Basically what I want to talk about here is to tell everyone to stop hating on this movie and just shut the fuck up. Now look, you're allowed to hate any movie you want, but it is insanely obvious that the majority of people who hate this film just hate it because it's popular to hate it, like The Dark Knight Rises or Twilight (I mean true Twilight is awful but how many people hate on it without actually seeing it?). And look, I don't love Avatar, I just think it's a pretty good movie, not mind blowing or anything, but I like to see movies be treated fairly and this film isn't, so let's go over this shall we?
Now the biggest complaint that I hear is how the story is unoriginal; it's the Native American story combined with an enviormentally friendly message that we've seen in Ferngully, Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves, Princess Mononoke and so forth. Guess what guys?...It wasn't original when those movies did it either! The fact that you can name more than one that did it means all those others must be crap as well? Well...maybe Ferngully, but the others are still considered good movies. Now true it can come down to how the story is represented, after all, there are some movies out there where you've seen the plot a million times but you still love the movie, so why do the others get a pass? Well Pocahontas is a Disney movie so it automatically gets a pass even though it's not very good. A lot of people grew up with Ferngully and love it despite it being kinda crap. Dances With Wolves is an Oscar bait movie and it's 3 hours long, you fall asleep 45 minutes into it and just assume it was good and maybe you were the reason you didn't like it. While Princess Mononoke (while also getting a pass for being Studio Ghibli) is genuinely a good movie because it does something different, it shows things from both perspectives, it doesn't say which one is simply the bad guy that needs to be stopped, both sides have legitimate reasons for their actions and it's left up to you to decide which one is in the right. It does something different with the story so people don't hate on it.
So what did Avatar do? Well there is a very clear bad guy in this movie...MAN!! And it is your pretty basic greedy foreigner corrupts and attacks the natives and their primitive technology but the one white man will learn to respect the culture and switch sides and fight to defend it, yeah, we've seen this all before. So what is it that this movie does that makes me like it? It fully explores the culture that I'm supposed to be rooting for. In any of the other movies (Excluding Mononoke) I couldn't give a shit about the native culture, in fact in most of the cases, they're just as bad as the white man. But in this version, the majority of the film is spent on learning about them and seeing just how cool they are and how different and unique everything is. So it may be the same story, but it goes a little be deeper into the native culture than most of the others, so when the white man comes to destroy the home, I actually feel upset because I spent time with this culture and learnt more about them.
So do I think this is a revolutionary film that completley changes the format? Oh fuck no, this movie is full of problems. Like Sam Worthington I think is literally the most generic actor in Hollywood that I'm not unconvinced he is actually a robot invented by Hollywood. But I do think it has an interesting culture, the effects are obviously amazing (Though I am always fully aware that I'm looking at CGI) and the side characters are surprisingly memorable as well as our main character been given better motivation for wanting to be part of the culture and I also think the movie has excellent pacing.
Is it a cinematic masterpiece? No? Is it overrated garbage? No? So what is it? A pretty damn good movie that honestly I think just range from "Meh" to "Awesome" but honestly I don't really see why it should be lower than that, unless someone really has a prejudism against 8ft blue cats.
-Danny
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