Monday, January 18, 2010

I am so disappointed

I generally don’t watch movies, and I especially avoid going to the movie theater. Movies just have never really appealed to me, but last week I was finally convinced to go see the movie Avatar. And let’s just say it is very unlikely that I will be watching another movie for a long time.
There was no problem with the theater itself; there were no noisy kids, obnoxious cell phone gabbers or whatnot. It was the movie that irked me in every way possible. Honestly, there really could not have been a more predictable and boring plot. From what I remember, the movie followed every cliché known to man: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back, protagonist always beats the antagonist in a final battle but only wins through insane luck despite all odds against the protagonist, etc. Even the characters are your expected run-of-the-mill cliché. There’s the protagonist, a free spirit who contains some kind of childhood innocence that those with tunnel vision cannot see. When I mention tunnel vision, I am of course speaking of the cliché “hardass”, the general or whoever because I forget his name, who is too stubborn and somewhat evil to see that he is provoking innocent lives to be lost. It just feels like once you’ve seen one movie, you’ve seen them all.
Aside from such a predictable storyline, the character development was also poor. In particular, I am talking about the protagonist, Jake Sully. This respective character is already somewhat hard to relate to, he was really spontaneous and reckless, and to make matters worse the audience is almost completely left in the dark as to Jake’s history. I believe character development is important, and in particular for this movie, because it would help the audiences understand Jake’s motives and beliefs more clearly.
One other problem I had with this movie was all the inconsistencies. One example was the fact that all the characters spoke with the same dialect and used the same slang that is used in 2010 when the movie’s setting is placed in 2154 or whatever. Think back one hundred fifty years ago; is it really realistic to believe that people used the same slang and dialect as they did in the 1850’s? Before I say anymore, I would like to clarify that I do understand that the concept of an avatar is unrealistic and probably impossible, and I am willing to accept that, but that does not justify how unrealistic this entire movie is. To explain, the likelihood of these “avatar” creatures that originally inhibited their respective planet of having almost identical human features along with the fact that these creatures express their emotions the exact same way humans do (through their facial expressions), and are able to relate to humans on an emotional level despite the fact that they live an infinite miles away is just ridiculous. Like I said, I am fine with impossible concepts and unexplainable science, but the aforementioned scenario is a matter of probability, and the fact is that the probability of this scenario happening is insanely low.

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