I hear from a colleague (for I did not watch the Academy Awards) that Hurt Locker and not Avatar won Best Picture of 2009.  For someone who places little stock in these awards, I find I’m surprisingly jubilant.  My ambivalence about Avatar has been well expressed on a previous blog posting, but I’ve had enough people take exception to my criticism that I feel compelled to explain a bit more.

Avatar was not bad.  Technically, it was fantastic, though I found it a more logical step up from LOTR than an unanticipated one-movie revolution of film.  Narratively, it wasn’t distinctive in any way other than its complete predictability of premise, character, plot, and just about everything but the look of the film.  The celebration it has garnered I find sad, because it is indicative of the substantial appetite there is for style without much substance.  What bothers me the most is that style can readily be used in service of substance, as could well have been the case with Avatar.  Here are a few specifics that bothered me about the film as well as an idea of what would have made it more interesting, which may help you better understand my opinion of the film.

1) Alien Love: Two complete different species experience attraction and romance so predictably that Jake and Neytiri develop an intimate relationship in a very familiar, human way.  Not only is this a boring approach, it isn’t particularly genuine.  The Na’vi are descended from felines and have carbon filaments strengthening their bones.  Their passions would likely be expressed, at least at times, far less tenderly than human intimacy.  Even the Klingons had more complexity with their snarling and biting and amorous adventures into dominance.  A lot could have been done with the complexities of inter-species romance, so big opportunity missed.  Every love story is about individuals, which means that they are at some level alien to one other.  By taking advantage of the significant differences between two individuals of literally different species, an interesting commentary could have been made on the nature of romance and love.   

2) Angelic Science: There are some quirks about Sigourney Weaver’s character that make her more interesting than any other character in the film, but even that is window dressing.  Weaver’s Dr. Augustine is driven by curiosity just hard enough to never compromise anything in the film.  Science is as pure as the Na’Vi faith, this perfect oneness with everything.  What a crock.  Science as a method is pretty trustworthy and impartial, but as a practice it’s cutthroat.  It’s intertwined with economics and prestige and the substantial fallibility of humans, and people who are driven to be the best in their fields aren’t ever self-sacrificing altruists.  Dr. Augustine would have been much more interesting if she was shown to be benefiting materially in some way from her study of the Na’Vi.  Would this make her evil?  Of course not.  Would it have made her a genuine scientist?  Certainly.  Real scientists confront tough calls frequently, crises of ethics and competition, and seeing how Augustine handled such situations would have helped the film immensely.  Instead, science serves as the perfect mechanism to verify the perfect system inherent to Pandora, and as any storyteller should know, few things are as boring as perfect.  Which brings me to the next point…

3) The Circle of Life!  Works well for an animated Disney show meant primarily for kids; for adults of a more examining nature, not so much.  The assumption that unadapted nature is the perfect environment for a sentient species is illogical.  The very emergence of sentience is tied to the ability to manipulate.  If I am aware of my my self then I critique my self, and as I separate my self from other things, I make use of them as best I can.  A sentient species will—even must—prioritize itself over other life by the simple fact of direct experience.  The simplistic conservationist message of the film was so trite as to be painful.  Now, if the Na’Vi’s god truly had not taken sides and let them all die, that would have been an authentic presentation.  Not a great film, but at least authentic.  What would have been far more interesting is a presentation of an evolved Na’Vi culture, better off in some ways and harmed in others, after interaction with humans.  If there’s a single great truth about nature, it’s change or die.  If the Na’Vi had been forced to adapt to the new situation, changing their culture in some way irrevocably, that would have been interesting to see.  Instead, we get a message not quite complex enough to deserve an Elton John song.

4) Evil, Stupid, and Cowardly Business:  The suit behind all the nastiness on Pandora is possibly the most irritating and one dimensional character in Avatar.  Believe it or not, even lowlifes usually don’t see themselves as lowlifes.  Most of them even have good points, such as sound understanding of market forces or even the yearnings and appetites of their market.  Some have even heard of a concept called “business ethics.”  They may not always follow these, but it does play a role in their decision making.  Ribisi’s character would have been so much more interesting if he’d genuinely represented the corporate world: human, perhaps even likable, but driven to do something that really bothers him.  He could have been charming, truly invested in finding a peaceful solution and bothered by their inability to do so—and he still could have ordered the attack on the Na’Vi.  That’s what makes excessive capitalism frightening: it can recognize other values, such as diversity, ethics, or interpersonal relationships, and consciousness relegate them to lesser value than profit.   It would have been even more interesting if the Na’Vi had genuinely benefited from the “Sky People,” making the corporation a great yet dangerous catalyst forcing the Na’Vi to decide how much of their own future would stay in their hands.  Instead, it was like Wal-mart with missile turrets bristling from every store.  Yeah, most realistic.

5) The Great Satan (the American military): This one makes me genuinely angry.  I find the assertion that soldiers are evil to be extremely offensive.  Most soldiers, including American soldiers, don’t demonize their opponents.  Their training is designed specifically to prevent that.  Soldiers are trained to focus on what they do, and to do it as perfectly as possible under the worst of conditions.  The enemy is a variable that you do not allow enough influence to dictate the outcome of engagement.  You don’t have to belittle or hate someone to fight them, even to kill them.  That’s one of the fascinating things about soldiers and war.  Col. Quaritch is every stereotype of the evil military commander.  He is a conscienceless killer, doesn’t know or respect his enemy, and is driven by no particular affection or defense of anything in which he’s invested.  He’s violent for the sake of violence.  At the very least they could have shown his viciousness arising from camaraderie with his men, which is true of almost every single combat vet I’ve ever met.  The dynamics of war are fascinating in their difficulty.  Soldiers are both people and weapons, and those aspects frequently fight against each other.  That’s what PTSD is, the human portion lashing out at things the weapon disregards as being no longer consequential.  Col. Quaritch isn’t human, just weapon.  If that happened in real life, and I expect it can, the result is a type of monstrous victim, someone who has had the humanity literally bleed and burned out of him.  There is no husk of a human soul in Avatar’s archvillain; he’s no person, just function.  That, ultimately, is the common fatal flaw throughout nearly every section of this movie: every character has a why for their existence, but almost never is there a why behind their why.  It is a film full of sparkly things, which, unfortunately, includes every character in the movie.

I don’t see many movies, but over my annual holiday month off—and with my writing career mostly stuck in waiting mode—I had time to see a few movies recently.  So I thought I’d comment on them.

Note that I said “comment” not “review.”  I don’t plan on reviewing movies on this blog, or much of anything else, truth be told, including politics.  I may comment on anything at any time, but that’s not the same.  The one thing I may formally review is books, but only books that I really love.  When I read a book I love, or at least like very much, I’ll mention it here; doesn’t matter if it was sent to me for a blurb or just something I picked up, it works pretty much the same way.  So, for those who send me books, be aware that I’m not an easy blurb or reviewer.  Quite the opposite.  I’ve found that I’m probably quite stingy when it comes to formal praise of others’ work to be used for marketing purposes.  I hope this doesn’t discourage anyone, because I do enjoy giving recommendations that I truly mean for whatever purpose might be beneficial.  Just understand that I don’t recommend many books, even books that most others feel are good or even great, and I don’t do negative or neutral reviews.  So if you approach me for a recommendation of some kind and don’t get it, please understand that I may not have had time to devote to reading it thoroughly, or I may not have loved it.  There are plenty of fine writers, many very successful, whose work would and has earned exactly the same response. 

So why even try?  Why approach an elitist curmudgeon with the puerile sensibilities of a mentally deficient hamster?  Because when I do give a recommendation I mean every single word, so it may be worth a go.

Films, on the other hand, I won’t review.  I’ll just tell you what I think.  So today I’ll tell you what I thought, in various levels of detail, about the movies The Blind Side, Avatar, and Sherlock Holmes. 

The Blind Side I liked a lot, even though it is a great example of my claim there is no such thing as non-fiction and that the statement “based on a true story” is ultimately irrelevant.  As someone once said—just who, I have no idea—”If the truth be told, I’d rather hear a story.”  It’s a good story, and so shouldn’t surprise people that it’s true but not factual.  In fact, I liked it so much that I won’t say anything other than go see it because I think you’ll like it.

On Avatar and Sherlock Holmes I will be somewhat more elaborate, which in this case isn’t good.

In the past few weeks I’ve seen a number of film critics and commentators recommending Avatar as one of the top films of the year, and I find this a bad, bad sign about the future of cinema.  Now, don’t misunderstand me: the film was visually stunning and the 3-D wasn’t gimmicky, which is an admirable move in the narrative form.  I enjoyed the movie mostly, though I won’t see it again and there were times when I found myself on the brink of boredom.  And while the story was decidedly cliched, predictable, and thematically didactic, it wasn’t any more so than most blockbusters, especially given recent history (the latest Transformers film, anyone?). 

You might tell from what I’ve said so far that I don’t greatly enjoy many movies, certainly not as many as I did before I started work as a professional storyteller.  But what I disliked the most about Avatar and its reception by many critics and the public is the clear foreshadowing that in future years I’m going to enjoy even fewer movies.  The Hollywood blockbuster, to which I have no ideological objection, is moving ever more toward excess glitz to cover anorexic story.  But that’s always been true, you  might say.  Yes—but recently more and more movies have been getting away with it. 

There’s always been a strong strain of visual puritanism among movie-makers, which often expresses in a fixation with technique even at the expense of rhetorical effect on the story.  Typically, these films have made the indie circuit where they’re watched by other filmmakers and no one else.  But now CGI has become so advanced that it’s capable of entertaining mass audiences purely on the level of distinction, so much so it can distract from or even hide the poor narrative structure beneath all the glamour.  Avatar used revolutionary production techniques to communicate what is, frankly, an unremarkable story—and in many quarters is being celebrated for this.  As a fan and writer of speculative fiction, this really, really worries me.  For years the best sci-fi and fantasy stories were avoided by Hollywood because of how difficult—sometimes impossible—it was to do the settings justice.  Recently we’ve seen technology unlock the door barring some of the greatest stories ever told from the visual medium.  The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a fine example of technology being implimented in service to great story.  But with the door now open too many filmmakers are mistaking their visual tools for their product, not as a means of production.  Avatar is the most spectacular average story ever filmed, and is certainly paving the way for many more gigantic expressions of mediocrity.  

If you think I’m being too harsh, consider that Avatar and Dances with Wolves are essentially the same story at the archetypal level.  Their structures are nearly identical, as are their themes.  Yet watch the two and there is no question which is a great story and which is not.  I’m disappointed because Avatar could have established a new standard for visual storytelling, broadening the possibilities of the medium; instead it took something very old standard and unremarkable, wrapped it in a massive, intricate, and glitzy bow, and called it revolutionary.  A revolution means doing something that hasn’t been done before, something truly new.  Avatar puts all its creative energies into packaging the common, old, and trite.  There’s nothing revolutionary in that. 

And you know, I think I liked Sherlock Holmes even less.  Partly this is because Holmes inexplicably became more Iron Man than super slueth (only without the suit); partly it was because the resulting action/mystery balance was, well, decidedly unbalanced; partly it was because I figured out the great “mystery” of the film about ten minutes in, and I hate that.  But the whole, complete, and total reason I didn’t much enjoy Sherlock Holmes is because it never understood what story it was actually telling.  I can’t say much without giving the story away, so I’ll leave it at this: the story is about Holmes vs Holmes, but the movie thinks it’s about the audience vs the filmmaker.  Really.  The entire movie is spent trying to manipulate the emotions of the viewer through uncertainty, and the manipulation is both intellectually and emotionally obvious.  The great crisis of the film is one of belief, and that belief is Holmes’s; his perspective should have been the perspective of the audience.  If that had been so, then the audience would have travelled the difficult path the movie wanted to take them down, because the character would have been their vehicle.  (If anyone’s interested, this is an example of abused point of view.)  Instead, the film feels schizophrenic and dishonest, trying to force the audience along a different path from the characters while claiming a joint journey.  In many ways, it’s a mess.  An entertaining mess sometimes (it does have Robert Downey Jr. in it, after all), but those moments of cohesion and pleasure are spaced out by all the instances where the film completely forgets its own story and goes places it had no business going by pathways better left untaken.  If you’re interested in an example of undisciplined and rhetorically mediocre storytelling in spite of strong moments of material, then Sherlock Holmes is something you should probably see.  If you’re just looking for a good time, read Doyle’s stories or watch Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett, because you can do much better than this movie.

Just a quick post to let everyone know that I’ve updated my calender, which now includes a free writers’ meeting where I’ll be speaking about networking to get published. Check out my calender for more information.

Random other news: My wrist seems to be getting better at such a lethargic pace, I swear, it’s healing just enough for me to estimate the amount and get frustrated. So I’ve started lifting weights again. That should show it: go ahead, taunt the bear with the kamikaze look. (No lectures, please. I’m doing my heaviest lifts at 60% weight, which has been cleared by my doctor.) Also, I’ve decided to take Rick Walton upon on his offer and drop in on his Children’s Literature Publication class at BYU tomorrow evening. I’m sure he’ll be able to use me as some sort of object lesson, perhaps in reference to things best avoided. Finally, I’m debating a post about a few movies I’ve seen in the last month. When the debate is over I’ll post or not depending on which faction wins. (Yes, I’m made up of factions, disparate and contentious all.)