James Cameron — director of “Titanic” — is finally back with his neck blockbuster movie:  “Avatar.”  The second trailer preview was released last week and we were left gasping in dismay at the longitudinal dismay of the attempt.


James Cameron is not an ordinary director, yet Avatar is just that — an old-feeling movie wearing new shoes and blue body paint. 

The premise of Avatar is fascinating:  Marines combine their DNA with a new species to become, in situ, that new species while retaining their Marine training.

Of course, the movie centers around a money grab for land and its riches and The White People trying to enslave and kill The Blue People to meet that financial end.  It’s Capitalism Meets Papa Smurf.

Watching the trailer for Avatar appears to tell you the entire story in three minutes and forty seconds and it just isn’t that ingenious or inventive.  Avatar may do well as a piece of spectacle in the marketplace, but it won’t be another Titanic-sized blockbuster. 

Perhaps, a decade ago — when Cameron first had the idea for this movie — we would have been knocked out of our seats by The Blue People, but as it stands today, we’ve already seen this conflict in video games, we’ve already experienced “Avatars” in our real and online lives and the military angle has already worn us out in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The lesson in Avatar is not for us, but rather for James Cameron:  Good ideas may take time to execute, but when the moment is the obsession, neither time nor tide can wait for the technology to catch up with the critical memeing. 

3 Comments

  1. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
    Gordon Davidescu says:

    It would seem like a more fun evening to see the Blue Man Group — though the tagline Capitalism meets Papa Smurf does intrigue me as a film notion 🙂

  2. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
    David W. Boles says:

    The movie looks visually exciting, Gordon, but the story is just old — not timeless — just aged and tired.

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