Another Donation To The Cameron Fund: Reviewing "Avatar"

Before last night, I could count the number of movies I've seen in the theater more than once on one hand. In fact, on one finger. (With all due respect to UPAC Cinema of RPI fame, I'm not counting $2.50 second-run flicks in a college amphitheater as multiple viewings; I'm talking strictly first-release film viewings.) At that, I hadn't seen a movie twice in its initial theatrical run until this spring, when I saw "Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen" in IMAX and later in standard digital. Anyway, I've qualified my assertion enough.

I saw "Avatar" last night for the second time. I was actually kind of surprised I decided to go a second time, but after I'd bought the ticket, it was something of a fait accompli. I ended up meeting up with some friends who were going for their second go-around as well. Unlike "Transformers," I opted for the IMAX show on this run, too. There really isn't a point to seeing it in any other format.

I admit, I'm still surprised at the success of this one. This movie came out six weeks ago now. Adam and I went the Saturday after Christmas to find that both evening shows were already sold out in advance, and the lobby was mobbed. We tried the next afternoon to buy tickets, but it was another sellout. (Third time was a charm, but Adam also bought the tickets at 11am for a 3pm show.) The theater last night was still packed, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were a sellout...I bought my ticket online and got there 45 minutes before showtime, and stood way back in line just to get in. The crowd was laughing as they'd announce seating for other films, and no one budged, all waiting for that 10pm IMAX showing. Granted, there's one IMAX theater in this state, but you'd think the enthusiasm would have faded after six weeks of nightly showings.

And all this pomp and circumstance for a movie that, according to the critics, isn't really about story. The more harsh reviews suggested it was "'Dances With Wolves'/'Ferngully' in space," and one notable image meme going around shows a brief summary of the story of Pocahontas with characters' names swapped for their equal from "Avatar." This being something of a review, I can't really get away without a brief summary, so here goes. The year is 2154, and a corporation from Earth is mining a distant moon in another galaxy for a mineral worth a small fortune back home. The richest mineral deposits, of course, are under the key habitat of the indigenous alien population. In the interest of trying to get them to move without resorting to genocide, scientists have developed "avatars," human-alien hybrid bodies controlled by a mental link with a genetically-bonded "driver," to interact with the Na'vi population. Former Marine Jake Sully arrives as a replacement for his highly-trained (and deceased) twin brother, and inadvertently becomes embedded in the Na'vi race, as he tries not only to assimilate into their culture, but also to figure out what will convince the Na'vi to relocate peacefully.

Of course, the Na'vi don't want to move. And with shareholder value on the line, the humans decide it's time to make them move.

Yes, the political/ethical commentary and allegory here are about as thick as you can spread them on. I suppose you could draw parallels to the Iraq War here, when one military man vows to "fight terror with terror." And I cringed when another character comments on a promised "shock and awe campaign." I think the more apt parallel would be to our own westward expansion and Indian relocation. The difference, of course, is that wars are waged with government resources, and in "Avatar," it's not the government driving this move, it's a business. So now you get the bonus commentary on heartless monolithic corporations. When chief researcher Grace Augustine (played by Sigourney Weaver) lobbies for the need to further study the Na'vi and negotiate peacefully, RDA exec Parker Selfridge (played by Giovanni Ribisi, who I barely recognized the first time from his appearance in "Gone In 60 Seconds") reminds her callously that stockholder value is on the line, and quarterly financials are paramount...though genocide isn't really a favorable alternative, because it's a PR nightmare. In the end, your sympathies lie anywhere but with the human mining team. But when you have human ex-military men going all Rambo on the natives, you'd have to be heartless not to feel yourself tugged in that direction.

And as with most sci-fi, a few minutes of thought reveal some questionable and even annoying plot elements. The first was the fact that they're mining a mineral called "unobtainium." Yes, that's the name of the mineral. Supposedly, it was an inside joke that stuck after no one suggested a better name, but where unobtainium is kind of a generic trope name for some kind of insanely-expensive and hard-to-procure element, I thought keeping the name in there, even as a joke, was sort of lame. (I mean, they spent years with linguists devising a spoken language for the Na'vi, and couldn't come up with something better than unobtainium?) The air on the moon of Pandora is unbreathable by humans, though they can walk around unprotected without medical problems, as long as they have a respirator. An avatar driver has to be carefully networked to the mental bridge, but the avatar can be awoken and driven without being near anything resembling an electrode. And did I mention the use of the term "unobtainium?"

But none of that matters.

Oh, it matters, but not as much as you'd expect, because "Avatar" is not a story-driven movie. It's a special-effects orgy. Carmine and I had this discussion today, how he feels "it's surprising people can still be impressed by special effects." In a sense, it is. It's more evident when you see an older movie (like "The Terminator" or "RoboCop 2") that relied on extensive stop-motion animation, then you see something like "Terminator 3" where cyborgs were replicated not with makeup and stop-motion but with chroma-keying and digital effects. If the effects are good enough, you should look right past them.

With "Avatar," you're not supposed to. Part of that is the 3-D imagery. Yes, you get special glasses to watch the movie with. No, they're not blue and red like the ones that you got as a kid. Yes, they fit over my regular glasses (though I think last night's pair fit funny). Then, as you watch Jake Sully emerge from cryostasis in a zero-gravity spacecraft, you think he's doing so right in front of you, close enough to touch the screen. Ferns rustle around you, floating seeds fall in front of you, a golf ball whizzes past your head. (That last one is about as gimmicky as it gets, actually...and with three hours on-screen, there was plenty of time for Cameron to shout, "Look, y'all, we're filming 3-D here!")

The other part is that this is a believable, realistic digital world. The humans are pretty much real, yes. But the Na'vi are ten feet tall, giant blue cat-people with tails and nerve-infused ponytails. No amount of makeup is going to make that look good. So Cameron, who achieved great things with that water-tendril in "The Abyss" and the T-1000 in "Terminator 2," used motion-capture animation to translate actors' behavior to the animated Na'vi. Never mind all the animals, from insects to winged creatures, that needed to be realistically animated, too, and all the plant life. Animating a digital landscape is nothing new. Doing it in a way that looks as believable as the live-action segments of the movie is the achievement here. And we're not talking about some dingy dystopia, either. The flora are bioluminescent, glowing after nightfall. The terrain of Pandora is amazingly-sculpted. The one thing that did catch me off guard, and it caught my eye the second time I watched too, was a particular scene where the camera is closed in on one of the Na'vi. At first, it looks like a poor makeup job, and it feels like it spoils the moment. In retrospect, the Na'vi character is in war paint, so of course it should look like that. But this is a beautiful movie.

Maybe that's where the amazement comes in, that a movie that's little more than eye candy is such a hit. It's not that the story is bad, it's just not remarkable. There's no amazing unforeseen plot twist, and plenty of foreshadowing. But those special effects on the big screen are raking in cash. One Farker today pointed out that the 3-D and IMAX 3-D showings are higher-priced tickets anyway, making for a bigger take than if it were just a regular movie. A good point, but then, I have to ask if people would be turning out in droves the same way if it weren't shot in 3-D at all.

Which leads me to DVD sales. I didn't plan to buy this one on DVD anyway. But how can you replicate that cinematic experience at home? I doubt the movie will be released in 3-D, complete with glasses. And so I wonder how well "Avatar" will do after its theater run expires. Of course, how quick will movie theaters be to get rid of "Avatar" in the first run?

So I'm glad I got to see "Avatar" twice. I don't think I'll ever see it again quite in that fashion. There's always the sequel; James Cameron says he has enough of a story behind the movie to generate a couple sequels. Now that he has, as one publication put it, "money for his money to burn to keep itself warm this winter," we'll probably see at least a second movie. However, given the seven years it took to get from "Terminator" to "Terminator 2," I don't think it's wise to count on that for a while.

A Broken Past Beats No Future

So for both of you who still read this, apparently with all the fascinating things going on in my life, the most important thing I could elaborate on in the past four months has been a douchebag making a scene on an awards show I didn't even watch. Yeah, I'll work on that.

Actually, I was going to do some kind of annual recap. Not that anyone really cares; anyone who knows me knows what I've been up to the last year and some. Facebook status updates work, too. But what has me inspired to sit and actually write something is, interestingly, a Facebook status update from an old college friend, who pointed out the thoughts in his head surrounding Dick Clark's appearance on "New Year's Rockin' Eve" this year.

To summarize: Dick Clark's been the ageless host of an annual New Year's Eve countdown program featuring pop stars and so forth to ring in the new year. It makes for passable background noise at a party, though I suppose some might actually sit down and watch it front-to-back. A few years ago, Dick Clark suffered a stroke. Surprisingly, after some time off, he came back to host again. I think he might have limited himself to the countdown the first year. It was immediately evident why; the timeless voice and cadence of Dick Clark had been replaced by a muffled, sluggish version, the after-effect of that stroke. It was Dick Clark's face on television, still practically ageless, but the voice that came out was not Dick's.

As we gathered this year for New Year's Eve, once again someone pointed out how he'd missed a digit during the countdown, and he just couldn't keep up with the second-by-second count. It reminded me a bit of going to see Journey this fall, and seeing the new lead singer on the big-screen closeup. The voice was that of Steve Perry, but the image showed this little Filipino guy singing, which was a little creepy. With Dick Clark, it was more sad. You could see in his face that this was the Dick Clark, the one who'd ushered in his fair share of New Years, and he was happy to be up there holding court. But the voice that came out was tired and broken and...not right. In a way, it almost felt like they kept him on the show out of pity.

The funny thing is that I've never really marked the New Year with Dick Clark. Maybe my folks did. But until recently, I can't say I've ever been one to usher in the New Year in style. My parents always encouraged early bedtimes, and so our New Years celebrations consisted of waiting for an hour and a half to get seated at a restaurant or (more often) ordering Chinese takeout, then going to bed like usual. There was one year that I sat at my computer, connected to a Hotline server, downloading QuickTime videos of ancient Apple commercials. Sadly, that's the only New Year's Eve I really remember in any vivid detail, and that was hardly scintillating. So I didn't grow up on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, though I was well aware of who Dick Clark was, and aware of that old "Far Side" comic that depicts Dick "inexplicably aging 100 years in 60 seconds."

So as I stood there in the Kowaliks' living room, watching this shell of Dick Clark holding court yet again, I asked myself, "Why doesn't he sign off for good and let someone else take the reins?" I don't want to deny the man the pleasure of doing what he wants to do, but I almost wish he'd retired with dignity intact, so we could all remember the Dick Clark that was, not the Dick Clark that became. Maybe dignity is something only we assign to all of this.

And then I asked the really important question, maybe the question that answers why Dick Clark remains on TV...who would be able to replace him?

It's sort of like when Bob Barker retired from hosting "The Price Is Right." He hosted that game show for 35 years, long enough to transcend generations. In a lot of our minds, Bob Barker was "The Price Is Right." It wasn't the same when Rod Roddy died and someone else took over the announcer's chair, and it doesn't feel quite like it did with Drew Carey at the helm. Dick Clark was like that. His image transcends generations. Our parents grew up with him, we grew up with him. On camera and on the stage, he truly had this emcee persona, that he was the man in control and the man of authority...and maybe even someone to aspire to. (Maybe I identify with that more because he's more like a grandparent to me than a parent, in terms of age.) It's probably what Dick Clark was shooting for all along, much like when Bruce Morrow took the radio moniker "Cousin Brucie." For years, kids confided and trusted in Cousin Brucie. I didn't—that was far before my time—but I see that kind of thing in Dick Clark. Here's this solemn, sincere, but fun guy ushering in the New Year, the official master of ceremonies for the calendar to turn a page, offering words of inspiration and anticipation and meaning every syllable of it.

Who else can do that? We no longer have emcees; we just have hosts, usually in tandem, as if it takes two personalities to fill the void one used to satisfy. Today's hosts are transitory figures, here when the ratings are strong, gone when they slip a point to some other flavor-of-the-week host, or when their generation grows up and leaves them in the dust. Is it because the newer generations are reluctant to embrace their elders' authority figures, or is someone telling them they should be? Either way, we end up with hosts who have personality but no authority, because their staying power is only as strong as the ratings they pull down this time around. It's why someone like Ryan Seacrest won't be the Dick Clark of the future; he's a pretty face, but he doesn't command any authority. I'm not really sure that he even wants to.

I also can't help but wonder what role the Internet has in terms of our celebrities. Frankly, I don't know anything about Dick Clark, as far as his relationships, his affairs, whatever goes on behind the scenes. Wikipedia tells me he's been married thrice, and since 1977 in his current relationship. However, pre-Internet it was a lot easier to make all that behind-the-scenes nonsense disappear. Now, every rumor becomes an extension of reality, not to mention it's easier to "research." The personal lives of today's celebrity material are laid bare for everyone to gawk at, and so today's celebrities probably seem far less wholesome and sincere as people. (Granted, our values system has shifted, too.) I'm sure when he was in his twenties, Dick Clark had his share of good times with the ladies, then settled down when it felt right. We just conveniently missed out on all of that. TMZ wasn't around to report every juicy detail.

And so we're left with a celebrity landscape that really isn't designed to produce or sustain another Dick Clark, not as we remember him. And so Dick Clark remains on TV because there really isn't anyone who can ever fill those shoes. Sometimes, it's easier for us to hold onto a bad version of a good past than to face an uncertain, unfulfilling future. When he finally does sign off for good, it'll leave a void. There'll be New Year's Eve specials with all the pop stars and celebrity appearances and annual retrospectives. They'll be more sizzle than steak, more razzle-dazzle than sincerity. But that's sort of where TV's going anyway.

It hurts me to see Dick Clark the way he is, because I remember a little of who he was. But I suppose it's easier to stomach than two hosts with no emotional investment counting down the ball-drop.