For the last month Avatar has been the movie virtually everyone has been talking about. In the first week since its release my Facebook news feed lit up with glowing reviews in the form of status updates. Almost everyone told me they loved it. Initially uninterested in the film, my curiosity eventually grew to the point where I had to see it for myself. And so this weekend, that is what I did.
As the Empire Theatres employee took my ticket to rip off the stub she asked me how many times I had seen the movie thus far. When I said I hadn’t seen it yet, she told me she planned to see it at least twice more. “Sooo good…” she added for emphasis.
James Cameron’s Avatar released in Canada on December 18th, and nearly an entire month later the theatre was so packed I ended up having to sit in the second row from the front. After the movie was over the lineup for the next showing was startlingly long. The moviegoers patiently waited in line, at least 30 minutes before their showing was scheduled to start.
When this happens, when so many people insist that a movie is just fantastic, I become determined to hate it. I walk into the theatre trying my best to keep an open mind, but as soon as the movie starts to play, I unconsciously start looking for things that are wrong with it. I start scoffing at clunky dialogue; I sneer at the slightest sign of cliché and I begin to ignore parts of the movie which I might have actually called good if I had truly sat down with an open mind.
All of Avatar’s characters appeared to me as shallow variations on clichéd archetypes. I saw the plot as cheesy and predictable. I perceived the underlying message and the film’s themes as insincere. Even Avatar’s action sequences (which I must admit, got my heart beating), I dismissed as special effects fluff.
That said, even with all the effort I put into trying to hate it, after the credits rolled I still couldn’t call Avatar bad. It just didn’t ‘wow’ me. In many ways I went looking for a verification of my own preconceived judgments, but I would like to think that I wanted Avatar to be good and that I wanted the movie to live up to the hype. I had just set the bar too high.
But that of course would be untrue.
My biggest problem was the insincerity. While watching it I remember thinking "Well, this guy's no activist". Of course it wouldn't be such a huge hit if he was, but I don't particularly support using that kind of backdrop as an excuse for an action movie.
Nice link to hive mind, btw.