What’s The Deal? Avatar

I’m so proud to introduce this post and new series titled What’s the deal? By Rob K.

Rob is constantly being bombarded by people telling him “you haven’t seen ____? You gotta check it out.” Or hearing critics rave “this movie is a classic, a must see.” So Rob decided that from now on every time he actually watches one of these flicks, he’ll give us his take on whether the film will live up to the hype or fall short.

Avatar is the highest grossing movie ever. It’s taunted as the latest movie that will change cinema forever. Having finally seen this movie I think it may have been over-hyped a bit too much. Sure, visually it is great. The rendering is done very well, it has a rounded effect versus post-render 3D movies that have a “layered look”. While the idea behind this is nice, I personally am having trouble jumping on the 3D bandwagon, so this didn’t do much to sway my interest.

The story of Avatar is as basic as everyone says it is. It’s not a terrible story, but it is extremely common. The writing is pretty bad, however. I couldn’t help but feel like every line was borrowed from some movie that came before it. It became predictable. I found myself correctly guessing when conflict was beginning and how the conflict would be resolved. There wasn’t any flaws or anything with the plot per say, it was just run of the mill. I suppose since the main draw of the movie was the visual, it was assumed that I wouldn’t really be that worried about it, but I think plot is more important than visual effects.

I also felt myself leaning back and forth between thinking this movie was good for what it was and thinking that this movie was too corny for me to tell people I liked it. Some of the scenes felt like James Cameron really wanted me to say “wow” when I watched them, but it seemed like he tried to hard. There was one or two scenes that I felt were a little embarrassing to watch, like they belonged in a sub-par kids movie. Every time I started getting into the movie one of these scenes happened and reminded me that there was no way this movie should have been so praised.

I came to the conclusion that if I ever watched this movie it would be in theaters so that I could see what made it so groundbreaking. From what I heard about Avatar before seeing it, if I didn’t experience the visuals of the movie in a theater there was little reason to see it at all. While I was watching the movie I didn’t really find myself thinking that this was going to be the future of cinema. I’ve discussed this with people who have told me it was because I saw it in a standard theater and not an IMax theater. My thought on that is that if a movie is truly a great movie I should be able to watch it on a tube TV and still get an enjoyable experience. Overall, I guess I’m glad I watched Avatar as a matinee.

Also, James Cameron couldn’t  come up with a better name than Unobtainium? Seriously?