It is movie awards time. The Golden Globes were just handed out and the Oscar race is nearly on. I could not believe Avatar won the Golden Globes award for best picture. Why is it that if a movie is filled with spectacular special effects it is considered a best picture candidate?
Asking this question is some evidence that I think a best picture is one that actually contains characters who show some complexity, or a story that is unique in some way beyond what the film looks like. I simply do not consider as best picture a movie that is unique only on a visual scale. There were so many deliciously brilliant films this year, I'm frustrated that a film whose only merit is visual is sweeping the awards yet again.
If Avatar had been set on earth, with humans riding horses in their beautifully lush jungle, the imperialists coming to destroy the land for profit, it simply would not have been possible best-picture fodder. I doubt it would barely climb out of B-movie-land. The story has been told, and it has been told better. The Mission comes to mind. Even Australia, which had some predictability and overwrought elements, but visually stunning panoramas, was a better film. At least it attempted character development.
However, Avatar is a visually stunning movie, and for that reason alone, everyone is going to see it and it is winning awards. Give us a few years and its effects will not be quite so grand after we've seen the same sort of thing a few hundred times. Remember Jurassic Park? The first time I saw that movie I was awestruck. I saw it again recently and while it is moderately entertaining, the dinosaurs are no longer quite so spectacular because I have seen giant CGI creatures so often, I am used to them. Not such a thrill these days.
Halfway through Avatar I was already frustrated by its bland formula and dialogue. The characters on Pandora lacked anything unusual other than what they looked like. Sure, James Cameron spent years creating this "other world," but that world certainly looked awfully earth-like to me. The characters were prototypical natives, down to their bare feet, the beads in their hair, and feathers in their arrows. There is the tribal chief queen and the royal children destined for marriage. There is the natives' intrinsic harmony with that land. And let's not forget their natural-world deity (native Americans, anyone?). Even their alien steeds, both land and air versions, look like horses -- albeit with some extra legs and wings, and reins that could connect to their riders' minds. Yes, in some of the details, the Na'vi were clearly aliens, but nothing about them was unique to the point they were unrecognizable as fundamentally human, something one might expect would occur on a planet somewhere far from earth.
And the human characters, don't even get me started. They were such caricatures, I could hardly stand to watch some of them. The bad guys were Very Bad. We knew they would be Very Bad the moment they showed up onscreen. The early dialogue in the film was unrealistic, managing to give us all the background we needed in the span of ten minutes. Hyper bad Marine colonel. Check. Scientist who wants to save Pandora and empathizes with the natives. Check. Evil corporate greedy guy. Check. Main character who will save the day. Check. Sexy native woman who is won over by main character. Check. And on and on. None of them had any depth beyond a mud puddle.
I suppose I should not be surprised that a picture so visually breathtaking while simultaneously lacking any depth is considered by many to be the best picture of the year. Spectacle seems to be the theme in so much of America these days. Rather than intelligent debate regarding complex issues, politics has been reduced to screaming sound bites and accusations. The worse the behavior, the more attention it gets. Reality television has mostly replaced anything resembling more complex programming. Spectacularly bad behavior replays constantly where the most loud and obnoxious wins, at least to the extent that the winner gets their face plastered all over the tabloids, their hideous behavior played out ad nauseam.
I liked Avatar. I did. I was moderately entertained when I wasn't squirming in my seat at the made-for-t.v. movie dialogue. The visual effects were cool. But I just can't see it as a best-picture candidate. Best means superlative of good, surpassing all others in excellence. Avatar may be the best today for visual effects, but in all other areas it was barely average. No matter how you cut it this just isn't what a best picture should be.
Unless you're arguing that the movie had anything NEW to say, it could not be further from best picture material.
hurt locker was a b movie as was district 9 tbh all the good films wont be considered and no not some girl movie like Australia i want a good fun film sick of crpy films geting pub like no country for old men that was ok but not a oscar film inglorious bastards and all those talked about were pure crap
sad rly films like star trek got no love that was a fun film and wai good to many good films to list tbh
Yes it would be. Only it would be called "Dances with Wolves".
Despite its perceived flaws, Avatar deserves to be nominated for best picture because it does what films are supposed to do: it tells a story visually. Switch off the sound and you can follow what's happening. You feel the film's wonder and the emotional impact through its imagery. From the breathtaking vistas of Pandora, through the expressions and body language of the Na'vi, and the climactic battle sequences, Cameron succeeds in creating a visual thrall.
Lest we forget, film began without sound, and the medium's greatest early practitioners created a visual grammar to express ideas without sound or dialogue. As audiences, we respond to this grammar. Dialogue and sound heighten our experience and should not be the primary criteria for determining the effectiveness and excellence of a film.
Kurosawa, Kubrick, Bergman and Fellini were masters of visual spectacle, not merely purveyors of weighty ideas. And one could argue that Fellini, who was influenced by Charlie Chaplin and comic strips, also dealt in caricatures and was far from a master of dialogue. But we remember his films for their visual audacity and for iconic images like that of Anita Ekberg frolicking in the Trevi fountain.
Ultimately, the category is Best Picture--not best dialogue, strongest characterization or weightiest treatment of the subject matter--and in this respect, Avatar delivers.
Another criticism in this review is that the characters were so blatantly good or bad. Well, so were those in the Wizard of Oz and in Star wars.
BTW, I've seen Avatar three times; not yet in 3 D. Wanted to process the iconic effects instead.
The young alternative types are beginning to pick up on the symbolism.
The shaman: a female named Mo'at. Like Ma''at, the Egyptian sky goddess and bringer of blance and justice. Na'vi word for shaman is tshahik; in Hebrew, a tzaddik is a righteous person.
Their Goddess Aywa-- close to YHVH. The feminine/yin aspects of God: Binah/Understanding/Holy Spirit. Or Chokmah/Wisdom/Sophia. Re-emerging from a long eclipse.
The central tree. Earth trees grow with mycorrhizae, complexity making symbiosis the dominant mode on this planet. Underground links unseen by surface powers.
Their planet is breath-takingly, heart-breakingly beautiful. As Dostoevsky said (Brothers Karamozov) beauty will save the world.
The name given to the planet-- Pandora. After the ills released in that Greek myth, what remained? Hope. Archetype big enough to use as a political slogan.
Those bothered by the movie: Reductionistic rationalists, who can't understand spirituality and who blame religion for everything ailing the world. Economic neocons, because corporations, backed by military, use manufactured enmity to access resources. Fundamentalists, critical of what they fear as a pagan revival. Last gasps of an old order sensing change.
Personally I found District 9 to be hugely more successful in every possible way. It had the same spiritual/pagan undertones, and it said a whole lot more (and with infinitely more subtlety) on the inter-related economic and political levels. It presented us with a bumbling and officious oaf with a strange resemblance to Hitler who ends up sacrificing his own life as a human to aid the aliens. Better yet, he does it grudgingly and with conflicted feelings, like a person in the real world would.
I just wish the Academy would remember that, in retrospect, awarding BP to Titanic was completely embarrassing.
"If Avatar had been set on earth,...it, it simply would not have been possible best-picture fodder."
Um...that is the entire point. It ISN'T set on Earth.
how do you know what "the entire point' is?
that Avatar takes place somewhere else? that just supports the idea that it does not deserve BP.
Avatar is science fiction through and through, much more concerned with ideas than complex characters. So I'm unsure why the writer brings up a DeNiro failure and a Kidman flop to the table when we're only talking plot summaries.
Beside, as others have duly noted, the Oscars have never been worth much (except to the winners' careers). How many of the big past winners hold any sort of influence over filmmakers today? The only Best Picture winner they ever got on the money is The Godfather Part II.
And where is the alternative list of all the movies that should be nominated but won't because they'll pushed out by Avatar? We don't even know if you've seen another film this year!
In my opinion, the aliens of District 9 are way better.