So I watched Avatar a few days ago and I'm still twitching from it. I'm not sure how, exactly, it was as highly regarded as it was. I'm assuming that in 3D, it must have been amazing on a purely technical level. It was bright and colorful and the CGI looked to be really well done. There were so many things throughout the whole movie that had me scratching my head that all of the technological magic was lost. I felt that I needed to compile a list of the things that made me twitch, in no particular order:
1- Unobtanium. Really? There's an entire periodic table of elements and this is what they come up with? I mean, couldn't they use just a little bit of imagination? Perhaps a new isotope of Uranium that has all the benefits but is less radioactive.
2- Naturally occurring carbon fiber that strengthens the bones of the blue critters. Yet again, there are so many things that could have made their bones stronger, but they went with 'naturally occurring carbon fiber'.
3- Floating mountains. So I'm not necessarily against floating mountains. I think the idea is pretty neat, but it would be nice to have some sort of explanation why they're floating. Are they made of Floatonium? Perhaps some sort of gravity anomaly?
4- Waterfalls from the floating mountains. As they were flying through the floating mountains and also while catching the dino-flyer critters, there were massive waterfalls from these floating mountains. Yes, they looked cool, but I had to wonder, where is this water coming from? These islands aren't that big. Perhaps they have torrential, highly localized monsoons? Perhaps there are pockets of super-dense water within these small, floating rock formations that give off a nearly endless supply. Oh, perhaps there are a series of wormholes that transport water up on top of the rocks.
5- Critters up on the floating rocks that would have a really hard time climbing. So, there's a big battle between the humans and the blue people (with critters) in the flying mountains. The blue people come attacking on horse-critters and then the hammerhead rhino critters attack. How did these things get up onto the flying mountains? Cloven feet are not conducive to climbing. Perhaps the flying critters carried them up there?
6- Mining techniques (or lack there-of). So the largest deposit of unobtanium is under the blue people's home under a massive tree. Ok, so maybe the mineral makes the tree grow and that's why they're co-located. I have no problem with all of that. What I don't understand is why they had to take out the tree (and the blue people) to get to the mineral. There are so many ways to excavate that stuff that there's no reason to go from the top. They mine gold and all kinds of other minerals just like that. Granted, it makes for a better story if you absolutely have to chop down their tree to get to it, but still.
7- Sending people out into the world with useless weapons. So, apparently, they send their soldiers out into the field with weapons (current era weapons no less) that are totally useless against the thing's they're facing. They have mastered space travel. They can repair paralysis. They can connect with clones and run around in the world. Apparently, weapons technology hasn't advanced beyond assault rifles, .50cal machine guns and palates of mining explosive.
8- Landing ground troops. While attacking the blue people, apparently, the best way to do this is to leave your highly armed and armored aircraft and deploy unarmored troops (along with some admittedly cool looking mechs). If you're going to blow up the place by dropping explosives, wouldn't it make more sense to keep the guys in the planes and just shoot missiles and machine guns at the blue people and their horses (which, of course, would be completely defenseless).
9- Sand bag gun emplacements on the tops of the planes. The ridiculousness is self explanatory. Whoever suggested that should be beaten with a sack of potatoes.
10- Using Pelicans as the airplanes. Granted, the Pelican is a bad-ass plane (from Halo, for those of you who don't know), but yet again, it shows very little of the technological advancement. It's the kind of plane that could be built now and was just a blatant ripoff. I kept waiting to see Master Chief and a group of Spartans jump out of the back.
11- The mech pulling out a knife to fight the blue guy. Wow... I mean, the mech has METAL HANDS! Why would it have a knife?
12- Arrows suddenly being able to pierce the unpierceable aircraft windscreens. So, when the army guys are attacking the big tree, the arrows are just bouncing off the windows harmlessly. Then, during the later battle, the arrows are going straight through them. So which is it?
13- The planet was named Pandora. Yeah, I get the reasoning for it and perhaps it was named that just because they wanted the reasoning to be so painfully obvious that everyone would get it.
14- The 'peaceful' blue people immediately resort to war. The blue critters are just as warlike as the humans, but only the humans are chastised for it. Their first response when the guy shows up at camp is to kill him. They aren't exactly open to negotiations (not that they necessarily need to be), but it's not like they're particularly diplomatic.
I wouldn't have minded all of these things nearly so much if the movie hadn't been so pretentious and full of itself. It tried to take itself so seriously and provide a social commentary (Operation 'shock and awe'... really??) but at the same time just blow any and all credibility away. I feel like it made me dumber having watched it and that 3 hours may have repercussions for quite some time.
Labels: avatar, movie
