Avatar: Awesome Eye-Candy

Avatar is awesome eye-candy. But, it's not an epic.

The graphics astonish, dazzle and amaze. So many times in the movie I marveled at their details and the fluidity of the movement. I jumped back sometimes when the 3-D effects seemed to drop things in my lap. I grew woozy at some of the flight scenes and mountain scaling scenes.

Avatar is awesome eye-candy.

But, as much as I marveled at the graphics, the scenes they concocted, the creatures and worlds created....I ignored the story. Actually, I think the story ignored me. With an hour left I turned to my watch. With 45 minutes left I thought to leave.

The characters were barely 2-D. They seemed chosen to not interfere with the graphics.

The script must have been bought in a cheap book:” Tired cliches of war movies, sci-fi movies, and jungle movies.”

The soundtrack was standard orchestral anthems of grandeur. We’ve heard one, we’ve heard...a hundred? (Well, in every scene where you could hear it over the explosions. )

But, the graphics were so compelling, mesmerizing. Their service to my visual experience was so grand, that the lack of a story, script or soundtrack was...tolerated. I stayed and yawned. I’m glad I did. I’ll see it again. But not at my initiative.

Avatar is an awesome piece of eye-candy. But it could have been an awesome epic movie.

What would it take to create an awesome epic with the current Avatar?

Here’s my 1% Solution for Avatar as Epic.

1%* for a story. There was so many opportunities for a compelling story here. But it seemed the attitude of the director and producer was “That’s good enough. We don’t want anything to interfere with our amazing graphics.”

1% for a script. There were so many bland lines. They were so bland, I stared at the screen. “That’s the line?”, I thought, even in the midst of these amazing graphics rushing at me.

1% for a soundtrack. I mean if Where the Wild Things Are can create a wonderful, charming, original....!, in-synch soundtrack that captured the vision of the movie and the book, and the characters and their little island world...I’m thinking with $4 million or 1% of the total budget ($400 million) a soundtrack could have been conceived by an original, creative...composer.

* Assuming Avatar's budget was $400 million...this 1% comes to $4 million.

Comments

[John Cass]

Zane, I loved the movie for the same reasons you did, the special effects. Though really part of the story was the world, rather than the plot line.

I was just thinking of another title for your post.

Writer Receives $4 million paycheck for Avatar

[Me]

I like your thinking!