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A non-nitpickers criticism of Avatar. (before you read this you may want to scan the Dysgraphia link at the top of the page) Then continue.  

For those of you who do not understand the reference to Kool-Aid there once was a crazy guy who had a cult that moved to South America. When people started to catch on to this cult the head of the cult had them all drink poisoned Kool-Aid to kill themselves.

Do you remember 1994? The year Bill Clinton signed NAFTA, the Northridge earthquake, the shoemaker-levy comet hitting Jupiter, Green Day released their album Dookie, the NFL moves to Fox and Babylon 5 hits the UPN. Oh those were the days.

I remember two movies impressed me in that wonderful year of 1994 for two completely different reasons. One was the Shawshank Redemption an adaptation of a Stephen King Novel that was directed by Frank Darabont. I loved the story and though I’m not a fan of Tim Robbins who plays the lead character and who's appearance is usually the kiss of death for all but two films, the other being bull Durham, he kicked ass in this movie. I loved Morgan Freeman who plays an almost equally important character that makes the movie work. Add in a cast of the best Hollywood supporting actors like Clancy Brown and David Proval and you have a powerhouse of acting. The second film is… wait let explain my Shawshank experience little more before I get to to my second film.

When I went to see Shawshank the first time there were only five people in the theater despite it being prime movie time. My heart began to sink when I realize that rumors of a flop and only five people in the theater did not bode well. Maybe they had heard something I hadn’t, my spirits began to sink before the film even started.

At the end of the screening everyone sat through the credits, No one moved. Then when the lights came up we all looked at one another in shock. We all found our selves together in the hall outside the theater and spontaneously started talking. All five of us, how many times have you seen that? An entire audience gathering outside the theater to talk after a movie?

Here we were total strangers, mixed incomes, races and two were married the rest single or divorces, a real cross section of America and we all agreed on one thing, that we had just seem something great. We talked for a half hour before breaking up and going our different ways.

 I stopped and looked ahead and saw a phalanx of people standing in line stretching out the door. Could this be the people for the next showing? I thought. Maybe there was some mojo for this great film after all, maybe there was hope. Sadly I found out that they were waiting for Forest Gump.

Forest Gump is the other movie of 1994. Now I would see Forest Gump as well and there was so much hype about it. Great buzz about the groundbreaking special effects and it was making huge money at the box office. Sure some knocked the story but everyone was on board the Gump Train. People were quoting it, talking about it and yes I saw it.

Gump was not awful but I couldn’t help but thinking as the main character managed to fall into the middle of something great… again that it was no Shawshank.

Well Shawshank came and went with a whimper as Gump climbed to the heights of greatness. Making a boatload of money and gathering up awards. 

Then a funny thing happened, Video. Shawshank that had bombed in the box office began to pick up steam in video. Sales of the Video and then the DVD grew and grew. It began to show up on lists of top tens, favorites and best movies of. Shawshank was what one studio exec called an “after release phenomena.”

Viewing Shawshank again I realized how well it aged. The story is a about human nature, our belief and biases and our desires to be free. A hundred years form now it will be as relevant as it was the day it was made. The alchemy of acting, directing, production and story that all came together to make a timeless film.

Forest Gump, again let me state that I don’t think it’s evil or awful or bad but Forest Gump has not aged well. I like looking through the selection of movies on the shelves of friends. I find it interesting that at last count every one of them had Shawshank and only three of them had Forest Gump. Only 1 had Forest Gump and not Shawshank. Many admitted to having Forest Gump but had purged it or lost it.

When I see Avatar I see in effect a new and updated version of Forest Gump. I see the lines and the hype about special effects. I hear the words about meaning and message. Like Gump it’s destined for greatness in dollars and a boatload of awards. But like Gump when those willingly drinking the Blue Kool-Aid someday wake up and find Avatar as relevant as parachute pants or Nehru jackets.

Unlike Gump Avatar is not a film. To be more accurate it is not a Motion Picture.

“What?” I hear you say. “Sure it is, I paid a bazillion dollars to see it? It has to be a Motion Picture.”

WRONG! just because you paid top bank that only means you are silly. Avatar is not a Motion Picture it is a spectacle. A motion picture is a medium of story telling, like a television series, radio dramas or plays and books. Avatar is a spectacle and a spectacle is simply a lopsided over blown exaggeration of an acceptable medium.

Wrestling is a spectacle of sport. Porn is a spectacle of women. Spectacles take the usual balance of a subject. Say sports or women and blow them out of proportions. In wrestling the humans are literally blown out of proportions, in adult films uh… well lots of things are out of proportion.

Avatar is a spectacle of Motion Pictures.

As in all spectacles it is difficult to see it accurately through the lens of the more common and acceptable criticisms. So you can’t measure wrestling through the vision of sports and measuring adult films through the filter of women films… well it’s a big stretch.

The same is true for Avatar. Is it difficult to review or measure by Motion Pictures standards because it is a spectacle. I clipped several reviews of Avatar from the internet at random using google. Top reviews from top film sites. Now take that review and strike out the lines about special effects, references to other films by Cameron, any mention of the time, the cost or how people fear it flopping. Take out anything to do with groundbreaking, feast for the eyes or other such hype and you will convert a six paragraph review to literally three lines. One of them will mention the limp story and one will mention how we have seen this all before. This is sure sign of a spectacle.

Compare this to one of the last block buster fiction films the Lord of the Rings.  Use the same filter and you end up with paragraphs of review not a few lines. It had special effects, fantasy world setting and something avatar didn’t have.. story. No one says, it’s a remake if anything Lord of the Rings is blamed for having too much story.

Stop it Fanboy. I’m not comparing  Lord of the Rings to Avatar. I’m comparing it to reviews. Sheesh. I can hear the complaints already.

Most reviewers aren’t getting the idea of Spectacle here. They are drinking the blue Kool-Aid that somehow this is a great motion picture. But like competition being the root of sport, and love being the root of romance for film story is the root. Wrestling has drama over competition and porn has graphic sex over love here we find image over story. The image blown out to exaggerated proportion.

 There is something else here and that is many of those who were wrong on Titanic, add most of Hollywood and film reviewers, are drinking more Avatar Blue Kool-Aid then the Fanboys drink Mt. Dew. Either consciously or subconsciously they don’t want to be the one reviewer who says “Star Wars will bomb” “Jaws won’t work because at its heart it’s a fish movie” Voices are muted not by some Orwellian power but by the choice of each individual to want to love this film. People I respect and are hopping on board the Avatar boat even before it was released because like all humans we don’t want to be wrong.

Spectacles, have a way of fading. They will not age well. Just watch wrestling from the 80’s or Porn from the 70’s and you will see what I mean. Everything in Avatar will one day be average. All the special effects and dazzling wow great stuff will one day be able to be done on my lap top. You will see the same thing in cartoons for kids. Just look at Morphing, once you needed supercomputers.. now my Mac can do it flawlessly. The marching of tech will make all of it common.

When everything in Avatar is common, what will be left?

Will people line up to see it forty years from now like the people line up to see the Seven Samurai even though they have the DVD of it at home?

Will its screenplay be read as examples of great dialog along with say Glenn Gary Glenn Ross. Will people say “I see you” like they say “may the force be with you”

Will its Dialog be held up as examples of excellence?

Will its story be novelized and sold for years?

No. Even the Fanboys will admit this while pushing up their taped glasses.

Then again maybe that’s not its job.

Maybe its to be the spectacle of our time, a hyper inflated mirror distorting our images like those in a clown madhouse.

So what’s the problem with Spectacles?

Well like all success in Hollywood this will have a spin off effect. Just like Star Wars open the gate for Science Fiction, Saving Private Ryan open the gates for war films, Lord of the Rings Made Fantasy hip. Avatar will be a formula that will be repeated to various degrees. Unlike Star Wars, Saving Private Ryan and Lord of the Rings Avatar is a flawed Source because its Spectacle not a motion pictures so it’s derivatives can only be less.

As if Hollywood movies execs need to think any less of the film going public they will see the lack of story and logic as a guide post. Someplace is a writer with a great story that will get trash canned because “It’s too much thinking” not enough shooting.

Imagine if every sport had to conform to wrestling? Imagine if every romantic movie had to conform to porn? Well the success of Avatar will create not a new high water mark in special effects but a new low water mark in story especially in the field I love Sci-Fiction 

Now this isn’t my criticism of Avatar. I’m not measuring Avatar by it’s inevitable effect on Hollywood. But I do know that every Fanboy who thinks this is the second coming of our savior of film makes the inevitable knock offs even more likely and the chances of those being superior efforts are poor to zero.

Now for the review… (to be continued)