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How something is packaged regardless of its content influences public opinion greater than most rational people realize. How something looks can provoke positive beliefs in how good a product is and in this case a film may be. So the medium can make a message even better than it really is. Supposedly psychological tests have demonstrated this to be so according to Brian Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia.
McLuhan’s understanding of the media that delivers the medium or message, was framed by his knowledge that satellite communications had made us more a “global village.” However, that level of understanding would pale in comparison to what he would say today about the internet (which did not exist in its current form since he died in 1981). Even more, since he was more focused on the medium that delivered the message, the iphone would further complicate matters, since the “hot” media he so described (such as film) is combined in its content on such devices, and computers such as laptops contain both hot and cold forms. All film is hot, and if McLuhan had seen an IMAX theater, he would have said, HOT HOT HOT! In this case, anything an IMAX theater projected would have the same significant impact on its audience due to its size and image clarity (especially by adding realism such as 3-D). But that would go for any film in that format or any format. McLuhan would not say that one film is more significant than another because it is the delivery system that is the medium, not the content.
For once, we agree
It seems rather superfluous to me to write a review of AVATAR at this stage. I mean, IMDB has collected 352 reviews from critics and an astonishing 2,170 reviews from "users". So, I reiterate the obvious: AVATAR is a monumentally entertaining immersive and sensorial experience. I can picture Chris thinking: "Argh! Dummy drank the Kool-Aid! Bought into the hype!" I tend to regard myself as a guy with eclectic tastes but I recognize I respond most enthusiastically to low budget, minimally plotted, subtly socially-conscious dramas with psychologically complex characters and ambiguous endings. The best films I watched in 2009 (The American GOODBYE SOLO and the Argentinean New Wave films THE HEADLESS WOMAN and LIVERPOOL) fit that mold. However, once in a while comes a grand fantasia out of Hollywood that sweeps me off my feet. I am a fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the first and last versions of King Kong, for instance. Likewise, I found AVATAR irresistible.
Not just the visuals, mind you, but the romance and the critique of imperialism that form the core of the narrative. I realize that the story mostly follows an archetypal template. Yet that is part of the reason for the film's universal reach and the specificity of the imagined milieu rendered with painstaking craft sustained my attention for the duration. Out of the 6 pages of comments in this thread, it is cinemabon's recounting of his (and his son's) emotional reaction to the scene in which the HomeTree is destroyed that resonates with me. One of the great things that cinema is capable of doing is to arouse emotions within the viewer. This one just could not remain detached and distanced during the destruction of Pandora. The CGI bombing scenes reminded me of the all-too-real bombing of Cambodia seen in the Oscar-winning documentary Hearts and Minds (1975).
The political allegories in AVATAR are clear, and central to my modest reservations about the film. There are two antagonists:Giovanni Ribisi's organization man and Colonel Quaritch. The former barely registers and the latter seems scarcely human; a barely personified Thanatos. Ideologically, it feels uncomfortable to me to "hate" a soldier and not the "suit" giving orders from earth for the enrichment of himself and his class. We don't get to see the real villain(s) in AVATAR. There has to be a Dick Cheney in it but we don't get to see him.
Personally, it's hard for me to really resonate with a movie that uses stock characterization and predictable storylines that seem to be idealiized beyond reality (even taking into account that it is a sci fi movie). We've seen the story all too often before - we the bad guys against the bad guys in order to promote some socially concientious goodness. Not a lot to really contemplate here. I got more out of Ripley saving her cat in ALIEN (1979) in terms of emotional resonance than anything in this movie besides the fabulous special effects or for another more effective socially redeeming movie take Golden Globe Signourney Weaver's performance, storyline, and script in GORILLAS IN THE MIST (1988).
I still haven't seen the film yet and I probably won't write a review either, like Oscar.
I'm impressed with my ability to resist seeing this behemoth. Gold star for hype avoidance! (Even tho I've hyped it personally!)
In the Toronto Star a few days ago they had a picture of a guy in Na'vi makeup and "costume", in all blue makeup, complaining about his country's displacement of his "people". (They named the country but I forget what it was- somewhere in South America? Maybe?). Apparently a whole horde of people protested in that get-up. The film has serious resonance on our little blue marble.
I sense serious political tones in it and I plan on seeing it in the first week of March. (Still selling out in IMAX here in Toronto- unbelievable)
There's a "man behind the curtain" like Cheney in it? Hmmm.
I think I'll love it.
Thank you Oscar for your remarks. The man who touted Avatar's horn is "still resistant" I find incredulous. Tsk, tsk, Johann.
Few movies in film history resonate with their audiences the way this film has. To be cynical and disregard those feelings on an intellectual basis is to deny ones feelings about any event... the skater who fights to be on the podium after a decade of sacrifice only to fall at the last second and have their hopes dashed away is a vicarious moment, not only for the skater but us. We feel the pain, the loss, the emptiness that follows and the terrible sense of failure that no matter what we do, we face this foe of fate that robs us of glory. "It was not meant to be." The reason I came out in favor of this film from the start, and I believe I made this abundantly clear many times, had nothing to do with the plot. We've gone over that time and again. It had to do with something much deeper than that. It concerns emotion... the kind of gut wrenching emotion that some people refuse to recognize in themselves, because to do so, would make them feel vulnerable. Well I happen to cry when I see something that calls for it, such as the skater who falls or the tree that falls, and to deny that "Avatar" is not some gut wrenching emotional event and a once in a lifetime happening, is to deny that child in ourselves that calls a spade a spade when we see it. If we are to seek out the truth in our lives, then we must recognize that part of us that is vulnerable, and let it out when called upon. For only then are we human and part of this larger tribe called humanity.
"THAT"S HOW YOU SCATTER THE ROACHES" -Col. Quaritch
AVATAR
Incredible movie. I waited a retarded amount of time to check Avatar out and it did not disappoint.
Wow.
In 3-D it is nothing short of breathtaking.
I was just bowled over with the gorgeous 3-D renderings.
The art direction (colors, character/vehicle designs, vegetation, MOONS!, etc.) was just incredible.
Everything I want in a movie is here, except there are two things that kind of annoyed me (yet are quite forgivable):
1. It seeems to me that Jake is plucked from nowhere to be the intel hero. Why? Why is he chosen? a crippled marine?
His mental state hasn't been analyzed enough. It seems like they just picked him out of a hat. Maybe I missed why he's the man for the job.
2. The Na'Vi accepted him pretty damn fast into their tribe. I had trouble with how they reason.They are extremely primitive, yet their communications and abilities to express themselves is quite developed. I was expecting maybe a little more "caveman" and a little less spiritual/native indian superimposition. But again, quite forgivable. James Cameron has suceeded in telling an interesting story about human folly transposed onto a fantastic forbidden planet.
That giant tree falling towards the end....holy shit. Just like the Titanic, falling to the depths!
Loved Avatar. I wasn't going to write a review but I had to comment on it. It is an astonishing achievement in motion picture history.
Everything was aces to me, each sequence was beautiful to behold. I often wondered how Cameron's SFX teams produced such amazing, believable images. The CGI was more believable than the great stuff we saw in the new Star Wars trilogy. Special effects are at a level now that surpass anything in the past. During Avatar I had flashbacks to when I first saw Jurassic Park, and The Phantom Menace. But Jake Sully's Avatar destroys the likes of Jar Jar Binks and Boss Nass. More believable and more interesting.
Just a fantastic film.
Avatar deserves all of it's recognition.
James Cameron has shoved the medium forward.