I dragged my brother and friend to Avatar. I’d been wanting to see it since I’d first heard about it months and months ago. It wasn’t a movie they really wanted to see but we went anyway. I took much ribbing after we left the theater, and I protested with what I could come up with.

“It’s the most expensive movie ever made. I had to go see it just for the historical fact of that.”

“It was technologically ground-breaking.”

“It was visually stunning.”

“It was creative; it was a creative concept.”

The movie sucked eggs; lets just be honest. The problem with Avatar is that there isn’t enough time to cover the problems with Avatar.

It was no District 9; that was the SciFi movie of 2009 you should have seen. Avatar was, instead, a blockbuster of staggering Hollywood predictability. All the glossy paint in the world doesn’t cover up the fact that it’s a dead horse. I don’t regret seeing it, and I’d recommend lovers of SciFi to definitely see it. I enjoyed it. But, when the lights came on at the end of it, I knew I’d just seen something fairly ridiculous.

I mean, “unobtainium“? James Cameron decided to pull that in and use it for the name of material they were fighting over? Really?

So here I find myself foolishly embroiled in a comment disagreement over on a Facebook page in which everyone is gushing about Avatar, claiming it to be one of the best movies they’ve ever seen. Why?

Because it was anti-imperialistic. And has amazing technology mixed in with it.

You know, I have my pet beliefs, too, and I don’t find myself falling in love with a movie just because it goose steps with whatever that belief happens to be. A movie is good because of, chief among all things, a strong story. Story is the foundation. A movie is a story, foremost. Dialog, character, acting, cinematography — those all help make and break a movie, but if the movie’s foundation is a weak, predictable and trite story, they can’t make up for it with all the pretty in the world. The other things might help it be a bit more palatable to choke down, but the fact that the story was a stinker never goes away.

Here is the Book-a-Minute Bedtime plot for Avatar:

Marine screws scientists for fellow marines, then screws an alien, and then screws the marines for the scientists.

It’s Titanic. It’s Terminator. It’s classic James Cameron, a guy who “fleshes out” characters with scenes like Billy Zane running around a sinking ship with a pistol to kill someone. Bad guys are 100 percent bad and good guys are 100 percent good and it’s one-dimensional and ridiculous. It’s a guy worth millions of dollars, scamming the peasant public out of their money to see his anti-rich, anti-military films while he gets richer and richer and changes women every five minutes. It’s a guy who makes his lead character look like a 10-foot tall blue version of Matthew Lillard, the most annoying actor alive.

Here’s how it’s gone on Facebook so far:

Facebook guy: “Avatar” is one of the best films I’ve ever seen. Anti-imperialism mixed with amazing technology, what’s not to like?

Me: The lame-ass story, that’s what.

Other guy: the military folks in that movie where about as intelligent as custer too… hopefully we never actually travel to other planets because we would just repeat imperialist history all over again.

Facebook guy: I didn’t think the story was lame at all. It certainly wasn’t subtle, but then again neither is stealing resources and wiping out entire civilizations. Sure, the military folks were brutes (which, as Adam points out, tends to be the actual case many times throughout history), but it was a good vs. bad Hollywood blockbuster, not a character study. Finally we get a blockbuster with a positive message. I loved it.

Another person: I agree with Graeme. Some of the characters were a bit over the top. But hell, when was the last time a movie this big is so blatantly anti-imperialist.

[...]

Me: Noble themes, sure, but handled by a ham fisted storyteller. It was lame-ass. Technologically amazing, visually stunning, innovative — lame-ass story.

Facebook guy: That’s a fair criticism, but I was able to overlook it because of the other stuff. I don’t know if that’s good or not on my part, but I left the theater feeling completely blown away and it has been awhile since I’ve had that sort of movie going experience.

Me: Anti-imperialist blockbusters? Try Spiderman. Try just about any movie where the little guy screws the man. It’s a common theme in blockbusters and movies because it’s a theme that sells really well to the public since most of us aren’t rich. If you liked it, that’s great, but you should come up with a better reason other than just “it was anti-imperialist and so I liked it.” The story was trite and lame and typical James Cameron. It was visually amazing. Lots of action. But lame-ass story! Marine screws alien, basically. That’s Cameron for you.

…and so it goes.

Frankly, the best comment I saw about the film was this:

Papyrus, James Cameron? Couldn’t use some of the $300 mil for a real font? Can’t wait to see your brilliant use of Comic Sans in the sequel.

Now that was brilliant.

Go see Avatar. It’s pretty and imaginative in some ways, and visually stunning. Don’t expect a great story.