Avatarrible (eek soz)

On Friday night, before my self-imposed incarceration began, I went to see Avatar. It seems like an extremely long time ago that I was seated in the Imax, but I feel as though I must dredge up my memories as a public service, in the hope that they might dissuade any of you yet to sit through it from making a similar mistake.

I was at university in Bristol the last time I saw a James Cameron film, and I walked out of Titanic before it finished. I did not expect Avatar to be good. But I didn't expect it to be terrible. I had thought, since it has been nominated for so many awards, including nine Oscars, that there may be some elements of positivity therein. Sadly, I was uncharacteristically mistaken. It was abysmal. And I know there are people out there, friends of mine, who enjoyed it. I tell you this: I'm sorry, but you were wrong. You need to go home, sit on your own, and think about your powers of judgment. You are allowed to say you enjoyed it 'in spite of yourself'. You are allowed to have been briefly diverted by it. But you are not allowed to think it was genuinely good.

For it was not. Not even the much-hyped 3D, which was ok, but not flawless - and there's still a part of me that feels like it's cheating. If a film needs 3D to work on the most basic level, it's not good enough, and Avatar needs 3D. Obviously, the movie works. It is the most successful film of all time, and even I will concede that, given our currently capitalist society, that's undeniably pretty successful. I'd happily argue that Shakespeare is overrated and/or that crumpets are slimming, but I won't try to deny Cameron's box office success. Of course, we all know that a film's success doesn't equate to its worth.

Avatar works, but it's crap. Why? My first major complaint is the script, which was a by-numbers rubbish Hollywood action flick script. If I'd had to write a spoof, I'd have used many of the same lines - at one point, the baddie is shooting at a monster, snarling, "Come to poppa." It is absurdly lazy and heaving with clichés. Yes, the audience loved it, so it worked. But it was crap. Secondly, there was the plot, also astoundingly lazy and heaving with clichés, from the disabled hero who finds his feet in the new world to the gruff and tough female boss who softens over time; from the daughter who loses a father and finds a father-figure to the arrogant sidekick who gains a new respect for his co-worker's intuitive abilities and realises that science isn't everything. Yawn. And don't get me started on the portrayal of the relationships between men and women in the movie, or between humans and the benign, nature-loving aliens. It's meant to be so fuzzy and equal, but male humans come out as supreme overall, with the major females either kowtowing or dying. The king alien's death elicits a momentary howl of sadness from his daughter, but the sickness of a human causes hundreds of aliens to drop everything and enter a powerful vigil state. Growl.

Thirdly, there are the themes: humanity's disrespect for the environment, the privileging of money over nature, of greed and selfishness over instinctive generosity, of science over creativity, of the appeal of short term gain over the threat long term destruction, of having to possess rather than appreciate something in situ - not terrible themes when taken individually, sure, but not necessary all in the same movie. Due to this absurdly epic sweep, or, rather, the director's complete inability to leave any stone unturned, all this was hammered home with the subtlety of a hammer to the temple over the course of 162 minutes. And yes, you read that correctly. Two hours and forty two minutes, during which time the four teenagers sitting approximately seven rows behind me did not stop talking once. Not once. Not when Jake Sully was being covered in tiny white jellyfish spores, not when the two avatars were mating under the magic tree, not when the forest was being destroyed by the big mean bulldozers. It was relentless. But no one else shushed them and I was scared in case they pelted me with sweets.

Anyway. It was derivative, sloppy, lazy, blundering nonsense that made The Hurt Locker look like On The Waterfront. I thought I'd panic if Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar, but if James Cameron gets it, I swear I'll never give a shit about the Academy Awards again, and in future will treat them as a gripping red carpet fashion show that ends the moment people go inside the Kodak theatre. Bet he's quaking in his boots.