I saw Avatar for starts. I hated it. Just kidding. The reason I say it though is it seems like a popular thing to say these days.
For starters, by no means do I think its a great movie in the normal sense of the word. I mean, as a far as Sci Fi goes District 9 was a far superior film. Moon even better again.
And I basically have had a hatred for James Cameron that borders on weird ever since he dropped that shit-pile of a film Titanic on us, so I really wasn't expecting too much from Avatar.
And they are very similar stories if you imagine Leonardo DiCapro to be a wheel chair ridden marine and the rich people to be big blue hot cat people, and Kate Winslet to be the forebidden lover and Billy Zane is that blue hard arse that the main blue chick was supposed to bone for the rest of her life....you see the parallels right? No. Neither. Anyway.
So how could I possibly like it?
Well my main problem with Titanic was the seriousness in which it took itself.
James Cameron constantly banging on about how it was an Historical drama made me feel ill. It was a fucking teenage girls wet dream is what it was. He may as well have just made a movie with My Little Ponies or whatever the fuck girls are into these days, on board the Titanic. It was more like a comedy movie, except not funny.
Anyway. The obvious button pushing that Cameron does serves him better when the subject matter is more fantastic, because well, I find it hard to take a neon, blue person filled world too seriously.
I understand Cameron takes himself very seriously, which is a bit shit, but in terms of something to look at, its a pretty staggering achievement.
I have seen some fx films in my time and worked on a few, and they all usually have some bad shots in. This film doesn't. All I can say is wow. And congrats to the people who worked on it.
So for all my cynicism about it. I enjoyed it. That's not to say it doesn't have problems. It does. But for fuck sake, when the other box office toppers include Transformers 2, you have to take a step back and think, well at least this film is actually kinda good. Transformers 2 had no redeeming aspects. At all.
Things that are annoying about it for me, were a lot of the creature design was a bit pants. I mean come on. Lets give everything six legs and name them roughly the same as the creature the idea was stolen from on earth. What was that six legged Panther thing called. I remember it was something really dumb like Panthero or some shit. And as everyone has said the dialogue is terrible. But to be fair, the dialogue was fucking terrible in Aliens and Terminator.
The marines doing pull ups in Aliens scene for instance.
Anything Hicks or Hudson say. The "You're Terminated" line from Terminator.
One thing that I liked which everyone else hated was the simplistic characters.
I liked having a bad guy that was just so obviously bad. It just makes things easier. Plus I sort of agree that the film needed broad brush strokes because, well there was so much other shit to look at.
Anyway. I switched my brain off, and I liked it. It didn't really hold up to a second viewing very well I have to say though. But hardly anything ever does for me these days.
A film I could have watched straight away again was Fantastic Mr Fox. That kicked arse.
