I feel pretty alone on this one. Most people I know absolutely love Avatar: James Cameron's latest entry in cinema. However, I feel like I just don't understand why people love it so much. I feel like I am missing something, and its with this idea in mind that I dub Avatar the most overrated movie I have ever seen.
Now to me, there are two kinds of overrated. Overrated as in "Eh, it was OK, but it doesn't deserve all the praise" and overrated as in "This film is terrible, It doesn't deserve any praise", and to me, Avatar is the ladder. When I go to see a film, I expect a well thought out story and interesting characters, or at least some effort put into the story. I especially expect a well written script/screenplay considering Avatar is border line three hours long. But Avatar's script is terrible in every sense of the word. A good amount of people can see that, but most people either love the script, or just don't care.
So if you've asked around, you may hear that Avatar is an sci-fi version of Pocahontas, Ferngully, Dances with Wolves, and Princess Mononoke. However, I believe comparing Avatar to any of these films is cruel, considering Princess Mononoke was well written and wasn't obnoxious with its messages, but I'll get to that later.
So Avatar's story centers around an ex-marine called into the moon of Pandora to assist a big cooperation mine the moon for a resource called "Unobtainium" The ex-Marine is known as Jake Sully, and he was called in because he is the only one who can replace his deceased older brother in the "Avatar" program, which is a program that involves a person plugging themselves into a box and controlling a special clone body of the natives of Pandora called "Navi" The cooperation hopes to use this program to convince the Navi to move their home so they can mind the area for the Unobtainium. And the Cooperation is more than willing to use brute force to get what they want.
Jake eventually infiltrates the Navi's home and eventually falls in with them, and he even falls in love with one of the Navi and soon realizes that the Navi are very nature centric and will never move, and they aren't just nature centric, they are very narcissistic. The cooperation however is growing impatient with Jake's slow progress and prepares to obliterate the forest (Navi's home) And Jake is still trying to move the Navi, but he sees the forces and tries to stop them, which angers the cooperation. Jake tries to convince the Navi to leave, but they find out that Jake is a human and they tie him and the other members of the Avatar program up and prepare to take on the evil humans from stealing land and GRRRR.
Now Avatar is absolutely obnoxious with its messaging. Now I don't know what everyone else saw, but I saw this movie as another Anti-America movie as well as an Anti-Soldier movie. And I cannot stand those. This film made the villains; the humans so simplistically evil and the Navi so goody goody. We are supposed to sympathize with the Navi, but the Navi are so self-absorbent, so arrogant, and think that they are so above everyone else to the point where they can use lethal force to wipe out anyone they don't like. I know the humans are jerks, but the Navi aren't much better if you ask me.
Of course, I don't feel sympathy for ANY of the characters. If a nuke flew out of nowhere and landed smack dab in the middle of the final battle and obliterated all the characters, I probably wouldn't bat an eye. Every single character is a card board cut out with absolutely no personalities. And if they do have any sort of personality, its cliche or just unlikeable. Jake is the worst offender of being unlikeable. For those of you who remember Princess Mononoke, remember that one scene where the Forest Gods ask the main character if he is going to join either side in the battle and he said no, claiming that would cause more senseless death and destruction? Now imagine if instead he said "yes", joined the forest gods and proceeded to kill any human they deemed as unlikable. Thats basically what Jake does in Avatar, and to me, thats incredibly childish.
So in the end, the Humans are either wiped out or exiled and Jake is rewarded with his "heroics" by being turned into a Navi himself. And lord knows the humans will be back in Avatar 2: the search for more money. God I hate this film. The story has been done to death and yet somehow its dumbed down, the characters are unlikeable, the dialogue horribly cliched and lame, and the movie is way to long for such a simplistic screenplay!
I understand if you don't agree with me, but I hated this movie so much.
