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Tuesday 13 September 2011

Avatar.

Today I'm starting my A to Z of movies/music/books (and possibly TV shows, if I can't think of some letters :P). I said I'd start yesterday, but I decided to go back to my four days a week schedule, which I remembered was Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. So that's what I'll be doing from now.

And, seriously, I had to do this one. Whether you think it's good or bad, it's had a pretty darn big impact on the movie world. If you do really, really, like it, you might want to skip down a couple of paragraphs.

Avatar has a lot of cliches in it, first off. Unobtanium? Please. And we have the cliche of the guy from the "bad" side (which is powerful and economic-based) going undercover on the "good" side (which is weak and "all for one, one for all"), and then turning over to the "good" side and helping them fight back against the "bad" side (with, of course, the addition of a good looking girl from the "good" side). Also, the cliches of the tech/geek/nerd guy, the crabby-but-actually-nice older woman, the soldier-with-a-heart, the guy-who-calls-the-shots-and-has-no-morals, and the guy-who-shouts-and-shoots-a-lot. Among others. Oh, and of course the cliche of the girl falling for the main dude, even though she didn't like him at the beginning.

OK, rant over.

There's one main problem with this argument, though: most good movies will have these cliches. These days, it's almost impossible to avoid them all, they're so plentiful. It's getting to the stage where, until something radically changes, most things have been done to some degree of similarity already :P An idea which you music folks should be very familiar with :D  :P

But, as well as that, I'm the kind of person that, while they know all the stuff above - and are acutely aware of it - ignores it. I just love the story, whether I've heard it a million times before or not; I've always loved a good story. And then there were the graphics/environment stuff, which was quite interesting. It was obvious that you could see where they'd borrowed from existing things on Earth; but I think they were quite interesting. The music I liked a fair bit as well - though honestly, for me, that's not saying a heck of a lot. I'll like most music, as long as I can get a sense of melody/harmony/rhythm from it.

Mozart is probably raging by now. Sorry man. :P
And if you're wondering, yes, this is quite possibly going to be the tack for many of what I'll look at for this series. I'll try to find some I don't like, to change it up a bit, but I'll probably have to dig around a bit. I guess I'm just not a very critical person, with this kind of thing :P
Hey, Jessie, you asked for this. :P

4 comments:

  1. Actually, I totally totally agree with you. I think that a lot of the time it's about what the person says, rather than how they say it. However…with James Cameron's film…let's face it…it's just Pocahontas in space.

    I found the film incredibly boring and predictable: a massive CGI ego trip, just like Titanic. It's a love story with tragedy. Now, why exploit the real tragedy of the Titanic. All I saw was this "forbidden love" motif, which was hung loosely around an actual tragedy in an attempt to capitalise massively on an idiotic public. Okay, maybe that's extreme, but Cameron was selling shit, really.

    I actually felt that the graphics were still not quite advanced enough to bring the visual element of Avatar out. I know he had to wait a while for the technology to catch up (like Lucas did with Phantom Menace), but I think a few more years would have been better.

    Anyway, rant over. Everything is derivative to a degree, which is why I don't really believe in "Intellectual Property", but I would question the motives behind the film. It seemed like a real money spinner more than anything else.

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  2. Yeah. But seriously, the majority of movies are "money spinners". Doesn't mean they can't be decent movies.

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  3. Naturally. Funnily enough I haven't really seen many films of late. I've just been watching sitcoms. :P I should really check out some recent films and see if their are any good ones. Recommendations?

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  4. Haha. Not the one to ask, I don't watch many. I'm a Marvel fan, though, so I've been watching their recent releases :P

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