Friday, December 18, 2009

Avatar

Did not suck.

What a relief.

5 comments so far. What are your thoughts?

JacquiBee said...

Oh thank you, you are a reviewer I trust so I'll go to see it when it opens here in NZ with less dread. I so want it to be good.

Kameron Hurley said...

It suffers, don't get me wrong. It's another "white guy saves the natives" type of movie and the main character is the least interesting character in the show, there's a lot of very silly old-school SF hand waving, and the characters are largely one-note.

BUT, in classic Cameron style, the women characters don't suck, there's plenty of big battles, it's visually nice, and tho it's an old, tired sort of story, there are a few interesting things he does with it (again, particularly with the world building, tho the society building is so stereotypically "native american stand-in" it made me cringe). It's a movie I'll get on DVD, but I won't be re-watching it a million times in the theater.

It was not disappointing, but it wasn't the best thing ever, either. I'll have a proper review up soon, but it'll have spoilers!

JacquiBee said...

I have come to expect so much more from Sci fi stories as the quality of the writing and story development not to mention characters improves year by year. when I heard that Avatar was written so long ago I did wonder if it might suffer from being a writers "favorite child" finally on the stage, with the writer not quite realising that story was not the equal of some of the writing of today, still Im off to see it tomorrow.

Unknown said...

I enjoyed it while being aware of its faults... The Last Samurai/Last of the Mohicans/Pathfinder + The Dark Crystal + Aliens = Avatar.

Loved the visual style and Sigourney Weaver was excellent, as usual.

Kameron Hurley said...

ohhh yeah, this movie was *definitely* a trunk novel. Sad, really. I wish he'd have written something fresher that would do the visuals justice.

The "wow, I've seen this story 800 times and really can't get over that whole cat people=Indians" factor may not have struck me so smartly in the face if it'd come out in 1975 (of course, I also would have been 5).

Reminded me of the new Star Wars movies. I admired what he was trying to do, but the story, writing, and execution were off.

STILL: adventure story with strong female characters. Sadly, that part of the whole equation is still lacking in most movies often enough that I went to this one entirely for that reason.