Avatar and D9 – epic timing on the two films.
D9 was innovative, thoughtful, deep… profound even. It was almost Orwellian in how he merged the current concerns, trends, etc with a plausible future. It also showed the complexity of empathy, which is HARD to do. The depth of emotion and powerful narrative was sort of like Children of Men…. very real, plausible and now. Pressing, and deeply impacting. I know I said it once, but it was a profound film – immersing yourself into this fictional probability wasn’t an extraordinary stretch, and they had a freaking city sized disc hovering over the whole damn film.
But you hit the nail on the head with Avatar (my friend Monty who said, “I get it – you use military to show military is bad) – the entire narrative of the story was destroyed when the simple message (Nature Good, mindless corporate army as bad) is compelled and cemented with the use of the same thing he was vilifying. You can’t use power, destruction, and military might as the driving force of the film, when the exigence is counter to it. It seems hypocritical, and so simplistic it pissed me off. A lot. I wasn’t expecting much from Cameron, but this was the first time I got that *A-HA* feeling about 5th Element, where people called it sophomoric and juvenile in regards to the story. That is precisely what Avatar was. The only thing that moved the story along was the same thing that was so vilified throughout the story of the film. That isn’t hypocrisy so much as a cancer in your story. It is lazy storytelling, it is childlike, boring, and pathetic. It sort of ruined the experience for me because I didn’t give a damn about any single character at all. I haven’t seen two dimensionality like that ever, and it became subtedly ironic in a 3-D film.
The emotions I felt while Sigourney Weaver was dying were the definition of disinterested and detached. I wanted something wonderfully visual, not a dying lady. I didn’t care about her character in the slightest… in fact I cared so little I was ambivalent about whether I even cared if she was dead. It was like I couldn’t be bothered with individuals they gave up on before the screen was even lit. But none of the other character’s story arcs were compelling, even thought they could have been…. the jealous tribesmen vying for machismo, the compelled ideological scientist that has been worn to smoking by the bureaucracy…. etc. Each character had some potential…. I was amazed they so ultimately failed in building any sort of relationship with the audience.
Further, when you start looking at it as Dances with Wolves in Space (decorated soldier escapes to hide away, become and befriends the enemy, empathizes, learns, then battles the original ally….) it gets even more boring. These are campfire tales that have been told around the campfire for millenia (something my friend Mike pointed out)…. and District 9 is the SAME damn story. A guy fighting the prawns is forced out by becoming a pariah, then drifts into the prawn world out of necessity to escape, learns, empathizes, then battles the original ally… and look at the difference. Look at the story arc. It’s not only amazing how well devised the faux documentary concept was, but just how epic it was that Avatar could miss the mark on so many levels.
I think a VERY compelling side by side comparison is the battle at the end… you have a “good” guy alien hybrid in a robot suit fighting humans, as compared to a bad guy marine in a robot suit fighting aliens. The budgets? 30 million versus 300 million. Which was more compelling, engaging, important, and interesting. I mean… seriously. You sit here now and loved both films… but which one seemed like an epic battle of good and evil and which felt like a GIJoe cartoon where knowing is half the battle? It isn’t a contest.
I know Avatar was PRETTY AS HELL! It was fun! In fact my suspension of disbelief was such that the only time I REALLY got caught in Avatar was the floating mountains. It was so stupid that they left out any explanation of that AT ALL, regardless of how rudimentary…… that I even made up a story. See the metal plate on the crust of Pandora, in this particular spot, was a negative to the positive mountains and repelled each other like magnets with opposite poles. It’s dumb, but at least it is something.
Suspension of Disbelief in District 9? I never really needed it…. at least not in the respect of Avatar. And not in the sense of Sci-Fi, but the idea of shallow stories lacking dimensionality or depth. I might be stretching here, but I think you get it.
I get film for spectacle… quite easily (speaking of the Mitchell treats). But is Avatar going to be nominated for anything important? No. Is it going to reverberate socially as an important film? No. It’s throwaway trash…. popcorn bullshit. Not only that, the message might have been impacting in 1999, or the animation might have been compelling in 2005. But to say this is a life changing film that will alter the future of film is ludicrous. Even the 3-D wasn’t that compelling because of how long it took to bring this to the screen.
Did I love it, sure. Did I reach for the screen when the floaty jellyfish birdy thingies were on screen, sure. I just don’t think there is anything to the film at all…. nothing. I mean…. a week later I haven’t thought of it once. District 9 is something that I think of every time I am in public, when I watch the news, when I think about culture…. it was an engaging narrative that will reach much deeper into our culture than Avatar will ever reach.
It’s like… remember that awesome balloon animal you got that one time? No… because even though it was the coolest balloon animal you have ever seen it was simply filled with hot air and when it burst you didn’t think about it ever again.
Is the world a better place for Avatar? Not at all… it’s worthless. Is it better for having District 9? I think in almost every way….. it was a particularly powerful idea.
But it does go back to the concept of the blockbuster, and niche or intellectual media being too complex for the masses to commune over (http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14959982) and that:
Perhaps the best explanation of why this might be so was offered in 1963. In “Formal Theories of Mass Behaviourâ€, William McPhee noted that a disproportionate share of the audience for a hit was made up of people who consumed few products of that type. (Many other studies have since reached the same conclusion.) A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read “The Lost Symbolâ€, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it.
I used to be insecure about culture. Pragmatists would flatly argue with my musical passions when I suggested Britney Spears, No Doubt, Sugar Ray, Reel Big Fish are UTTER TRASH. “But what of the masses,” they would say with a drone. “Millions of record sales can’t be wrong”.
It use to worry me like some conundrum a la Pascal’s Wager. But then it washed over me…. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds helps a bit… but YES. Oh my dear YES people can be delusional en masse. It’s human nature.
Just because it made a billion dollars in 17 days doesn’t mean it’s important or impacting. It just means it’s simple.
Both were great films, but I think it’s important not to overstate the importance of Avatar less the TV Brainmushed Ambulatory Vacuum Tubes (Thanks Mr. Breathed) that are the American Public becomes dumb down even quicker. Reality TV has showed our collective lack of any desire for original, engaging story, and if we become any more intellectually lazy dialogue and plot will go the way of silent movies, with intermittent cavemen grunts.
I felt incredibly tricked by Avatar. I didn’t have any expectation at all… but eye candy is the word. Or hollow, insipid, trip video might be better.