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What are they Plotting Next?
By Devin Doherty. It’s sad but I believe that movies are getting progressively more stupid and predictable overtime. It is as if the amount of creativity and fresh ideas in movies has just been picked from a finite pool. Creativity seems to be a limited resource, preserve yours today!
Take the movie, Avatar. Yes, it’s a groundbreaking 3-D visual experience and it will literally melt your eyeballs with the amount of gorgeous CGI imagery cram packed into the 3 hour long festival of pretty colors and lush environments. However, if we just peel back the glitter encrusted skin of Avatar we see that its plot is as thin as a lake of ice in the middle of the summer. Honestly, did anyone not watch the first 10 minutes of Avatar and already know how the following 2 hours and 50 minutes would play out? Basically the story dribbles down to Nature = Good and Exploitation/Aggressiveness = Bad. It has a story fit for six year olds and the flat characters have no qualms or problems with the decisions that they make. In the end, Avatar is like a ride at a traveling carnival, it looks good when you’re not riding it, but once you get on you realize it’s broken.
Maybe as a movie watching society we have kind of lowered our standards. Critics hated Transformers 2 but endowed Avatar with all sorts of praise for its awesomeness, when they are pretty much the same type of movie. No creative nutrition and full of juicy CGI fat. Both movies also did well at the box office. They’re pretty much clones in all but name and themes, if you could say both of them even had central themes. So then why did critics hate Transformers and love Avatar?
It’s because of the decreasing standards for movies in this country. All you need are a few million dollars for effects, take some reusable themes like colonization, exploitation, good versus evil, or law versus chaos, slap on one dimensional characters with an intrinsically good hero and a naturally evil villain, and you have got a blockbuster right there. Hollywood probably has a reusable template locked away in a desk in some studio that just tells writers what to write to create these “groundbreaking” movies.
It’s sad because there are some really great movies out there with great effects and sophisticated plots/themes. Movies like The Road are what the movie industry should aim for. Unfortunately, it seems like the industry is myopic and can’t shoot for its life. But this doesn’t seem to matter to the general public. We’re going to keep riding this CGI roller coaster until it falls off the virtual tracks.
SimonKamerow
March 9, 2010 at 5:40 pm
With all due respect to the author, I’d like to raise a far less negative view point on modern film. The alarming trend you point out is, as Mr. Benson pointed, older then most myths themselves. But in your damnation of what is often considered the stalest of stale industries, that being cinema, you seem to overlook the simple fact that you are viewing industrial films.
Hollywood is not, and has not, been the highest echelon of filmmaking since the days of Un Chien Andalou, to attack the American film industry on grounds it never purported to stand on is ridiculous. Look at the oft-abused Academy Awards of 1994, Pulp Fiction lost to Forrest Gump, despite the fact that Tarantino’s film was hailed the greatest and most innovative American film since Citizen Kane. It is cheap, and certainly easy, to insult the Hollywood machine as repetitive, redundant and clichéd, mostly because it is.
But the true flaw in your analysis of the situation stems from your condemnation of the fact. Avatar, your chief victim, apparently has a “plot [that is] as thin as a lake of ice in the middle of the summer.” However, the film was not regarded highly for its plot, or story, in the strong tradition of viscerally pleasing films such as Jurassic Park, Die Hard, and even the classic Singing in the Rain. Avatar is not a soul-bending film filled with existential angst and layered plot development; it is an experience in and an introduction into an entirely different style of filmmaking, and nothing more. The original King Kong fails to convince anyone of the authenticity of the aforementioned simian beast and James Whale’s Frankenstein no longer instills even a modicum of terror in audiences, yet both films are considered classic for their achievements made in furthering the medium.
Again, the visual aspect is merely one of the many faces of film which make it such an expressive medium. If you wish to see champions of plot and character development then you must broaden your horizons beyond that of the local chain theatres. Look at the Best Foreign Language Film category at this year’s Academy Awards, from Ajami to Un prophète they offer the emotionally involving and structurally complex films you so desire.
And most importantly, I would caution your condemnation of the modern Hollywood film. Rather, think of it as a parallel to the art often scene in hotels. It is fairly unremarkable for the most part, but it is not meant to be remarkable. It is meant to be enjoyed, if even briefly so, for what it is; pleasant, entertaining, and possessing of a certain spark of vitality inherent in all art, everywhere.
I hope that you, and all other critics of modern films can understand that even if they are not masterpieces, it is often because they were never intended to be.
Devin Doherty
March 10, 2010 at 7:31 pm
YOU DOUBT MY ALL KNOWING MIND???
INFIDEL!!!!
Nah, thanks for the criticism. It’s always nice to have my flawed work commented on.
IN MY OPINION Avatar isn’t a new type of extraordinary cinema. It looks amazing, but beyond the eye candy there is not anything to it.
I don’t think that comparing “the ground breaking” Avatar to Frankenstein or King Kong is quite fair cuzzzz Frankenstein introduced interesting themes like man playing god and his creations running amok. King Kong is from 1933. We’ve had more than five decades to refine storytelling to something better than what KK showed us.
The rare times I watch foreign films I do enjoy them greatly, but IN MY OPINION most of them are too weird for my tastes.
FINALLY I understand that not all films are gonna be masterpieces. I don’t expect them all to be wonderful pieces of cinema. What I demand is engaging characters and stories, a decent movie can provide this, Avatar can’t.
OKAY I’m done ranting. No more fighting in the War Room.
John Benson
February 9, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Read Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” Repetitive themes in storytelling is not a new phenomenon.
Erin Walk
January 27, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Really interesting article. It seems that as the animation gets better, the actual writing and plot gets worse. A columnist for the Washington Post Magazine also wrote an article about this issue…..
Devin Doherty
February 1, 2010 at 8:22 pm
True.
Aaron W.
January 22, 2010 at 12:16 am
Avatar’s plot was not only predictable, but had a morally wrong message. Cameron depicts U.S. Marines as equivalent to Nazis at a time when thousands of them are willingly putting their lives on the line in Afghanistan and Iraq in order to save innocent people. Whether or not you agree with the wars, one cannot condone the shocking disrespect that Cameron shows towards our military.
Devin Doherty
January 23, 2010 at 11:53 am
Not only that, but the main character has no problems whatsoever killing his own species while he’s a 10 foot tall CGI monster.
Mbernstein1
January 21, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Fantastic article. Very well written.
Devin Doherty
January 23, 2010 at 11:54 am
Thanks
Eli Prysant
January 21, 2010 at 10:08 pm
True, Cameron has never been one for amazing dialogue, but Avatar was leagues above Transformers 2
Eli Prysant
January 20, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Critics hated Transformers 2 because the plot was wretched, as well as the dialouge, and during the fight scenes it was almost impossible to know exactly what was happening. They also did too many close-ups of all the Transformers, and it was incredibly difficult to figure out whose CGI face you were staring at.
Devin Doherty
January 20, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Okay. They hated Transformers 2 and liked Avatar for the same exact reasons.
Avatar’s Plot: Terrible and linear
Avatar’s Dialogue: Stilted, familiar, and not exciting. If you have watched a movie in the last year, you have heard it all before.
Avatar’s Fight Scenes: Yes they did look amazing, but they were the same as Transformers 2. Bang, boom, *explosion*. Yawn.