A Solid and Respectable Observation
Quote:
Originally Posted by
cinemabon
The fourth biggest movie in box office history... I'd say he made his money back... and, knows something about what the film-going audience wants - entertainment, pure and simple. What's your dream?
I completely agree with your statement and Cameron like Spielberg's JAWS (1975) has demonstrated that he is attuned to what the film-going audience wants - entertainment, pure and simple. Nevertheless, this is a populist movie that fails to really adhere to the hard core nature of sci fi aliens - AVATAR is more like the soap opera STAR WARS (1977) updated with special effects that provided more dazzle and flash over the substance and inherent essence of sci fi much like Richard Gere's character of Billy Flynn in CHICAGO (2002).
The Titanic and Avatar Phenomena
When Titanic came out in in 1997 people oohed and ahhed at the dazzling special effects and the nearly perpendicular death falls of passengers, this was a huge epic love story pasted on the background of a huge dizzying set and for a while the audience was transported much like an extended Disneyland ride into a world outside of themselves and away from their current lives. Today in 2010, America and now the world are again enthralled in another visual entertainment ride transported far away for a couple of hours away from the terrible worries and anxieties of reality by the dazzling special effects and another love story and American-based fairytale in outerspace. Nevertheless, both Titanic and Avatar are just that - amazing visual entertainment rides that allow us to turn off our minds and absorb the visual images and forget our real world for a few moments, hope for a better future with images of perhaps experiencing some moral uplift in ourselves. Whether or not the audience afterwards has really been intellectually stimulated with a truly layered and qualitatively substantive script with any depth is another matter. Yes, both Titanic and Avatar were phemonena but so were the Wall Street Crash and executive bonuses, UFO Balloon ride, and the Palin Vice Presidential campaign, and the death of Princess Diana or the television coverage of OJ Simpson's trial.
Absoflogginlutely beautiful
Issue #120 of Cinefex magazine arrived with over half of the issue dedicated to the production of "Avatar" (2009) with production stills and art for submission to the Motion Picture Academy. (A collector's item if I ever saw one) The full page shots which include close-ups are about as real as you can get with all the art, emphasis on art, thrown in. Right up your alley, Chris. Someone has got to be coming out with a book called "The Art of Avatar" or my name isn't Buffalo Bill Cody... and it's not!
It's the number of tickets that really matter
AVATAR still has a way to go to really become the most popular (as opposed to most financially successful in 2010 dollars) as there are number of movies that have attracted more people. Anyway, again what does the most financially successful (in 2010 dollars) really have to do with the quality of the film anyway? Just yesterday USA Today came out with an article "Psychologists: Propaganda works better than you think." People can be made to believe and buy stuff that they really didn't even know they wanted in the first place.
Art - a personal perspective
First, 'bout time, Johann.
As Stewart Klawans says in his article, "Geeks prepared for the revelation [of Avatar] by draping themselves in garlands of e-mails," in speaking of its anticipation. I tend to agree, but only partially. I agree that Fox had plenty of advertisement for the film, including numerous interviews and guest spots. However, that can only help a film so far. After that, the movie must stand on its own. No amount of publicity can save a bad film, as many studios have discovered through the years. Big budgets can also mean big disasters. However, on a rare occasion, a single person has a vision for a film and gathers a group around him or her to help bring that vision to the screen. I can think of many examples, from Hitchcock (Psycho) to Welles (Citizen Kane) to Wyler (Ben-Hur) to Speilberg (Schindler's List) to Lucas (Star Wars) to Coppola (The Godfather). While film is a collaborative effort, the vision of the individual, usually the director, guides the work from start to finish and delivers a product that stands up to multiple viewings. Klawans, in a round about and overly intellectual way, arrives at a similar conclusion, although his analysis of plot is slightly over the top. He took great pains to find the root appeal to its mass attraction by careful examination of the rudimentary elements that comprise the film and its creator. All fine and good. However, such "intellectual masturbation" as I have come to call it over the years, does not produce what Cameron found so easy to do... find the art, let the story tell itself.
From the start of this thread, I said the plot was very simple. Klawans calls it "cowboys and indians." It is, but with a modern twist, just as Star Wars is also a western with outer space elements. Yet, if we even go back to the western and look at those elements, we find why they had such great appeal at one time. These include the basic elements of plot and story. True the protagonist is a cripple whose deliverance can be considered Christ-like or prophet. Only these are but stories, too. The kind of writing that is sucessful usually uses these same plot devices that have been used in storytelling since the beginning of human speech to elicite emotional chords that are universally felt. Find the right combination, and you can make a million. Deliver the right combination with a personal touch that also gives the audience a new artistic twist, and you can laugh at the critics all the way to the bank.
Separate Tables and Avatar
Thanks to digital television offering more channels, I managed quite by accident to catch the last four-fifths of SEPARATE TABLES (1983) , made of television movie starring Julie Christie, Alan Bates, and Claire Bloom last night. The movie was shot in a play setting format, yet what struck me was the relatively simply plot outline and yet its presentation was so captivating, so rich in nuance, and so bitingly and emotional gripping that when I compare this television movie to AVATAR, I can't but be struck by how deeply SEPARATE TABLES was able to strike strong cords of both emotional and intellectual resonance on the topic of difficult human and intimate relationships as well as controversial public sentiment and humiliation and tolerance. In comparison toe AVATAR, SEPARATE TABLES was production singularly focused on the acting and ferment of the human condition while AVATAR took advantage of spectacular visual effects, almost hypnotizing its audience into a mindless joyride that offered some tidbits of the resolution of ethical dilemmas and heroic battles. Yet I would take SEPARATE TABLES over AVATAR because it was it didn't require fancy gloss-over effects to get its strong and sensitive message across. As I mentioned elsewhere, for alien-ness, even a movie like THE FIRST SPACE SHIP TO VENUS (1960) with its low-budget could easily rival AVATAR for its depiction of an otherly world.
Thanks for your Reassurance
Quote:
Originally Posted by
cinemabon
If we're speaking just of acting, then why not take a film like, "12 Angry Men" instead of "Avatar"? This Sidney Lumet film is shot in one room with absolutely no action and no other sets used - twelve men acting, pure theater and as far removed from cinema as one can get. Why do I say that? Because cinema is not a stationary thing. While the acting in "12 Angry Men" is practically superior to anything you can name, it is still theater and not cinema.
The art of cinema is to tell stories using this medium of film (and now digital, but the same difference - you still have to cut between shots whether physical or in a computer). What we are talking about when we sing the praises of "Avatar" has nothing to do with a detraction of the actors or acting. It has more to do with a fluid and visual expression of art.
So when you come down on "Avatar" because it uses "virtual actors" and not real ones, you are missing the point. No one is advocating that actors be replaced and no one should. I started in the theater at the ripe old age of three and performed in plays for the next forty years of my life. The theater is in my blood. Yet, I also studied cinema and turned out some very interesting product. However, I look at James Cameron's work with envy. For he has blended that world into a wonderful homogenous effect. I understand your fear that the popularity of this medium might under cut the work of actors. But rest assured, we will be around for a very long time, with or without special effects around us. That is the human condition, to look at another human and listen to them tell a story, by gesture or facial... and no computer will ever take its place, not even a fancy one. Disney's realistic animation in 1938, called "Snow White" did not replace actors (actually quoted in the New York Times!) nor will this fantasy.
"Have no fear, Underdog is here!"
Your words are comforting to hear. I shall look forward with interest with the reign of the 3-D film during this decade.
Here's The Company That AVATAR keeps and still has a ways to go
As AVATAR is about to surpass TITANIC as the number one box office champion based on unadjusted dollar box receipts is well to remember other films that may have a just as strong a claim as box office champions and as to whether such a claim relates to the quality and "best" movie claim as well, I'll leave to readers to look over the list and decide for themselves.
Rank Title ( Year) (Est. tickets) (Adjusted Gross)
1 Gone With The Wind (1939) 202,044,600/1,455,000,000
2 Star Wars (1977) 178,119,600/1,282,000,000
3 The Sound of Music (1965) 142,415,400/1,025,000,000
4 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) 141,854,300/1,021,000,000
5 The Ten Commandments (1956) 131,000,000/943,000,000
6 Titanic (1997) 128,210,000/924,000,000
7 Jaws (1975) 128,078,800/922,000,000
8 Doctor Zhivago (1965) 124,135,500/894,000,000
9 The Exorcist (1973) 110,568,700/796,000,000
10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) 109,000,000/784,000,000
11 One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) 99,917,300/719,000,000
12 Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) 98,180,600/707,000,000
13 Ben-Hur (1959) 98,000,000/706,000,000
14 Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983) 94,059,400/677,000,000
15 The Sting (1973) 89,142,900/641,000,000
16 Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) 88,141,900/632,000,000
17 Jurassic Park (1993) 86,361,800/620,000,000
18 The Graduate (1967) 85,571,400/616,000,000
19 Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) 84,738,800/611,000,000
20 Fantasia (1941) 83,043,500/598,000,000
21 The Dark Knight (2008) 80,765,300/533,000,000
22 The Godfather (1972) 78,922,600/568,000,000
23 Avatar (2009) 78,133,700
Defending the Undefendable
A circular argument at best when one comes to argue about the validity of box office receipts and then ends up stating that AVATAR has made more money than any other movie as a concluding statement. The fact that AVATAR has made more money than any other movie considering all the variables involved still isn't very meaningful statement as regards the movie itself...
While I have rated AVATAR an 8 on a 10 point scale, as a fascinating and visually delightful movie, nevertheless, Marshall McLuhan's the "Medium is the Message," where the 3-D and the visual effects become the popular, Disneyland entertainment of the current fashion, the world's LSD trip...where a passing technical breakgrhough is sought over substance, the collision of mental thought and emtions for primitive sensory delights...we find ourselves in the sci fi world of Fahrenheit 451 (1966) looking at wall screens that offer only a mirage of substance over an illusion of brilliant intellectual stimlution while books are banned and burned.
