I'm sorry, but this is such a nonsensical argument. For Avatar of all things. These movies are pretty much solely going to exist because James Cameron wanted to make them, not because a studio had been pushing for them, or because people have been clamoring for them. You yourself have made the argument nobody cares or wants more Avatar shit. Think about that for a moment. And of course it's a an investment for a film studio, what major film production isn't? What point do you think you're making?
Well, now you're talking about the trimmings when I'm talking about the substance. Criticisms of the film's visual style--which I'm not a fan of either, for the record--are separate from its pedestrian ideas, which is what I'm talking about. It's Ferngully. It's Dances With Wolves on another planet. Nothing interesting is done with its take on "indigenous peoples and their world attacked by imperialist, capitalist forces". It's worn and cynical.
People only bought the Blu-ray because of the 3D, no one actually liked the movie. Come on now.
Avatar as a film literally wouldn't work if they didn't put in as much as they did to establish a sense of place. Pandora isn't trimming. It's the main focus of the film. It's the glue that holds everything together. On top of the writing, acting, cinematography, etc.
That is a very short list of movies that share surface level similarities to Avatar in the broadest possible sense. So again I ask, where are all these films again?
The irony of you regurgitating these 10 year old criticisms and calling Avatar unoriginal is freaking hilarious.
www.google.com
Too bad with two decades to expand on and add nuance to Ferngully's themes, we wound up with something on about on the same thematic level. But then, Cameron is a creator of "spectacles". Ideas aren't his forte and never have been.
The idea is to suggest a fertile, alien environment and the natives peoples' unusual relationship with it, à la European colonizers' perspective on the "strangeness" of the Native Americans and the new world in which they dwelt. That's fine, but when the look of the alien world is so very kitsch and we aren't given more than a cursory view of how things actually work on the planet and how they inform the lives of its inhabitants, it doesn't give us very much to chew on that hasn't been similarly expressed in a crapton of other films about the evils of imperialism. Indeed, the film's themes seems no more than a pretext for taking us on a theme park ride showcasing an exotic, artificial environment, with all the stimulus to imagination that implies.
In today's CG film factories, there's no shortage of movies which seek to create detailed alien worlds. Blade Runner 2049, Dune, The Hobbit, Ready Player One, ad nauseam. I get that a lot of the creatives in Hollywood these days look to the popularity of video games for inspiration, with much emphasis put on visceral world-building.
If it makes you feel better, I was posting these criticisms of the film online back in 2009 when it was first released. But then, no one hypes up my internet musings as the greatest, most dazzling thing since the discovery of fire, do they? At that, I don't really even care for blockbuster films, Avatar included. This whole thing started simply because I stated that there are countless films out there which explore their ideas in far more interesting ways. I prefer to save my intellectual bandwidth for those films.
Now you're just being disingenuous.
Feel like it says so much that despite CGI environments being incredibly commonplace in the film industry that very few movies have managed to have locations as engrossing as Pandora. Which people are still talking about ten years after the fact. As I said, Pandora isn't just the setting, the film quite literally would not work without it.
I don't make disingenuous posts. I call 'em as I see 'em. The fact that we're never given any insight into how the physics work on Pandora leaves a whole lot unexplained and glossed over.
Admittedly, Cameron did enjoy the privilege of, at the time, the biggest budget in film history and the freedom of not having his vision limited by having to adhere to a pre-existing property. Don't get me wrong, I agree that Cameron is better than most in his industry at what he does. It's just that I view that more as a commentary on the creative bankruptcy of Hollywood these days than I do Cameron's talents as a filmmaker. IMO, he certainly has too cynical an approach to the medium to appeal much to me.
Can you not stand for other people to not like the same things you do?
Absolutely not. People have a right to their opinion on a movie. Showing them the movie is popular and loved is completely redundant to the discourse around the film. People already know it's one of the most popular films of all time. It's just another form of shitposting an attempt at a "gotcha" moment.
