Monica and I saw Avatar the other day, and had divergent reactions to it. I expected a special-effects bonanza that would leave me with a wet spot on the front of my jeans, and a plot so idiotic it would induce localized brain damage. My reaction, to either, was not so extreme. The special effects were great, but my life remains unchanged. The plot was simplistic and pretty stock, but not nearly as absurd as I had feared.
Still, on the way home we were talking about it, and I went into my usual spiel about how Hollywood was willing to spend two hundred million dollars on the movie, so why couldn’t they spend an extra, say, one million dollars, and get a script by a real writer that had not only the requisite ass-kickery and car chases, but was actually compelling and interesting, too?
I have this argument memorized and can give it without much cortical involvement, but halfway through I stopped. This movie has made more than a billion dollars already; and made it faster than any movie in history. If somebody made a movie of a dog shitting in a park, and it made a billion dollars, I suspect no amount of sturm und drang and wailings about artistic vision would persuade anybody. People like movies the way they are; they don’t require ANYTHING from them wrt actual story. That’s the way it is, that’s the way they like it, and I play my own part in the whole ecosystem by forking out eight bucks even while believing the story would be excruciatingly lame.
So I’m going to tear those pages out of my mental notebook and never use them again. The only people who give a shit about a thoughtful and interesting story don’t matter to the people writing the checks, either the ones writing checks to make the movies or the ones writing the checks to see them. This is dog-bites-man to everyone but me, I realize, but what can I say. I’m slow.
Update: You might enjoy this review of the movie, which is well-written and interesting.