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This summary really does capture the story, puddle deep movie.
Biggest box office hit, but I’ve never met anyone who’s given it more praise than “I don’t mind it”.
I was goong to say it was more a tech demo since they made the insta-CGI machine for it. But then he went and made a second one about abandoning your home, getting your new one in the same trouble, and whales.
That's how I saw it, a tech demo for the cgi and the 3D TVs that everyone now has.
I saw the second one and literally don't remember anything about whales. So that's how much I paid attention.
I say that Avatar is the cinematic equivalent of having one of those monstrous huge old keyboards with eight hundred different preloaded sounds and instruments and pressing the DEMO button and listening to five minutes of every ridiculous sound effect known to God and Giorgio Moroder, and with about the same artistic merit.
A lot of movies are shallow. This one just rubbed people the wrong way because it was pro environmental.
It rubbed me the wrong way because it's still the mighty whitey fantasy. White dude comes in and is better at all the native stuff than the natives. It's just using blue alien sexy placeholders for the aboriginals.
Yes, that's the biggest and probably most valid criticism not tied to the film's writing or acting. It's pure white savior narrative. Same issue with Last of the Mohicans and a bunch of other movies.
My dad says it's one of the best movies he's ever seen, but specifically because we saw it in IMAX 3D and the graphics were outstanding. Beyond that, he agrees with me that it's just Fern Gully (but without Robin Williams, which instantly makes it worse), which is basically just Disney's Pocahontas.
I always called it "Dances with Fergully"
It's either that or people are salty these movies are so successful... But then again, I never see people complaining about how shallow the latest Transformers or Fast & Furious or Jurassic World movie is yet it's all I see whenever either Avatar movie is mentioned.
I've got a friend who's a big fan of the OG Transformers and all the comics and deep lore, and I can guarantee you that he's not happy every time another terrible live action Transformers movie comes out and is in the top three biggest movies of the year.
I really don’t think that was it, most people have no opinion on it at all.
How could you really take offense to the film? It’s kinda toothless.
How can people who didn't like the Avatar movies not simply drop it after a while. Their dislike isn't that it's shallow. If that was it, they'd have moved on. It's something else. Their hate has the same kind of vibe as people complaining about "wokeness" in other movies. Hell, I still hear people complaining about the "bad science" and "unrealistic villains" of Captain Planet, but praise 80's Transformers.
My grandson loved the Transformers movies even though I can't remember a thing about the first one (the only one I've seen). Lindsay Ellis did an essay on why the first one is so forgetable (hint, its Michael Bay's direction). I also was way too creeped out by the decepticon woman (Alice from Revenge of the Fallen) which was a total Michael Bay creation showing a bit too much about Bay's issues with women.
Avatar has James Cameron's solid direction and scriptwriting. It has the kind of strong women that Cameron can seem to write that others cannot seem to get right. But Avatar gets into some creepy themes much the way True Lies did to which Cameron clearly has a blind spot.
Proof that graphics matter more than anything else😔
I very much enjoy the first movie. I have watched it several times and still enjoy going back to it. I absolutely agree the plot is puddle-deep, as you said, and it makes no attempt at all to disguise its analogies ("unobtanium"), but it's mastery is not in the story itself but the way in which it is told. It's almost operatic in the amount of time it spends within each story beat. The second film failed to do a lot of the things I loved about the first one and was very forgettable.