Some stories should never be written. This is the one truth that Hollywood can never seem to grasp. They keep doing remakes and retellings of stories that didn't need to be remade or retold. Is it creative bankruptcy? Some sort of Hollywood formula? Or simple blindness amongst producers and writers? I don't think there is an easy answer.
When I started my novel, I knew the time was finally ripe for telling a story that had been rambling around in my brain for fifteen years. I wrote and wrote and wrote. After five years I gave up for two reasons - first, the story had a structural problem. But second, and more importantly, I realized that my story had outlived its useful life. The world had changed too much for my story to ever work... which brings me to AVATAR.
Now before I go any further, I want to say that there may be spoilers ahead. Although the biggest problem with AVATAR is the story's lack of originality, I still think you should see it spoiler free and enjoy it for what the producer and writer intended. So if you haven't seen the movie, turn away now... Go ahead, we'll wait...
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This film achieves heights of visual accomplishment not seen in a long time. The environment is just that crisp. When you add the layers of wildlife and the imaginative takes on animals and geography, it all adds up to one of the most astonishing film looks since The Lord of the Rings pilfered New Zealand and turned it into Middle Earth. However, a film begins, middles and ends with story - and that is where this film dies on the vine.
As compelling as the visuals were, if the story had really been churning out at an equal rate, the visuals would have been even more spectacular. For example, in the films best sequence where Jake has to bond with his first flying dragon thingy, the story and the visuals are equal, creating a fantastic sequence that almost seemed like a completely different movie. As these characters had to climb up to the floating sky islands and then bond with one of the dragons before plunging to near certain death made for the most compelling moments of film this year - both visually and creatively entertaining, with story and image in sync. If the rest of the film was as interesting as these few minutes, I would have been thrilled.
The problems with the story begin right away. There are logic problems with the set up. Our hero is a wounded marine who agrees to work for a space corporation to replace his dead brother in the Avatar project. He goes to Pandora where this corporation is mining a miracle substance called unobtanium (I'm not making that up) that does something or other - its never explained with the implication being that its not important as to what it does. At one point, Jake illustrates this point by saying something to the effect that, "They have something we want, so we take it." Upon arriving at Pandora, Jake is immediately cast as the middle ground between mindless automaton Scientists and mindless automaton Soldiers, both being played against each other by the evil Corporation. The xenophobic soldiers don't see the aliens as the indigenous peoples on the planet, but as stupid savages in the way of progress. The scientists, on the other hand, see them as some sort of enlightened culture that could bring humanity back to us if we could just learn from them. Jake is just happy to run in his giant blue Avatar. The problems, of course, are that the film is set up as an analogy. We are not presented with real human beings or real aliens. We are presented with stereotypical view points (good guys = scientists, bad guys = soldiers) and we aren't ever given any contradictory evidence. All scientists are good, all soldiers are bad. And the Navi are a god fearing alien race that lives in peace and harmony with everything. So, of course, we hate them. Because we're greedy.
The whole world that Cameron created doesn't make any sense from that point of view. Quick, write a prequel in your mind. How did humans find this planet? How did we determine there was this mineral on the planet? How did we manage to set up a giant base there? Did the Navi not realize that we humans were there? Did we humans not realize that we would have to wipe out the Navi in order to rape their planet? Its stated right at the beginning that the Navi want to kill all the humans and yet they seem to tolerate these obvious Avatar's in their midst? Why? None of this made any sense... and from that point forward, the stupidity begins to pile more on top of a story that is already built on a pretty shaky base.
The Navi had been at war until they were brought together at the beginning of the time of sorrow (presumably when the humans arrived, though never clearly stated). Why didn't they try to kill the humans then? When the humans first attack (about half way through the movie), the Navi try to kill them with bows and arrows - with the arrows just bouncing off the ships. Have they never fought humans before? Haven't they been killing humans for years before this? So why don't they know their arrows are ineffective? Shouldn't they already know how to kill humans? And isn't this environment supposed to be extremely hostile to humans? And yet these space marines are constantly wiping the floor with their primitive counterparts without doing anything more strenuous than pulling a trigger. Heck, they march in a straight line and fire their guns and the Navi charge right at them like Pickett at Gettysburg with the same result. And if the Navi are supposedly so peaceful and harmonious, why have a warrior clan or warrior mentality at all? If they are one with nature, why learn how to kill others? Why have that become the basis for your entire culture and your entire manhood ritual?
I could go on and on and on. But the gist of the problem is this, in trying to borrow the story of Dances with Wolves, they took all the parts of the story that they liked and left the rest behind. The Navi were so much like Native Americans that even the space horses looked like they'd just been hijacked off the wall of a Native American petroglyph. And yet, the Navi had none of the associated history attached - no trail of tears, no Little Big Horn, no Plains Indians and counting coups and Buffalo Hunts... nothing like that - like some sanitized version of American Indians, like a really fuzzy shadow of them. And the marines weren't much better - dumb grunts that go off to fight because, of course, they're blood thirsty savages who follow orders because they're marines. Fire on innocent men, women and children - okay. Do it for some dumb corporation - might as well. There was no motivation for them, as they too were scrubbed clean of all the massacres they'd been privy to, all the civil war fighting, all the fear of being scalped. As a writer, if you simplify your analogy too much, it ceases to have meaning. And it really becomes problemsome when you have such a clear cut analogy that has been stripped of most of its meaning. What we're left with is a message that says, human beings bad, native creatures good. Or more simply, Greed is bad. At nearly three hours, to be left with a message like that makes the whole affair seem rather pretentious.
I'd like to be able to say that I liked the movie while I was watching it but formed all these opinions after the fact, but the truth is that these problems were so glaring, I was bothered by them throughout. In the battle scene at the end where the aliens fight back by flying in from above on their flying dragons and shooting arrows through the windshields of the helicopters, my only thought was... "When did they figure out how to do that? Or is it just that somehow the windshields are now more brittle and arrows can pass through them?" I'm thinking this as I'm watching the movie, which is never a good sign. But I did have one revelation after the movie that is the basis of my argument here.
Years ago, right after Titanic came out and Cameron was talking up his new 3-D technology idea, he suggested that his next project would be a TV series about a real life mission to Mars. When I got home last night and my eyes were still caressing the incredible visuals of Avatar while my brain spewed hatred on the story, it occurred to me that if Cameron had decided to use this technology with a story about going to Mars, the film would have been completely incredible. So compelling were the visuals that had they been slaved together with a story worthy of them, Cameron really would have changed film making forever. And that was when I realized that the end result of all my bitching about the story came down to the fact that the film LOOKED great, but the story was a complete waste of time. It should never have been written. There was no reason to even tell the story. It was a story we'd all heard before and it had been told better by someone else.
So overall, I'd have to give the movie a C- at best. It was visually stunning, but the story was so weak that my brain protested while I was watching the movie. It was like biting into a nice juicy steak only to discover that it was actually a plastic dog toy that goes squeak. You still have a nice dog toy, but the meal you were promised is only a distant memory.
5 comments:
Allow me to be the seven zillionth person to observe, "Dancing With Smurfs."
As I noted (and stole from a Twitter feed) and mentioned on your Facebook page:
The Matrix + Pocahontas + The Smurfs = Avatar.
I liked it for what it was - a good looking film that was at least 30 minutes too long, predictable plot ( with all sorts of sci-fi storylines stolen) and James Cameron patting himself on the back...
OK, I agree with most of what you say, Will. Like you, I found myself protesting some things even as I watched the movie.
Why would so many of the vertebrate animals on the planet have evolved with 6 limbs when the people look just like us only better looking and blue? We look like we do because the 4 limb configuration is efficient across vertebrate species. It makes no sense that lower species evolved on Pandora with 6 limbs but the top level species somehow lost the extra arms.
The analogy to the conflict between the US government and the Native Americans is so obvious that it hits you between the eyes. But much of what passes for religion among the Navi looks more Afro-Cuban. If the screen writer must be so analogy driven, it would preferable not to hybridize so much.
The characters play to type beyond believability. Unobtanium is a stupid name for an element.
However, some of your criticisms strike me as unfair in that the stupidity of the two sides in the Pandora/unobtanium conflict has been played out repeatedly in THIS planet’s history. “Dances with Wolves” was a success because, among other reasons, it rang true with the audiences. The mindless, and seemingly enthusiastic collusion of the soldiers with the corporation, has been seen many times in our own past. We all hope it won’t happen again in the future, but what are the chances, really?
After listening to an interview with a descendant of Sitting Bull just today, I wonder how Native Americans view the conflict between the US and Al-Qaida. Is not Al-Qaida – or its surrogate, the Taliban – fighting to preserve an ancient way of life that is completely misunderstood by those who seek to destroy it? Have we really tried to understand it? Do we think of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan as automatons? Those who oppose them probably do. I do not, nor do I view our opponents as devils. My point here is that the over-simplification of opposing sides seen in Avatar is what we engage in every day.
The 2.5 hours of the movie, though they may seem overlong to the movie’s critics, are too short to include the full story of the expected human internal opposition. One chopper pilot (her story line itself doesn’t quite make sense – why was she not court-martialed for her desertion during the attack on the Tree?) and a couple of less well defined characters must stand in for what we would expect to be a more widespread movement of disunity among the humans. But to the Navi (Native Americans, North Koreans, Vietnamese, Taliban – pick your conflict), the entire human species (or Americans as all humans in the movie are portrayed) must seem like the soldier automatons seen in the movie.
I agree that the plot coasts along on the plots of other stories that seemed more original in earlier tellings. Really, the story is much too lazy for my taste, as it is for yours. But I also must point out that thousands of years ago, the author of Ecclesiastes noted that “there is nothing new under the sun.” All things being equal, I prefer an original and surprising story. On the other hand, I enjoy “comfort” stories as well. I don’t hate the predictable story if it is told with style. I cheer the heroes and boo the villains with gusto. I laugh and cry at all the cues.
The best stories of the past keep getting retold over and over again, re-interpreted for a new generation. This is not necessarily to be scorned, but to be recognized and appreciated. One of the reasons that Cameron chose the plot line he did, I must guess, is because we LIKE this story.
Overall, I think that Avatar is flawed, but still Oscar worthy. The visual virtuosity alone is, as you say, stunning. I would see it again, and I’m sure I will – with our without the 3D specs.
Happy New Year, dude.
Cheers.
Dave...my main issue with your review...this film is Oscar-worthy from a special effects standpoint, and maybe sound effects, but that's it. It should not be a contender for best picture or best director.
It's funny...because the more I think about the film, the more I dislike it...
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