Posts Tagged ‘James Cameron’
Overstreet posts best review of Avatar I have read so far…
I usually find film critic and author Jeffrey Overstreet’s insights invaluable. And in regard to Avatar, he does not disappoint.
Most critics either gush over the film or dismiss its contrived plot, but others have managed a more balanced approach. James Cameron has always delivered a feast for the eyes, and anyone familiar with his work would agree with Steven Greydanus–Cameron is a master manipulator adept as making his themes seem weightier than they really are.
I never suspected Avatar to be any different, but all the talk of its sermonizing has started to make me wonder if it was somehow weaker. Overstreet’s reaction to the film has at least compelled me to take the time and go see it (maybe), but still manages to cut through the hyperbole.
The masterstroke of the original Star Wars‘ trilogy was its bold third-act subversion of audience hopes and expectations. Lucas made the villain we loved to hate into a redeemable human being, one who could be saved by grace. Avatar has nothing so bold or redeeming as that, nothing to discomfort audiences with the wild truth.
What begins as mythmaking devolves into political pulpit-pounding, a narrow-minded “war-for-oil” critique of recent and present-day American military interventions in the Middle East that sounds oh-so-2004.
[…]
So I’ll join the chorus in singing “I can’t believe my eyes.” But I cannot echo the recurring declaration that the movie is “mind-blowing” unless I mean that the movie short-circuited my intellect as I watched. The waves of toys spilling from Cameron’s toybox momentarily distracted me from the fact that what he’s built from them is flimsy and crude.
As an achievement in technical innovation, Avatar is phenomenal, a ride worth taking more than once, but as adventure movies go, it is impressively new in every way except the way that matters most. Its look will last. But its heart won’t go on.
After waiting 12 years for another Cameron film, I had hoped for better. Sure, Cameron could never live up to the hype he generated. Who could? After all, this was the film to which Titanic was a mere detour, right?
Riiight…
James Cameron gets the machine rolling on Avatar. Finally.
The trailer is said to hit IMAX theaters and stream on the ‘net on August 21. For now, though, here’s is the first official teaser poster.
Avatar premieres December 18.