Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Giving Blockbusters a Good Name

I’m not normally greatly impressed by fx. Give me a good script and cheesy fx over the reverse any day -- any day but yesterday when I caught Avatar.

Avatar’s cgi animation achievement (in 3D) is so over-the-top that it deserves to seen just as a spectacle. See it in the theater no matter how big your plasma or LCD screen may be. This needs a really big screen. The script? Well, there is a certain irony to a film that relies so heavily on advanced industrial technology carrying an anti-high-tech-industry message. The whole Noble Savage thing may be a bit overdone (in the way that a Caterpillar D10 is a trifle large for a tractor). For all that, it is well-plotted, well-written, and well-paced – so much so that the 162 minutes passed quickly. In this it is unlike Cameron’s earlier film Titanic which seemed to me interminable – I know it was a hit, but by an hour into it I was rooting heartily for the iceberg. The villains in Avatar are villainous, the heroes heroic, and their clash makes for a rousing drama. This kind of thing could give blockbusters a good name.

Now if I only could get my hands on some Un-obtainium. I'm guessing that’s the stuff that makes the mountains float in the air on the moon Pandora.

2 comments:

  1. Need to catch this one still. My wife was not impressed with Titanic, so she's a bit resistant to seeing this one. I keep telling her that she enjoyed Cameron's other movies. But that Titanic thing just hangs there. :-)

    But your the fourth person who has similar taste in movies that enjoyed it. So that's a good sign.

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  2. Actually I enjoyed them both. There are scenes in Titanic that I like, which are atypical to what a reviewer might point to, like the enormous engine room on that ship. I guess that comes from working around large machinery. The love story and villain in the film work well, but is not the main draw for me per se--it's the overall look of the film. So I'm still drawn to the effects moreso than the story. That said, I don't enjoy it so much I own a copy of it. It's a bit too long in the tooth as well.

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