Avatar

The Great Blue Hype?

Don't get me wrong, I really like Avatar. I am a sci fi fan first and foremost. Avatar has everything I like in a movie. There is a ton of action, your brain is required and the movie has some deeper meanings. Having said all that, how many other people are sci fi fans? I would venture to say not as many as there are people raving about Avatar.

CGI effects are impossible to avoid these days. Every big blockbuster employs them to varying degree. The holy grail of effects is photo realism. Many have claimed that Avatar has reaching this sacred plateau. Sorry to ruin the fun, but it's simply not the case. They are wondrous effects to be sure, but they are not radically better than any other CGI world we have seen in recent history. This is not to say that they shouldn't be talked about, they should. But they have not redefined the movie world as we know it.

Avatar has done one thing to help the ever advancing realm of movie tech. It has significantly upped the bar for motion capture technology. The facial animations for the characters is nothing short of spectacular. As is the audio design. The world lives in the room with you when you turn up the volume on this movie.

With all this though, Avatar is still just a really good movie with really great effects. It is not the cultural and movie going phenomenon many people are making it out to be. And, honestly, many of the people that are all about this movie are not sci fi fans in the first place. They have clearly jumped on the bandwagon of the massive hit. There is nothing wrong with that necessarily. People want to be part of what's in at the moment and that is fine. But let's call it what it is.

James Cameron is a wizard of a director. His movies are of consistently high quality and Avatar is no different. For my money, though, Aliens, The Abyss, and maybe even True Lies are better movies. Aliens certainly shares many similarities with Avatar such as the giant walking robots, the heavy military presence, the detestable corporate weasel and of course Sigourney Weaver. These elements are all good in Avatar. They just happen to be better in Aliens.

In the end, this is purely opinion. I just don't like being told that I am crazy because I think these massively hyped movies are rarely as good as advertised. I have nothing against Avatar but you'll forgive me if I don't call it the best thing ever. Though it has made the most money ever, like so many things, it may have the numbers but that doesn't make it the best.