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Monday, January 31, 2011

Avatar Sucked Ass

*****Spoilers Ahead*****

Now I know that everyone and their mother loved it, but I just watched it and found it nauseating.  It's a string of cliches packaged in a lame white guilt fantasy.  It's like a bunch of bleeding heart white liberals were sitting around going

"gee, I feel really bad about the destruction of the environment and the way that, historically, europeans have exploited and subjugated indigenous populations for their manpower, land and resources." 
"Hmm... yeah, I agree.  maybe we should do something about it." 
"OR, we could produce a movie that alludes to those issues, but will make billions of dollars, none of which will go toward helping the environment or improving the lives of the descendants of those our ancestors have wronged."
"Perfect!" 

And everything in this movie is just so contrived.  The remorseless bad guy, the way the good guy turns from his original intent (full on with a scene of "it started out that way, but now I'm changed!"), the dramatic death of their comrades. Maybe it's because I've seen this 20 times before, but I just didn't care. I didn't care that the military guy was an asshole.  I didn't care that Giovanni Ribisi was a douchebag.  I didn't care that Sigourney Weaver died (or did she?  I kind of stopped paying attention for a while).  I didn't care that Jake Sully was fortuitously saved by his blue girlfriend, twice. 

And I'm not a tactician.  I've had no military training.  I'm not a marine like mister Jake Sully.  I'm no warrior like the Navi.  But it seems to me that the obvious thing to do would not be a headlong assault into a technologically superior enemy who can easily outgun you.  Ever heard of a flanking maneuver?  You mentioned something about having the homefield advantage.  Maybe use the terrain to your advantage.  Is there anywhere they would bottleneck or be particularly vulnerable?
Not to mention that when they rode their birds in, they physically assault the helicopter-esque flying machines.  Now I figured the obvious thing would be to have your giant birds pick up rocks or thick tree trunks or something and drop them through the rotors, since knocking even one rotor out would cause the entire helicopter to go down.  But whatever.  I mean, even if the rotors wouldn't tear apart from the impact, I would assume it would cause some type of damage that would negatively impact their maneuvering capability.
Or you could put big boulders up on those floating islands and maybe roll them off onto the aircraft and the soldiers below. 
Or maybe direct part of your assault toward the gunship with the super evil bad guy aboard, thereby taking down the chain of command, since your familiarity with the military probably allows you to know on which aircraft he would be. 
Or maybe have your foot soldiers circle around and attack from the rear to create a diversion before your horsemen charge in. 
And why waste Rodriguez's character?  They had her take their only aircraft and attack the commander's airship, but had no one backing her up?  Seems like while all of his guns were trained on her, it would have been a good idea for Sully to have jumped onboard and dropped his grenades then.  But I guess sacrificing her needlessly works too. 

Jake Sully is a moron and everyone would have died if the fucking planet didn't decide to save them by sending in all of the animals to help them. 

Now, all that being said, I guess that ultimately I only found the story itself craptastic.  The direction, effects, dialogue, acting, etc were all fine.  So even though the movie sucked story-wise, everything else was well done.  And obviously, the visual effects were amazing.  I guess it depends on what you watch the movie for.  If you're caught up in the visuals, you'll probably find the movie pretty interesting.  If the visuals are secondary to an interesting story, you'll probably think the movie sucks balls. 

23 comments:

  1. I heard Avatar was a huge subliminal peace & save the trees film

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  2. You know, I read the title of this article and instantly disagreed with you and was planning my counterargument... but after reading that opening inner dialog, you had my attention once again.

    I think if you go into the movie with an unassuming, not-too-focused-on-details attitude, it has the ability to immerse you completely in another world and leave you wishing you were there.

    However, if you look at the movie critically, I agree with you-- there are annoying minutia and a relatively vapid plot that make it unsatisfying.

    Thanks for the post!

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  3. I thought this movie was really boring. :|

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  4. thank fucking god. i really disliked Avatar. i dont know why everyone loved it so much. such a bland and unoriginal plot, predictable, awkward alien sex scene. it was pretty, but fuck that. special effects are for suckers. they wont save a bad movie.

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  5. They could learn a thing or too from the Ewoks.

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  6. never watched it and never will.
    so bring on the spoilers.

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  7. yeah. you are right. the visual effects and so on were really great...but the story is not very hmm...new

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  8. you're totally right they had the wrong tactics - they should have employed an insurgency based approach and worn the marine's down.
    However I thought it was a cool film...just an opinion

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  9. I only liked the visuals, the story was blah...

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  10. I agree, a movie can stand on it's visual effects alone! The story and acting was hardly engaging and overall the movie was just a bunch of eye candy.

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  11. i got 20 minutes into it and got bored

    your friend,
    ectomorphmuscle.blogspot.com

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  12. I disagree with your opinion good sir. I actually enjoyed the movie.

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  13. hmmm personally i thought avatar was an OK movie. story line was nothing new, only selling point i believe why people liked it was because it sort of sparked all these new movies to come out with 3D movies.

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  14. I personally loved the movie. I didn't think too much into the technicals of the movie, I just thought the plot was awesome.

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  15. I actually loved the movie, but that would probably be because I watched it in awesome 3D mode and all.

    Hans-Mylife345.blogspot.com

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  16. I only watched the first 20 minutes or so of this movie before I got bored. I am gonna hold off on reading this article though because I might actually end up watching the whole thing... Also, I am preparing for an epic snow storm...

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  17. Yes and No, you have too look beyond the usual story and quality in these types of movies

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  18. Yeah definitely an overrated CG fest! I completely agree! Kudos!

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