“Avatar”

If you’ve never seen a movie before, I highly recommend seeing “Avatar.” Every line of crap dialogue will feel fresh and new, and you won’t be able to see every single twist in the story within 10 minutes of the movie starting.

Sam Worthington is terrible. He plays a shitty Australian actor that can never quite figure out how to do an American accent. He’s dressed as a Marine. Stephen Lang plays Col. Hap Hapablap. Sigourney Weaver smokes, and there’s also tons of computer graphics. Supposedly, this was going to be the film that made us forget we were staring at pixels, because it’s all so photoreal. As James Cameron liked to say, “We pushed the technology envelope on this film . . . and it pushed back!” Apparently, the technology pushed them down the stairs, because most of this film looks like the most awesome video game cut scene ever.

I’m not denying Cameron’s talent: The man can put together a technically amazing film, and I like that his films are coherent. (On a side note, I hate Michael Bay.)
Unfortunately, because they’re coherent, I’m able to clearly realize that I’m watching something sucky.

The reason Cameron’s made the two highest grossing movies ever is simple: They aren’t that great, but by God, you want to see them. His films are shiny pander-thons, boomy and splody with a couple of kissy parts. He’s found the perfect middle ground between super-shiny stuff and lazy, boring dialogue. People don’t have to listen to Cameron’s films; they can just stare, and occasionally, something will catch their eye and they can go “heh” or “huh,” then it’s over and they don’t think about them again. Quite simply, it’s the kind of popular entertainment our world craves, and it’s cheaper than buying a fishtank.

It WAS shiny, though. So whoopdee-doo.

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