Full of Sound and Fury

"We must first say a prayer to the apple spirit before you shoot it off his head."

You have to tip your cap to James Cameron. Only he would have the cojones to pioneer a new form of motion capture technology while reinventing an old trompe l'oeil chestnut like 3D for the 21st Century to tell a story about the evils of modern, mechanized man and the sacrament of the natural world. Oh, the irony! Granted, that may be a more metatextual interpretation than Cameron intended, but after viewing his ten-years-in-the-making opus, Avatar, thoughts turn to things such as these.

The movie's perspective is simplistic at best: corporate men are irredeemable plunderers of earth's riches and the the blue denizens of the planet Pandora are the noble creatures who have this whole living-as-one-with-mother-earth thing figured out. Almost twenty years ago, there was a lighter hand but a similar message imbedded in the Oscar-winning Dances with Wolves. While both films are too preachy by half, Wolves still resonates today because its story is part of the fabric of our country and the performances are not filtered through a computer. Avatar is an alienating romp through a wonderland of CGI candy. For each moment of hi-tech wizardry, the movie's rock-em sock-em plot dressed up as a environmental PSA drifts further into the background. By the movie's overlong climactic battle sequence, you find yourself rooting for more amazing effects and spectacular explosions. It no longer matters who lives or dies as long as Cameron keeps delivering the goods.

Cameron has created a junkie culture. We expect each scene to outdo the previous and forget (once again) the laws of diminishing returns. We now stand on the precipice of a full-on descent into a world of prevalent 3D movies and television, and the enormous success of Avatar is to blame. As other studios scurry to cash in on the newest craze, the outlying voices expressing dissent are drowned out by the trailers for the next 3D experience. The horse is out of the barn and hurtling towards you.

Perhaps it is unfair to saddle Cameron and Avatar with such a weighty analysis, but as thoughts of the movie itself quickly evaporate into the ether, the only thing left to ponder was its cultural significance as film (Can we still call these things that?).

35 years ago, Jaws ushered in the era of the blockbuster, that special movie that captured everyone's imagination and attention to the point that film-goers would quote lines and remember every detail. Avatar is the apex of what has become more and more commonplace. It is the Roman Empire of forgettable blockbusters. As a commodity, it is a Hollywood game changer whose effects will be felt and seen in an extra dimension for years to come. As a film, it is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.