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Post by rally on Jan 11, 2010 4:57:58 GMT -5
Every so often a film comes along that changes the climate of the times. James Cameron's Avatar could be one of those films when it comes to global warming, Alice Thomson writes from a snowbound Britain that needs convincing the world is growing hotter.
Checklist: thermal tights, gloves, hat, boots, shovel, ice axe. Ring the plumber to remind him the boiler hasn't been working for the past three days, spend an hour scraping ice off the car with your fingers before discovering that the school is closed, turn around, inch your way back and slip on the steps before taking a binbag up the nearest hill. This is Britain 2010: freezing in the coldest winter for 30 years.
Global warming? Don't even try it. They're ice-skating in Delhi and sledging in Seoul. That kind of sums up the argument, doesn't it? One of the heaviest snowfalls of the winter was landing on Britain as Energy and Climate Change Minister Ed Miliband stood up in parliment to defend the Copenhagen climate-change summit and explain why it was the political event of the Noughties.
Yet the NZ$283 million spent on this environmental junket for 115 world leaders appears to have come to nothing. They just expended an extra 41,000 tonnes of CO2, more greenhouse gas than produced by Malawi, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone over the same period.
No-one seems to care. Who gave their wife a wind turbine for Christmas? How many people bothered to sort the paper crackers from the cranberry sauce? Perhaps it's not just the Chinese who aren't trying any more.
When the political parties began their election campaigns this week Prime Minister Gordon Brown somehow failed to mention his compost; opposition leader David Cameron didn't pose for that poster with homegrown marrows in his vegetable garden. Green is no longer minty cool, it's sludge-brown boring.
According to a poll in The Times in November, fewer than half of Britons believe it is an established scientific fact that global warming is largely man-made. They refuse to feel guilty any more. Going green is just another luxury that we have learnt to do without in the recession.
Yet the planet may be saved - not by human beings but by three-metre Picassoesque aliens in turqoise Speedo bodysuits with tails. These creatures, who inhabit the distant moon Pandora, live in branches and worship Mother Earth. They drink water that is pooled in giant leaves, chant around trees that whisper of their ancestors and use pterodactyls for transport (althought they do still eat meat, apologetically). They are the stars of Avatar, the film that has become the fourth-biggest blockbuster of all time in less than three weeks.
The Na'vi may be armed only with bows and arrows, they may live 150 years in the future, but their message to humans is clear. You have no vegetation left on 22nd-century Earth. You have messed up your planet and wasted your resources, now don't come and destroy ours.
When humans were sent to exploit their mineral wealth (called Unobtanium, of course) with a campaign of shock and awe bombings, they fall in love with the low-emission lives ofthe Na'vi and the hero chooses to become an alien and reject selfish humanity.
The script could have been written by Al Gore. This is An Inconvenient Truth for children, but instead of a middle-aged former vice-president lecturing you about destroying the planet, it's extraterrestrials who are better dressed than ET with their covetable jewellery.
How come you know so much about it, you're thinking? It sounds ludicrous. Having seen the film twice in three days with my nine-year-old, I admit I don't need to see it again, but he and his friends do - and not just for the 237m (pound) 3-D effects, the battles, the Bambi-like scenery of Pandora or the popcorn. My son believes in these creatures' message and has started lecturing me on my environmental commitments. Why do we need to cut down a tree for Christmas? Does he really need all that packaging round his new iTouch? (He does, however, still need the iTouch).
The film is brilliant PR - smug and simplistic but effective and energising. James Cameron, who won an Oscar for sinking the Titanic, now wants to save the world and may just succeed in converting the next generation.
Avatar made US$1 billion from ticket sales around the world in the shortest time yet and could overtake Titanic, which took in US$1.8b.
No wonder the United States Right hates it, with one commentator calling it "a deep expression of anti-Americanism". They understand that any nation that loves this movie will not want to continue pumping oil out of the Alaskan National Park.
The director sounds a bit ridiculous when he says: "We're going to find out the hard way if we don't wise up and start seeking a life that's in balance with the natural cycles of life on Earth."
Disney put it more succinctly in The Lion King with "The Circle of Life," but Cameron is clearly a believer who is not in it just for box-office receipts. He spent 15 years perfecting the film.
It may not be every 40-year-old's first choice, but anyone with children - which includes most politicians - is likely to see it. President Barack Obama chose Avatar for his family's new year outing.
The British opposition Conservative Shadow Cabinet has fallen for it: "A story about blue people who save the world created by a man called Cameron - of course we've seen it," said one, who went with his son.
On the governing Labour side, the Miliband brothers are said to be fans. The political elite is beginning to get the message - audiences do care about the planet, they just don't want to be lectured about it by hypocritical politicians.
They want help to do their bit, not hectoring.
Avatar isn't Star Wars, Apocalypse Now or even Lord of the Rings: it's not classic. But few films manage to change perceptions. The Sound of Music rehabilitated the Austrians, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner ridiculed racism, Kramer vs Kramer tackled tackled divorce. Avatar - rather than Ed Miliband talking about Copenhagen - could do the same for global warming. For those who can get through the snow to see it.
-- Britain's The Times
I typed this up from a newspaper article I found on Sunday. It's pretty on to it, because even I, the great master of predicting the predictable, think the plot could have been a little less state highway straight and a little more mountain road twisty. XP
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Post by Aramius on Jan 11, 2010 5:18:12 GMT -5
Sorry to say this, but quite a bit of this article made me want to just walk away with yet another sigh. Not that I'm against being greener, reducing pollution, and taking care of our world better; hell, anyone who is needs a very firm smack upside the head. I'm against the continuing scaremongering of 'Climate Change'; simply because it's a natural bloody process, and thinking we, humanity, are the cause of it all is just massive pigheadedness and sheer, blind arrogance.
That said, it's always good to see Avatar getting more good press, as it well and truly deserves it; come on, $1.8 billion!
And finally, bite your tongue, Hector! The plot was freaking wonderful, thank you! ;D
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Post by rally on Jan 11, 2010 5:29:12 GMT -5
*whacks with floofy pillow* The plot was good, but not as good as it could have been with 15 years work. But you're right on all the climate change crap - it is changing, but I believe we're simply rotating round to another ice age as part of the Earth's own evolution. I might go see the movie again, just to add my $16 contribution to the 1.9 billion goal. XP
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Darkness
Wanderer
all energy is only borrowed; at some point you have to return it
Posts: 16
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Post by Darkness on Jan 11, 2010 5:29:49 GMT -5
wow u put in a lot of effort into that. u do have a point Avatar is like star wars but of this generation.
who would want to see Pandora or earth get destroid??
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Post by Aramius on Jan 11, 2010 6:21:38 GMT -5
Sir, must I inject this into you with a Na'vi neuro-toxin-tipped arrow?
THE. PLOT. IS. BEYOND. COMPARE.
Every plot needs that little injection of predictability. I, for one, cannot think of one way that the movie could have been better. The action scenes were flawlessly done, the dramatic moments, like the fall of Hometree, were perfectly prepared with every little detail, the environments were exquisitely detailed, and every bit of the plot felt polished to a perfect sheen, with the soundtrack perfectly offsetting the emotion and wonder of the Na'vi world.
*bares fangs and hisses*
PERFECT.
;D
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Post by rally on Jan 11, 2010 7:11:25 GMT -5
FINEFINEFINE, it was perfect. PERFECT I TELLS YA!
*dodges arrow and dives behind upturned table*
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Post by Aramius on Jan 11, 2010 7:24:40 GMT -5
Victory is mine!
Oh, here, have this as a gift. *throws Thanator over the table and walks away, whistling the Avatar theme*
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Post by rally on Jan 11, 2010 7:27:16 GMT -5
*is eated* >.>
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Post by • Aerys • on Jan 11, 2010 13:00:07 GMT -5
Eh, I beg to differ regarding the plot. And, drive a stake through me and burn me alive if you so desire, but I don't think I would have enjoyed the movie if NOT for the effects. The plot itself was pretty bland, not to mention it's been done before, sans blue aliens and space helicopters. And pretty mechanical, in terms of execution.
I've said this before in another post, but I think Cameron knew he could get away with a pretty meh storyline because of everything else the movie had going for it. The world building that he--and his colleagues (I refuse to give him total credit)--did, however, is what drew me, and ultimately led me to make this site. That is hands down the most difficult part of the creative process, as far as I'm concerned, and they did an incredible job with it.
The effects overshadowed the plot ENOUGH that people like me were okay with coming out of the theater and saying, "Hey, I don't feel guilty for enjoying that". I would not see the film again if not in 3D. This is all purely my opinion, though. I'm a writer, as everyone else is here, but after four years of being an English major I tend to view things from a different perspective now >>.
That being said, I really enjoyed the movie and thought it was well done. I just don't think Avatar should be praised for being a groundbreaking film with an A+ storyline.
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