Patrick,
Thanks for the links!
I, too, enjoyed Avatar. Pretty much for the reasons that you liked it. Without going and reading the articles, I want to put my thoughts about where Avatar failed on the table.
As hinted at, the main problems I have with Avatar are primarily in the realm of storytelling. I think that many, if not most, of the big budget Hollywood movies these days rely on special effects to carry the story. This, in my opinion, is an impossible task. Stories are not setting. And, as heretical as this might be, stories are not characters. Nor are they plots, but plots are probably the closest thing to stories of these three.
Avatar, while it had all three: great setting, passable characters, re-hashed / retreaded plot. If you weren’t familiar with the plot, then the overall movie worked better, I think. Unfortunately, there were storytelling problems. One big thing I noticed was that nothing in Avatar surprised me, unlike Star Wars (and when I say Star Wars, I mean the original Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and to a much lesser degree, The Return of the Jedi). And this isn’t because I was young and inexperienced in the way of the Force, uh, sorry, Storytelling. The with Avatar goes beyond being non-surprising and into the realm of the Predictable. And that is a place that no reader / viewer should be led. Then there was the huge swaths of lazy that flattened the story. For example, remember how dangerous the jungle felt when John (was that his name? Let me check me check… http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/ Nope it was Jake.) that is, when Jake was alone? The nasty animals? Then those big nasty animals? What happened to them for most of the movie after that? Oh, wait, they weren’t needed. So they didn’t exist until they were needed to kick the invaders asses. Then there was that little story that Neytiri tells about her ancestor that unified the tribes. And what was the skeleton they were looking at? The beast that allowed her ancestor to unify the tribes. That little bit of backstory becomes the hinge that the rest of the plot revolves around. What other background do we get? Hmmm. Can’t think of much. The foreshadowing had the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Don’t get me wrong, as a writer you must treat your readers with respect. This means that you need to foreshadow. But try to do it with some dignity.
OK, enough ranting. I think I’ll go post this on my blog…
That’s my nickle (inflation, you know) on Avatar.
Fritz.
—- And the Three Pillars of Storytelling are:
—- Patrick’s links:
http://storyfanatic.com/reviews/movies/avatar
http://storyfanatic.com/articles/story-analysis/avatar-and-the-broken-main-character
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