mmoa_writes: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] mmoa_writes at 11:51pm on 03/02/2010
OK - long comment ahead!

I did actually go to see it again and the only reason I haven't changed this review (I added a few extra comments on my lj http://mmoa.livejournal.com/175218.html#cutid1 which for some reason didn't update here) is just because it would have turned into a load of capslock. There were things that I didn't notice the first time I saw it that leapt out at me, and reading other reviews brought up many things that would normally have pissed me off, but I'd just... suppressed? I also think I was rather struck by the novelty of a three hour film that didn't make me go to sleep and consistent (though in no way groundbreaking) CGI!

I also think - which is why I'd make a terrible critic - that I felt too embarrassed by the whole spectacle to be very negative about it; there's something so wasteful about a film like Avatar and that it turned out to be a load of unimaginative piss was just sad. Especially as it's the only real sci-fi film of that scale that's been made for a while.

As someone who loves science-based worldbuilding...it was terribly disappointing.

Absolutely! I had very very high expectations, even after seeing some of the leaked pictures (which weren't nearly as impressive as I thought they were meant to be). After the first ten minutes, I stopped expecting them to be met. After the first half hour I think I stopped expecting anything. To me, it just turned into eye-candy, the sort of stuff Pixar puts out to show it's latest developments, and almost not worth considering as a film (unlike District 9 which definitely had it's problems but at least asked me, the viewer, to take it seriously).

I hated the fact that Pandora looks so much like Earth when it shouldn't. I actually found the bioluminscence so annoying as if Cameron were saying 'look! I know scienze!'. I hated the fact that a comparatively developed African nation amongst several other 'developing' (ie South American) nations are the only ones mentioned to show how much of a shit hole Earth has become.

...although it would not have been enough to save the movie for me if nothing else about it changed.

And there've been lots of other suggestions - telling the story from the Na'vi perspective (which would have been ten times less coherant and a hundred times more offensive, knowing Cameron), or Trudy's. None of these would have helped especially considering the original material (I think I linked to a leak of the first plot in the edited lj post) and how badly Cameron treated it to give us the dross that is Avatar.

PS Have found a link to one of the documentaries - http://www.yourdiscovery.com/alienplanet/. The other one I really want to find as it was even better in my opinion.

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