avatar

After months of non-stop hype, record-breaking sales and now an Oscar nomination for best picture, I took in James Cameron's CGI-dominated 'Avatar.'

The frustration I have with the majority of action-based films is that the director's intent is to bombard the audience with special effects. Usually, this is done in order to disguise a basic storyline and mediocre acting. By laying out the film in such a way, what I believe the director is telling me, the viewer, is that in order for me to have an enjoyable film experience, the plot should be spoon-fed to me, requiring no contemplation on my part. The director seems to have a preconceived notion that the audience of the movie either has no desire to challenge itself intellectually, or has not the capacity to do so. And the frequency with which these films are being made, I lean more and more towards the latter notion.

The latest example of this is in Avatar, where acting and storyline appear to have been an afterthought. Giovanni Ribsi, who has done admirable work in the past, portrays the stereotypical corporate CEO, Parker Selfridge. Throughout his one-dimensional performance he fails to stray from his goal of removing the Navi people from their Native land, Pandora, in order to access the unabtaniem beneath the surface. In his quest, he exhibits the icy demeanor we have come to expect from fictional company presidents, and refuses to acknowledge that digging up this unabtainium will cause great havoc in the lives of the Navi. In conflict this we see the predictable drama of corporate interest vs. environmental concern that has littered the news for decades, with seemingly no effort at coming up with a unique solution to this stalemate.

What makes James Cameron's latest opus so bothersome is that his resume shows that he is capable of making films foucsing on visuals without sacraficing the quality of the story. While Alien and the first of the Terminator films are now ancient in terms of special effect technology, both of these can still be enjoyed because the strength of the narrative carries the film along as equally as the abundance of explosions does.

However the greatest example of the merging of visual delights with story and at least, mediocre acting, is Terminator 2. In what was one of the milestones of big-budget, summertime, explosion-filled mind-nummers that now innudate moviegoers annually, Cameron was able to provide a storyline that was fantastical, but engaging enough not to be ignored. With it came the best acting performance of Arnold Swartzanegger's career, which, overall isn't exactly on par with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but an acheivement nonetheless.

Which is not to say that a central role for Calfornia's current governor in this film would have gone miles to increase its overall quality. However, perhaps a review by Cameron of how he -previously relied on other elements to tell a story would have.