All he is saying, is give AVATAR a chance

December 10th, 2009 at 02:48pm Will Pfeifer

Sure, AVATAR looks a little goofy, but as Vadim Rizov points out over at IFC.com, that’s nothing new for a James Cameron movie  — and it certainly doesn’t mean it won’t be a success.

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I’m getting sick and tired of hearing about how much AVATAR is going to suck because the trailer is loud and has silly dragons and it looks like DELGO or something. It seems like whenever I talk to someone about whether or not they’re looking forward to the film, their response is “It looks stupid.”

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You know what else looked stupid? TERMINATOR 2, a movie about a woman trying to destroy a bunch of computers to short-circuit a future computer/human war, alongside the world’s most annoying kid, the charmless young Edward Furlong, teaching Arnold Schwarzenneger how to say “dude.” It’s all voice-overs about being a single mother.

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Let’s be honest here: pretty much all of Cameron’s movies look/sound basically stupid if you only, you know, read about them, and not just in a “genre movies have different rules” way. Like, THE ABYSS is (SPOILER ALERT) about aliens who want to destroy us with a gigantic tidal wave. TRUE LIES has a punchline where a nuclear bomb going off is supposed to be funny. TITANIC has all those moronic Celtic pipes on the soundtrack.
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Rizov has a good point — up to a point. Yes, Cameron’s movies sound silly on paper, mostly because on paper you can’t experience the powerful action scenes and visceral thrills the director has always excelled at. And I’m a big (big) fan of TERMINATOR, TERMINATOR 2 and ALIENS (a movie Rizov doesn’t mention). I’m a fan of THE ABYSS, though I wouldn’t put it in the same class as the other three, and though I have some problems with TRUE LIES, it really handles its over-the-top action scenes well. (That nuclear explosion does play as a punchline, and in the context of the movie, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis smooching in the foreground — see image above — it is pretty funny.)

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But sometimes what sounds bad on paper for Cameron’s movies turns ut to be bad on film, too. Those scenes of Edward Furlong teaching the Terminator how to be human are the worst part of that movie, and though the nuclear bomb works well in TRUE LIES, the scenes where Arnie deliberately torments his unsuspecting wife work a whole lot less. The aliens in THE ABYSS aren’t bad, but the best scenes in that movie come before their arrival, with Ed Harris and the rest of the cast reacting to tension deep under the sea.

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So, though I do think AVATAR looks a little goofy (and has a plot that feels like DANCES WITH WOLVES in space), I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. If it’s anything like Cameron’s other movies, it will look amazing — and have something about it that feels so annoying you can’t believe it made the final cut.

Entry Filed under: directors, Action!, Uncategorized