Why Avatar Is a Waste of the Worldwide Dollar

If you have not seen Avatar but plan on seeing it soon, I recommend checking your brain at the door before you do so.

    While the visual effects are truly spectacular, Avatar is really not worth watching a second time. Allow me to state why.

     Like I said, the visual effects are stunning. If the effects are that mesmerizing in 2-D, I can’t imagine what it must be like to watch Avatar in 3-D. It must be quite the ride.

     Sadly, much like in Titanic, it seems that James Cameron spent the vast majority of the budget on the effects, and not enough money went to find good screenwriters and actors.

     A young paraplegic, Jake Sully, is sent to the planet Pandora to learn more about the Na’vi, the planet’s natives, before the greedy Colonel Miles Quaritch destroys the planet for its resources. After coming to know the Na’vi, Sully starts to question the decision to ruin Pandora, and Sully (who goes to the planet with the body structure of the Na’vi) decides to rebel.

     Sounds like a good plot, right? But leave it to Cameron to screw it up.

     First of all, I have something to say about the visual effects. The motion-capture animation used for the Na’vi was adapted/stolen from that used for Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King. So yeah, if you liked the Na’vi, give credit to WETA Workshop, even if for some reason you're not a Lord of the Rings fan.

     There goes the one good thing about Avatar. Now for the rest.

     First, the subtitles, for some reason, bother me beyond belief. I believe that the subtitles are typed in Papyrus font, which is really elegant and old world-ish. I like Papyrus, but the subtitles are way fancier than they should be. Even they add to the over-the-top feel of the whole movie.
    Second, people have criticized Avatar as being nothing more than a high-budget Pocahontas. And heck yes, that is true. Apart from the characters' names, there is no distinction between those two movies' plots.
    Third, the English-speaking skills of one of the Na'vi, Neytiri (Sully falls in love with her), is glaringly inconsistent. The first time she speaks follows an incident in which she had to kill animals that were attacking Sully. Her lines are something like "They no have to die." In the very next scene, in which Neytiri is introducing Sully to her fellow Na'vi, the fellow tribespeople start quarreling about him. When Sully asks what they're saying, Neyitri says, "They are trying to decide whether or not to kill you." And it's like that throughout the movie--broken English one scene, perfect English the next.
    Fourth, the resource on Pandora is an element called “unobtanium,” which seems like an obvious take on the word unobtainable. They could have created a name that was more clever, or at least not as glaringly symbolic.

    Plus, naming the element "unobtanium" is illogical when you think about it. The average human would take one look at the element's name and say something like, "Oh, it's not obtainable. Let's not waste our time trying to obtain it."

    But, of course, if the characters of Avatar had that line of thinking, the movie would be over within a few minutes.

    Fifth, the Na’vi somehow manage to keep their hair in perfect braids, despite all the crazy stunts they pull. I’m serious. After an extremely epic battle that involves flying all over the place, not a single hair was out of place. If you have seen Avatar, watch it again and take note of that.

    Sixth, almost none of the characters are very sympathetic. Sully is supposed to be the strong unlikely hero, but I did not have that impression of him. I won’t say he was a whiner, because he wasn’t, but I just found it difficult to sympathize with him. Also there is no way that any human can be as evil as Quaritch. And I can be pretty cynical about humans, so for me that’s really saying something. 

    Also, Neytiri wants to be a strong, noble heroine, but again, she does not come off like that. She came off as an emotionally unstable whiner. When Sully reveals the humans' plan to destroy Pandora, Neytiri's reaction does not feel real. It's more like "I loved you! I trusted you! You've betrayed me!" etc. than it is "How can your kind be so heartless?!"

    Seventh, the only character I really like dies. That character is Dr. Grace Augustine, played by Sigourney Weaver. The character, like all the others, is more a cliché than a human, but Weaver gave her at least a bit of a human side. Poor Weaver. What a waste of such a talent.

    Eighth, the cast does not stand out. The actors cannot help that they all play stock characters, but the best actors make do with poor material. Weaver is really the only one who tries to develop her character, but even she can't take the development that far.

    Ninth, Avatar takes forever to end. During the last battle, I seriously found at least half a dozen times in which I thought that Quaritch was going to die. It eventually became something like "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," and I almost did not believe it when Quaritch actually died.

    Tenth, the message is quite a paradox with the events. The film clearly says, “We must preserve the Earth!” Pandora does get saved in the end, but the entire planet practically blows up in the process. Yeah, Sully, you saved the Na’vi, but it’s gonna take a long time for the planet to actually become a healthy oasis again.

    Finally, the script was God-awful.

    The film’s message, like I said earlier, is clearly the importance of environmental conservation. It’s nothing we haven’t heard. The message, though, doesn’t bother me. It’s the delivery, which is completely unoriginal. It’s basically Sully, Augustine, and the Na’vi screaming, “Save the Earth! Save the Earth!” and Quaritch screaming, “No I won’t! No I won’t!” The best word to use for the delivery is preachy. It's something we've all heard a million times, and the message is not told in an original way.

    Also, it’s because of the script that the characters are nothing but clichés. They are all stock characters, and only Weaver’s Augustine strays a bit from the clichés.

    Without the visual oohs and ahs, nobody would have sat through the film. Don’t let the effects distract you. They are just covering a mediocre story.

    Wait. Hold on a minute. I just thought of something bad about the visual effects. Perhaps Cameron used the oohs, ahs, and booms to insult the viewer's intelligence.

    Picture the following dialogue between Cameron and visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri.

CAMERON: Joe, I need to talk to you.

LETTERI: Sure, Jim. What is it?

CAMERON: I've been thinking. My script sucks. I know it sucks, but I don't want to waste any time or money on fixing it.

LETTERI: So what do you want me to do about it?

CAMERON: What can we do to distract our audience from the bad script?

LETTERI: Hm ... I've got it! What if I spend all the money in our budget on glamorous oohs and ahs and, of course, things going "boom"?

CAMERON: [pause] I like it! Think you can do it?
LETTERI: Hell yes, I can!
CAMERON: Awesome!

[CAMERON and LETTERI high-five each other]

    You see my point? The visual effects definitely overpower the story, or lack thereof. Cameron could have toned them down a bit.

    Huh. So I guess I can't find anything good to say about Avatar after all.

    Please examine your brains before you watch Avatar, and make sure they are working properly. If you want a movie with a good, solid plot and great, but not overpowering, special effects, go watch The Matrix or, even better, a Lord of the Rings movie.