Tag: Noble Savage

Gone to the movies

I suffer the consequences when I overdo. It doesn’t take much to put me down, and it takes a lot of time to get me back up. So I have to find entertainment to at least keep me sitting down while I pull what health I can together.

Since I haven’t had DSL very long, I’m a bit behind some folks in the art of movie-hunting. Catching up is a nice sit-down occupation, and entertaining in itself. Many episodes of Doctor Who (with Chinese subtitles) and other fun things later, I’m getting the hang of it.

Believe it or not, the first big one I went for was Avatar. The perfectly good reason — I wouldn’t get upset if I encountered problems acquiring it. Why practice on something I cared about?

Anyway, now I have seen the whole thing. Not in 3D, of course. I have never seen anything in 3D. My eyes don’t work together. I have lived my whole life without the illusion of 3D in the real world. Oh, I have depth perception, of a sort. It relies on focus, and it works very well under most circumstances. I’m a dead shot.

Heading back toward the subject: With one less illusion to veil the wizard, I see what is really there more easily than the average moviegoer. What I see pisses me off. All that technology wasted on a craptacular concatenation of clichés! Sure, there are a few nice moments, a couple of characters I could care about (if they could stop spitting out stale platitudes). None of it is enough to make up for the constant pain. Avatar, how do I despise thee? Let me count the ways.

The plot — well, it’s possible to do good things with the worst of plots, but that sure as hell wasn’t done with this Dancing With Wolves Meets Dune on the Forbidden Planet mess for the masses.

Noble Savages are bad enough; but nobsavs that yammer like sixth graders playing cowboys and indians, zomg. Not only are the aliens far too human, they are so dumbed-down-human as to be nauseating . What do you mean, we’re not in Kansas? I can see Topeka from here.

Reef lifeforms transplanted into forests. Come ooooon. It’s so obvious. There is nothing alien about the flora, it’s just scrambled habitat with a touch of exaggeration. Well, except for:

That godawful Tree of LED ropes! Cheeses freeakin’ tripes, did a manufacturer of non-essential lighting widgets underwrite the film?

Six legged animals vs. quadripedal humanoids. All sense and reason left behind. Besides, having two sets of front limbs is advantageous only to centaurs and dragons.

People doing the usual stupid things to get the plot along. Jake was supposedly a well-trained Marine. First he walks off to sniff the flowers in a deadly jungle, then he fails to find a place where he can cover his back when night is falling. Assbuttfucking stupid.

I can’t go on. Gah. Why couldn’t millions of dollars and thousands of hours, not to mention some pretty decent camera work, go into a good Dragonriders of Pern movie? Cripes, I’d pay to see that!

AVATAR — Supersize my lie!

Let’s postulate a peaceful tribe of Noble Savage warriors descended from carnivores. Send them an Honorable White Man with a selfish motive. Let’s have this HWM, this super Everyman’s Gary Stu, be sucked right into their neo-aztec NuAge culture and impress the tits off them. Yeehah.

Uh…too oxymoronic for you? Okay, let’s pile on a shitload of gaudy color, make everything three times as large as life (except for what has to be ten times larger than life), and keep the action fast and violent. There. Now the unbelievability factor has increased to the point of stupefaction. You have to accept it because…because the gimmick of 3D is so cool.

But…but…waitaminnit, what about the truly awesome Message? Mustn’t we be mindblown by the Oneness of all these bloodthirsty creatures with their too-grand environment? Shouldn’t we have the tits impressed off us by things like the straight out of Disney’s Fantasia tree seed scene? I mean, hey, all this NuAge wonderfulness is in direct opposition to the horrors perpetrated by lying politicians and greedy corporate entities, right?

Right. Let’s fight lies with bigger lies until we smash ’em all flat!

The Message doesn’t apply to the real world. Take off the goggles, walk out of the theater, and what do you have? A lot of wishful thinking. Baby, your buttons have been pushed.

You want a pristine environment? You’re probably going straight to Wal-Mart afterward to blow what’s left of your entertainment money on plastic crap. Then you’re going to your overheated home to eat junk. It’s too much effort to change your habits. Too hard to think about the connection between what you do and the consequences of your actions. Yes, Ducky, your actions. Not Those Other Bad People, you.

You want peace? Let’s kill the enemy, blow up their stuff. There’s a Message for you.

Avatar is going to help make this world a better place to live, you betcha. For liars. So lie to yourself, hang onto those fantasies of pure unobtanium, but don’t let them intrude into your Real Life; don’t look at them too closely. Just believe in lies, and keep the big liars rolling in money.