Actually, providing a review of Avatar is superfluous. Aside from the blanket publicity the movie received in the months before its release, and the multifarious efforts of every movie critic, professional and amateur, to document its success, excess, and failure, almost everybody fails into one of two categories: you’ve either already seen it, or are going to see it sooner or later. Or both. For the few of you who might still be on the fence, a proper review really only consists of three words: Go See It.
With the review out of the way, I can move on to something much more fun – personal reaction and reflection.
In 1977, Star Wars had a similar build up, at least relative to the times. I was in LA then, and the city was blanketed with little billboard ads showing the two four letter words which looked so much Star Trek. Really, that was the basis of their pre-release advertising campaign – provide a subliminal link to that iconic TV show, and hope people would respond.
It seemed to have worked. Movies opened on Wednesdays back then, not Friday, and by the start of the weekend, the word was out: Go See It. So Cheryl and I tried that Friday night in May. On a typically balmy LA evening, we drove up the ocean from Venice to San Vicente, and on to Westwood by 7 PM. Sold out. All night.
We had to go, though. I was 28, and had spent many hours in the mid 70’s watching the ubiquitous Star Trek reruns, enamored by the subtle insights I was gaining into human psychology and leadership tactics by watching the interplay between the Doctor, the Captain, and the Chief Science Officer – better known as Bones, Kirk, and Spock. Also, one of the reasons I had picked my specialty of Ob five years earlier was the secret ambition to have a skill set which might be needed if humanity ever began extra-terrestrial colonization (remember, back then, we were still flying to the moon with regularity, and it seemed only a matter of time …)
Saturday morning, about 10 AM, we showed up for the first show of the day. The theatre was packed. Mostly with 10-15 year old boys and a few dads along for the ride. We had no idea to expect. The time from 1968 through 1976 had been a golden age for Hollywood cinema. Films were meant to be both entertaining and intelligent (at least for 20 somethings like us.) Bonnie and Clyde. The Graduate. Midnight Cowboy. American Grafitti. Chinatown. The Godfather (I&II). Taxi Driver. And a raft of others, like Easy Rider, Medium Cool, Mean Streets, which would be called Indies today, and were gritty and honest back then. We expected a lot from movies.
So we were not really prepared for what we saw that day. Luckily, we were seeing it with all those adolescents, who had no pre-conceived notions. They reacted to the movie as it was – a Saturday morning adventure, with Good Guys and Bad Guys, and Close Calls and Funny SIdekicks. All made up with the highest gloss of honesty and reality (read: a grubby, not spit-polished future), respect for the story and nothing else. The actors were treated by George Lucas the way Phil Spector would use singers on his records: just another musical instrument building the Wall of Sound. A bunch of nobodies who were told to act sincere (Luke) or as if they were in on the gag (everyone else, especially Harrison Ford and Alec Guinness). The kids in the audience would gasp, would scream, would cheer, would applaud – they were raucous, not respectful, and really defined my reaction to that movie. They saw it for what it was, entertainment based on an archetypal story of youthful rebellion and journey.
That movie played all summer, and is one of the few I’ve ever gone back to see again in a theater during its initial run (Significantly, Titanic is another.)
Flash forward about 30 years, and Peter Jackson’s New Zealand and computer graphic re-imagining of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy made its annual Christmas time appearance. By this time, we knew what an Event Movie was all about, having been through so many over the past two decades. Think Jurassic Park, Independence Day, and the like. Really, Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark started all that. A few were worth attending; most were pale imitations. And occasionally, one would surprise you.
Cheryl and I went to see The Return of the King with our kids, my sister and her husband, and their friends and kids – a dozen of us in all, half under 20. We had to set aside the whole day for this, what with collecting the broods, driving to the theatre, parking, walking, a 3 hour show, and then de-compress at Leucadia Pizza afterwards. A movie that took a whole day to enjoy had darn well better be worth it, and that one was, the last Event I had felt good about.
On Christmas, we had a collection of 20 somethings at our house – 4 kids (including Mu Chen, who had been a exchange student with us two years earlier) and two Significant Others. Years earlier, Cheryl and I had gone to movies on Christmas, which back then was a lonely affair – no one went out that afternoon, which made picking a show easy.
We wanted to see Sherlock Holmes, opening that day. Sold Out. All Night. So we immediately called a quick family meeting, and rushed into Avator, which seemed to be playing every hour on the hour. Place was PACKED, and the whole audience looked like something out of the 50’s with our 3-D glasses and goofy grins on. Except we were in gigantic reclining “stadium” seats and eating from popcorn containers the size of a Swedish exercise ball.
Avatar breaks no new ground with its story. Every 10 minutes or so, I would get a flash of, say, Braveheart or Apocalypto, or Jurassic Park, or .. whatever. Didn’t matter. For most of the 2.5 + hours, I sat enthralled. The colors, the action, the snide remarks from Signorey Weaver, the touching youthful sincerity of Sam Worthington (Jake), the weak-kneed corporate bad guy Giovanni Ribisi, the floating mountains, the fiberoptic love tree, the 10 foot tall Na’Vi and their cryptic language, Michelle Rodriguez piloting a goofy 22nd century helicopter – I bought it all.
James Cameron may be an ass, and he may be a crypto-fascist, but he sure knows how to make movies. I don’t care about the technology – the whole POINT of movies is “suspension of disbelief”, when the artifice drops away, and one is IN the story. Doesn’t matter how the filmmakers achieve it, I don’t want to de-construct their work (at least not now) – that would only re-build the proscenium for me, and I‘d rather just enjoy myself, thank you very much.
I have not yet met anyone who has seen the film that didn’t like it. When both my wife and I feel equally strong about about LIKING a movie, and are both, at our age, ENRAPTURED by it, then I know it has a universal appeal. Don’t worry about the 3-D, the years of green-screening, the motion capture tech, the CGI work – it doesn’t matter any more than the technology behind a classic Walt Disney cartoon like Sleeping Beauty. Just go and have fun – gasp, laugh, be a little excited, and walk out with a smile. Just don’t breath the air until you have a mask on.