Avatar

For as long as I can remember, video game designers have been trying to make their products look and feel more like movies. So why is it now that filmmakers want to regress and make their movies more like video games?

The answer is money, obviously. To get the video game generation off of their computers and into the theaters. So who ends up suffering?

Me, of course.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not some cinematic Luddite. Some loathsome purist who thinks that film was ruined by the advent of sound or color or Cinemascope or Michael Bay. Well, maybe a little ruined by Michael Bay but, none of these technical changes ever amounted to anything more than a temporary, fitful inconvenience to the conservatism of a film audience who grows  increasingly unphased by minor fluxes in presentation style. These technical advancements often do cause severe shakeups for the players of the industry itself, however. Silent actors with poor vocal abilities were ruined by the introduction of sound. Cinematographers schooled in the black & white use of light and shadow scrambled to learn Technicolor techniques. Old studio moguls who clung to the sweeping epics and gala musicals in Cinemascope throughout the '60s were tossed out on their ear by the new maverick filmmakers of the youth movement.

This whole "performance capture" evolution seems something quite different. Perhaps it will go the way of the "colorization" movement of the '80s. What bothers me is that with all the CGI magic being employed to make the realms of imagination and fantasy seem more lifelike and natural, the human element of real actors within those "sets" is more necessary than ever. Shall everything become a form of animation? I don't want to sound like a crazy reactionary but I think we need to nip this in the bud before our hordes of servant robots and sex holograms turn on their human masters and force us into slavery and unending toil in their zinc mines.

Also, we would keep the future of filmmaking out of the hands of dorks who live in their parent's basements and smell their own fingers too much.

Do we really want a significant portion of our movies stocked with the creepy caricatures found in Polar Express and Beowulf? And while James Cameron fudged a 50-50 approach in Avatar of real performance and "performance capture" (even the phrase is eerie), it doesn't take a financial wizard to figure out that paying $10 million a picture to an outsized ego of an actor will be a severe waste of money when you can conceive of and program in your new "stars" virtually.

And the Best Actress Oscar goes to... Omicron Zed 34572.yxl, from Apple's new line of iThespians!

Hell, on the bright side, maybe it will usher in a resurgence of live theater. The process might even make Gwyneth Paltrow appear more human.

All of these concerns arose within me as I finally sat down and watched King Cameron's latest blessing bestowed unto his admiring lords, vassals and esnes. A little ditty called Avatar that has become (showing you how far film has fallen into gimmickry) the number one box office earner of all time. Surpassing, you guessed it, Cameron's Titanic, which held top honors since 1997. The fucker is just printing money at this point. All from a reputation unduly earned. For Cameron doesn't make films. He makes digital events. And he markets them like cheap crank to a world of popularity junkies and fame whores who think anything is palatable and good if it's simply the biggest, most well known and shared experience. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Cameron was somehow involved in the creation of Facebook and Twitter. His movies fit perfectly into that mindset. A high school clique mentality for the movie-going world where the kid with the off brand jeans or the one without their own cell phone are ridiculed and outcast.

"You haven't seen Avatar yet!?! OMG, what a loser!"

But I've never given a shit about popularity or acceptance (my writing salary and blog activity attests to that). So, I made Cameron wait for the dollar or so I spend on DVDs through Netflix. I hope my stalling cost him a bid on a castle in Moravia; mostly due to my hatred of the wealthy, but also because his fucking movie sucked.

The best thing about Avatar is its lukewarmly liberal themes involving the "noble savage", some environmental preservation lessons and the absolute truism that most people who work for corporations in any capacity are soulless, inhumane wretches.

Cameron's metaphorical, eco-friendly apology to the Native Americans gets a tad lost however, by utilizing the very spendthrift ideology and wasteful excess that allowed the white man to conquer and ruin the peoples and their land in the first place. If you want to get across a message of earthy spirituality, harmony amongst the races and sharing cultural influences, I would suggest that dedicating the final hour of your $387 million picture to "shock and awe" explosions, futuristic war machines and rapid-cut action sequences is not, as the Lama would say, the "enlightened" path. Make a documentary like a normal hippie for chrissakes.

Avatar is flashy junk. Cinematic "bling" for a youthful audience visually deadened by the preponderance of shiny objects in the theaters these days. Filmic input for the "more is better" crowd of wired technophiles. Garish tripe for the sub-mental set. Digitized crack for the download generation. Vapid, computerized masturbation...

You get the idea.

The good news is that it took Cameron 12 years since his last feature to bring Avatar to the screen. Let's hope his next self-aggrandized abortion takes at least twenty.

Hopefully, I'll be dead by then.

Hopefully, we all will be. Then Mother Earth can truly have her well deserved rest.    

Comments

[Lance Lyle]

Dear C. Adolph,

Well and truly said...the popularity of this waste of film (or video, however Dr. Technology does his thing) says something about the movie-going public, and it sure as shit isn't good.

Immerse yourself in "Berlin Alexanderplatz" to cleanse the soul, intellect and palate!

Pots of Love and Kisses,

Lance

[jjmitch21]

Tarantino loved it, so it must have been good, right? ...right? No?