done the Avatar story, but last time it was a historical romance aboard the Titanic. Yes, perhaps Cameron is too young in his career to be attempting a magnum opus -- perhaps he's not quite auteur stuff yet. Yes, the dialogue is so-so and the foreshadowing is a bit slap-in-the-face. But really, what film these days isn't? The last film that had any surprise value to me was... Man, I think it was Memento back in 2000. And we all still knew something was coming. But let's compare apples to apples and leave Christopher Nolan out of this.

Still, what I'm getting at... what was it again? Oh right, leave Avatar alone. What the hell is so bad about it, anyway? Let's itemize, I guess.

Predictability. I'm reading all up and down Facebook about how predictable it was. When has predictable ever stopped you from going to a movie? Sure as hell didn't stop me from going to Sherlock Holmes. Twice. And I can tell you as a fact, I knew everything that was coming the second time. Predictable didn't stop anyone from sitting all the way through all three of the Pirates of the Carribbean movies, Harry Potter, or Star Trek. Was it that you thought it wasn't going to be predictable? Or have you never seen a James Cameron movie before? I'd spoil the ending of Alien 3 for you, but you could probably guess it.

Script & Acting. Really? You think the script and/or delivery of the script was any worse than any other action film that's come out in the last year? If this film is competing with the big sci-fi blockbusters of the last couple years, it's up against stuff like War of the Worlds, Transformers (which was a franchise), Star Trek (franchise), and... Star Wars (which, by the time it was the 00's, was a franchise). Were any of these impressive in the script department? And that's excusing that the Star Wars franchise set the precedent for fantasy-type scripts in a sci-fi type film (not to mention orchestral score for a major motion picture, and not to mention ANY of the fantasy/sci-fi genre blending we see every day in film...).

In fact, who's been impressed with any non-drama script in the last three years at all? (Twilight fans, I'm doing you a favor by not mentioning Twilight) Maybe it's just me and maybe I'm just jaded. Maybe it's just some sort of sign that Avatar's script is SO bad that everyone thinks it's bad. But this is supposedly an opinion post, and my opinion is that Avatar had about as much to say as everything else in its genre, and for the bad press it's getting about the script, I didn't think it was that awful. It obviously wasn't about the script, anyway.

Well, if it wasn't about the plot or the script, what was it about? I guess I think that's obvious, but I'm not in agreement with the internetworking masses... To me it's rather clear that Avatar isn't about telling a new story, but telling a story in a new way. And that way is bright, fresh, ass-spanking CG in mother-loving 3D. Yes, the story is rather generic (read: GENRE), but the spin is what it looks like. Nowhere else (except X-Men) will you see blue cat-people riding dragons (except the dragon part. Nightcrawler didn't need a dragon.). Or 3D subtitles. Or... well, I already mentioned giant blue cat-people riding dragons. Who look like Sigourney Weaver. The cat-people. Not the dragons.

Right. My point. I'm going to make one.

Avatar's plot was run of the mill Romeo & Juliet, boy meets girl, problems of the ecological/ethical nature (get it? nature?), and also some spiritual undertones. Of course it's predictable. It was predictable in the 1600's. Everything we watch is predictable. The thing that makes movies interesting is how it's done differently. And I guess, for me, the oldie-time story that was being told in Avatar was different because it had blue cat-people in 3D, and Michelle Rodriguez. And it was fun to look at. And what's so effing wrong about that? Leave it alone, people. Just because it's making more money than you doesn't mean you need to pick on it.

OK. Rant completed. I'm gonna go watch SNL now.