Water Tribes

Film: Avatar: The Way of Water
Format: Streaming video from Disney Plus on rockin’ flatscreen.

Well, I knew I was going to have to watch this eventually. I very much didn’t want to watch Avatar: The Way of Water, and had it not been for my personal commitment to watch every Best Picture nominee that I can, I would not have watched it. For starters, I don’t have that much interest in it, nor any real desire to remember the mythology from 2009. Second, and importantly, this thing clocks in at 196 minutes. If ever there was a poster child for runtime bloat, it’s this.

We’re going back to the planet of Pandora, and thankfully this time we won’t be dealing with the ridiculousness of looking for a mineral called unobtanium. We’re going to spend the start reintroducing ourselves to our main characters. On the one side, this is going to mean getting reacquainted with Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). It’s years later, though and now they have kids. These are sons Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). It also includes adopted daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), born from the inert avatar of Dr. Grace Augustine (also Weaver) from the first film. Also in the mix is Miles “Spider” Socorro (Jack Champion), a human child who we learn is the son of Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang),the bad guy from the first film.

Oh My God, They Killed Kyle Reese!

Films: The Terminator; Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Format: VHSs from personal collection on big ol’ television.

In the mid-1970s, Star Wars made science fiction not only cool, but socially acceptable. So, in the decades that have followed it, big-budget science fiction films have become a staple of the summer. At times, it feels like not a week goes by from May through late August that doesn’t feature a special effects extravaganza, and every year is littered with the metaphorical corpses of robots and aliens. We can be angry at George Lucas for what he’s subsequently done to the Star Wars franchise, but he deserves a lot of credit for allowing many of us to wear our geek badge proudly.

Of all of the 1980s science fiction films, perhaps none is more important than The Terminator, an ode to man-versus-machine warfare, time travel, and more. Okay, you could argue Aliens, and I wouldn’t fight that, but The Terminator is (and should be) mentioned in the same breath. The basic story is simple, but the execution is nearly flawless. There’s a reason that Schwarzenegger is still associated with this role more than 25 years and a political career later. It is arguably his best work, and that includes his governorship.

If you haven’t seen this film, you should. Now—like you should go rent it or move it to the top of your NetFlix queue right now. Seriously. Open up a new tab, move this to the top and drop everything and watch it when it shows up. Actually, it’s streaming at the moment, so put your reading on hold, watch it, and then come back.

Here’s the back story: in the future, a war for the survival of humanity occurs because a machine put in charge of national defense becomes self aware and determines that all of humanity is a threat. The machines are winning the war until a human named John Connor steps up and leads the humans to the brink of victory. However, the machines have an alternative plan; they send one of their human-like cyborgs, a machine covered in living tissue, back through time to kill the mother of John Connor before he is born. The humans send an agent of their own to stop it.

So, what we get is that battle that starts in the future and occurs in the film’s present. The machine, called a Terminator (and played convincingly by Arnold Schwarzenegger) is essentially an unstoppable force of killing and destruction. It arrives, steals some clothing and weaponry, and starts going through the phone book, killing everyone named Sarah Connor it can find. The Sarah Connor of importance here (Linda Hamilton) is a waitress and knows nothing of this until she is essentially kidnapped by her rescuer, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn). The two then do everything they can to get away from the Terminator while battling cops because of the massive amounts of destruction caused.

The Terminator skirts the line between science fiction and horror. As a character, the Terminator is something straight out of a nightmare. While he tends to favor guns over things with blades, there are a lot of similarities between him and the classic slasher movie villains of the same era. He’s unstoppable, bent on killing and destruction, remorseless, brutal, and without mercy. And to most of the cast, he kills without a reason other than killing.

We spend a good amount of time in this film away from our three principle characters, and much of that time is spent in the company of the police trying to make sense of everything. The cops are led by Lt. Traxler (the vastly underappreciated Paul Winfield), who is assisted by Detective Vukovich (the equally underappreciated Lance Henriksen). We also get Dr. Silberman (that-guy Earl Boen) who gets involved as the criminal psychologist trying to understand the insane-sounding story of Kyle Reese.

Really, though, the three principle characters are the reason to watch here along with the inventive and entertaining story. Biehn is completely believable as a guy who goes back in time to rescue this name from the past, sacrificing everything to keep her safe. Linda Hamilton, who in future films became buff almost beyond recognition, works here as a plainly pretty, not-too-exceptional woman. But ultimately, this is Arnold’s movie, and while he has almost no lines, he makes a meal of this role.

What’s sad here is that The Terminator trades in a large part on its special effects, and the effects really haven’t aged well. There are moments, for instance, when we get an animatronic Terminator head, and it’s pretty obviously an effect. Late in the film when we see the fully unfleshed machine, the stop-motion work looks, well, like stop-motion work. It’s not terrible, it’s just obvious. Additionally, the score is awful. It’s not the iconic “Terminator” soundtrack you’re thinking of. Instead, it sounds like one guy with a midi keyboard rockin’ out with his feathered hair and parachute pants.

But none of this matters. The Terminator has entered into movie and cultural mythology for a good reason. Despite the effects looking their age, Cameron’s film is a dark fantasy that still resonates. We are, point of fact, in many ways controlled by the machines around us, and many of us (myself included) wouldn’t last too long without them. And, in addition to all of the allegory and meaning we can dig out of this, in the final analysis, The Terminator is a flat-out, kick-ass action film.

Many, if not most fans of Cameron’s mythos will claim that the sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the superior film. Having just watched both, I’m not sure I agree. Certainly the effects are worlds better, and many of them still look as good and clean today as they did 20 years ago. But this is a bigger film, with a larger budget and a larger core cast, and because of this, it doesn’t have the intensity of the original film. This isn’t to say it’s not worth watching (it is, absolutely worth watching), but seeing both right in a row, I seem to favor the more streamlined, compact original film over the more florid, explosion-heavy sequel.

Anyway, I’ve jumped ahead of myself. We flash forward from the end of the original film to a few years in the future. John Connor (Edward Furlong) is a misdirected youth of (allegedly) 10, although he certainly looks more like 13. Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton again) has gotten rid of the baby fat and replaced it with solid buffitude, and has also gotten herself institutionalized for constantly waxing philosophic about the coming war against the machines. And once again, there’s trouble from the future.

This time, though, rather than send back a frail human being to protect himself, the future John Connor sends back a reprogrammed pet Terminator (Schwarzenegger again) to keep his past self safe. This is necessary, because this time, the machines aren’t playing around. Rather than send back a simple Terminator, they’ve sent back a T-1000 (lop-eared Robert Patrick), a machine made of liquid metal, able to duplicate anything it touches and any person it encounters. The Terminator’s job is to protect the young John Connor so that he can grow up to lead the human revolution in the future. The machines, naturally, would like to prevent this, and so we get all sorts of funky time paradox just like last time.

See, last time, the company that eventually creates SkyNet, which destroys humanity, discovered the remains of the first Terminator. Specifically, they found a hand and a highly advanced cybernetic chip. And, unbeknownst to pretty much everyone in the world, the company is working on developing anything they can from this found technology. Essentially, SkyNet and the nasty machines are created because the nasty machines planted evidence of themselves for their creators, who built them capable of planting evidence of themselves in the past…yeah, you know what? Let’s forget about the time paradox and just enjoy the damn film.

Anyway, the film revolves initially around getting Sarah out of the institution and keeping John safe from the deadly T-1000. We learn a little of the past few years. John, for instance, has become something of a budding delinquent, able to scam ATMs, build pipe bombs, and reload pistols without having to think too much about it. We learn that Sarah essentially became sort of a knowledge gold digger, hooking up with any survivalist or former military wingnut who could teach her anything about weaponry, survival, or similar topics. We also learn that the project to create the machine that creates the chaos is underway and is headed by a guy named Miles Dyson (Joe Morton).

In many ways, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a genre shift from the original, much like Cameron’s Aliens moved genres from its original film. Both The Terminator and its sequel are smack in the heart of science fiction, but the first has a number of horror elements, while the second film is almost pure special effects and big budget romp. This is not a bad thing—as big budget action films go, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is one of the best ever made, a statement that remains true after 20 years. Much of the horror is lost, though, in favor of pushing the science fiction envelope.

And the effects really are still cool. Most of them center around the T-1000 and his morphing capabilities. We see him impaled, for instance, only to pull the offending implement through his side and immediately heal up. A fist to his head causes his body to shift, turning an arm into a new head and his former head into a grasping hand. Slammed face first into a wall, the T-1000 simply reverses itself, the face coming out the back rather than turning around. The best effect, though, is seeing the machine spread itself out over a tile floor and then slowly rise up behind a potential victim, reforming as the victim’s doppelganger. Regardless of age, this still works and still looks fantastic.

But (and you could sense that, couldn’t you?) this is not a perfect film. The larger budget allows for some fantastic explosions and effects, but it also allows the story to grow more expansively. While this does give us additional insights into things, some of the effects—like the dream of nuclear war—are really there for no other reason than to spend the budget. This film is a good half hour longer than its predecessor, and not all of that half hour is really needed. The film feels a bit less focused than the original in the series, and what it gains in exposition it loses in flat-out intensity.

And then there’s John Connor. I’m certain that Edward Furlong was told to play John like the world’s most annoying individual, and if that is the case, the kid deserved an Oscar. John Connor is kid that, if you met him in real life, you’d want to punch repeatedly in the face. There are times when I think that maybe trading him for the survival of humanity is a fair trade—if he’s the best and brightest of the future, then we are Planet of the Apes-level degraded as a species. John is a self-centered, smug little prick, and whatever “cool” Cameron thought he was giving the character by making him a rebellious youth he lost ten times over by making the character a whiny little bastard.

But again, so what? This is an incredibly entertaining film, and a spectacle that remains fresh today despite the years and the dependence on special effects. It’s further proof that good science fiction is possible and that great science fiction is special. This film has held up in part because of those effects, in part because of Schwarzenegger’s relatively nuanced performance, and in part because, at its heart, it’s a great story.

Why to watch The Terminator: If you need me to tell you why to watch this, you’re not allowed to read this site anymore.
Why not to watch: Cheesy ‘80s music.

Why to watch Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Ridiculous special effects and bad-ass Ahhnold.
Why not to watch: At times, saving John Connor (and thus all of humanity) seems like a really bad idea.

Rip-leeeeeeeeeeee!

Films: Alien, Aliens
Format: DVDs from personal collection on laptop.


It’s been awhile since I updated, mostly because of a film that will be appearing here in a few days. I just received the last DVD for that, and while I’m interested in finishing that film up, I needed a break from it today. So I’m watching a couple of films I dearly love instead: Alien and its arguably better sequel, Aliens.

Alien is the story of the crew of the Nostromo, a towing ship with a crew of seven. The ship has been roving around the galaxy and is, at the start of the film, loaded with 20 million tons of unrefined ore. The ship is headed back to Earth with the crew in hypersleep, when they are suddenly awakened by a distress beacon from a nearby planet. The crew investigates and discovers something startling—a massive alien spacecraft with no evidence of survivors. The ship itself is huge, and the creatures it held, based on the scale, were massive. The skeletal remains of one sits in a chair on what passes for the bridge, with bizarre wounds—it appears to have had its ribcage burst apart from the inside.

What there is is a room filled with bizarre eggs. As the crew investigates, one of the eggs splits open and a creature leaps out, attaching itself to the faceplate of a crewman named Kane (John Hurt). It burns through the glass and attaches itself to his face. Kane is still alive, and the rest of the crew drag him back aboard the Nostromo before taking off. Any attempt to remove the creature threatens Kane’s life, so they leave him where he is. After a few days, the thing falls off his face and lies dead on the floor. This takes the first hour of the film.

Of course, if that was all there was, there wouldn’t be much of a film, let alone one of the greatest science fiction/horror films ever made. At the next meal, Kane convulses, and a brand new creature pops out of his chest in a scene that, despite being 30+ years old, is still effective and startling. The creature runs away, grows to a massive size, and then begins to pick of members of the crew one at a time. This crew, in no order, consists of Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Ash (Ian Holm). Once things get going, they really get going. Half an hour after Kane’s abortive last meal, half of the remaining crew is dead in one way or another.

There are other surprises along the way, of course. It would still be a great movie without all of the additional surprises that crop up along the way and the interplay of the personalities. Ash, for instance, is a hardass who tows the company line in all things. Parker and Brett just want their share of the money for the job. These characters turn into real people with depth over the course of the film, which is one of the reasons the film is so effective, as is the fact that we don’t really see many of the deaths on screen in front of us.

The two stars of this film are Sigourney Weaver as Ripley and the alien itself, which was based on the artwork of H.R. Giger. Beyond these two, and the rest of the cast, what makes the film work so well is the blending of genres. Alien is absolutely a science fiction film, but it is equally horror. Essentially, it is a slasher movie or a haunted house picture set in outer space, with higher stakes because the characters literally cannot get away from creature, since they are millions of miles away from home.

It’s worth noting that Alien was written by Dan O’Bannon, who was a college friend of John Carpenter. In fact, O’Bannon starred in Carpenter’s college film project, a low-budget science fiction comedy called Dark Star that is actually worth watching despite the $0 special effects budget (the alien in this film is played by an inflated beach ball). It’s not immediately clear to me who is responsible for the overall look of the film, but as far as I am aware, it’s the first time that a film of this type feature such a dirty, industrial look for the future. Far from the lean and clean spacecraft of earlier science fiction films, the Nostromo looks like an overcrowded factory with pipes and wires hanging everywhere, and not quite enough lighting to see everything clearly. It’s really effective. This is made even more effective by the constant smoking of the crew, which adds a foggy, smoky atmosphere to every scene.

It’s also notable in the sense of Ripley’s role. There are two female parts in this film—Ripley and Lambert. Lambert is far more of a traditional sci-fi woman’s role. She screams a lot, and spends a good bulk of the last hour crying, a stereotype often played in movies based on the idea that women are more emotionally fragile than men. Ripley, on the other hand, is a extremely strong, in-charge character. O’Bannon’s original script considered all of the character roles unisex, so there’s nothing specific about Ripley’s part that requires a woman to be in the role. What that means is that Ripley is, in many ways, one of the first film characters who is her job in the film first, and a woman second. There were certainly female asskickers in film before Ripley, but this role is different. Ripley isn’t a kung fu killer or a sexy assassin trading on looks and slinky outfits. She’s a competent performer in her job who merely happens to be a woman, making this an important film in terms of the presence and treatment of women by and in film.


Alien proved to be such a success that seven years later, its sequel was produced. Aliens does not pick up from where the first film left off, but instead gives us a new story with only one character consistent—Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. The biggest change is the directorial duties. Ridley Scott opted not to direct the sequel, giving way to James Cameron. Cameron is much more attuned to straight action, and in this sequel he delivers.

In fact, Aliens is very much a straightforward science fiction film. While there are scares and jump moments here, no one would call this film horror. It takes place nearly 60 years after the original film. Ripley’s escape pod has been rescued, and she learns that, to coin a film cliché, everyone she knows and loves is dead, including her daughter. She’s put on trial by Weyland-Yutani, the company she worked for because of the destruction of the Nostromo, and is banned from finding work in the same field. Shortly thereafter, she is contacted by the company again when a terrible secret is revealed. The company has placed settlers on the original planet, and they have now lost contact with the colony.

Ripley, because she is the only one to have survived contact with the alien species the first time, agrees to return to the planet to investigate what has happened. She accompanies a team of marines who are going just in case the worst has happened (and if you know anything about films, you already know that the worst has happened). The colony has been overrun—the people are dead, and the place is crawling with the same kind of alien that ravaged Nostromo in the first film. Of course, the kicker this time is that there are a bunch of aliens this time—probably coming from the thousands of eggs that didn’t open in the first film.

Ripley is seen as something of a crackpot at first, at least until the marines first encounter the creatures for the first time. It’s at this point that the personalities of the marines start to come into play, and we get a better sense of who they are, and they are an interesting bunch. A good half of the marines bite it in the first encounter, and those remaining are a motley assortment. Ripley is still around naturally, as is a little girl they encounter on the planet early on. This is Newt (Carrie Henn), who survived the carnage by hiding from the giant creatures. Also surviving at this point is Hicks (Michael Biehn), the corporal, and a solid soldier; Bishop (Lance Henriksen), who is more of an advisor (see the spoiler below); Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), a company representative; Hudson (Bill Paxton), a wannabe tough guy who is prone to panic; Gorman (William Hope), the inexperienced lieutenant; and Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), a tough-as-nails marine out to prove that women can do anything men can do.

*** QUICK SPOILER ***

Bishop is an android. This is revealed early in the film, so it’s not much of a spoiler. Ripley has an intense reaction to this, though, because Ash in the first film was also an android, and attempted to kill her as well as the rest of the Nostromo’s crew.

*** LIKE I SAID, QUICK SPOILER ***

Again, the goal is to survive, this time against overwhelming alien odds. The characters attempt to get off the planet, fighting against time and the aliens as well as each other. While there are certainly tense moments, this is an action film. The characters aren’t stalked by the aliens, but assaulted by them, and the aliens are fended off with high caliber weaponry, flame throwers, and explosives. Burke wants nothing other than a live specimen to bring back to Weyland-Yutani, and threatens the others at every turn.

There are two payoffs in this film. The first is that Ripley continues to be a strong female presence on the screen, this time with mothering instincts kicking in thanks to the presence of young Newt. While in Alien the Ripley role could have been handled by a man or a woman, in this film, the role is definitely a female one. Ripley is no less competent, no less bad-ass, and no less an asskicker than in the first film, but here she is allowed to be more than just a character who happens to be female. Here, she is allowed to be an asskicker who happens to have a nurturing, caring side. It’s an even better role than the first film.

The second great payoff is the confrontation between Ripley in the forklift suit and the queen alien in the loading dock. In this moment, Ripley comes into her own in one of the great fight scenes in science fiction film history. It says a great deal for Cameron’s script and Cameron himself that he was not only able to recognize this quality in the character, but keep it and expand it in the sequel without it ever becoming trite or maudlin. Ripley’s relationship with Newt is entirely believable. This is especially true in the director’s cut of the film, which reveals Ripley’s relationship with her biological daughter.

Aliens happens to be far more quotable than the original film as well. I don’t know if I can think of more than a couple of actual lines from the first film, but there are more than a dozen from Aliens that have become classics not only for the genre, but for film in general.

So which film is better? It’s impossible for me to say. These are not really comparable films despite the fact that the enemy is the same and the main character is the same. Alien is a horror film in a science fiction setting. The fact that the characters happen to be on a spaceship just means that they don’t have a way of getting out of the situation. They’re trapped, but they’d be trapped the same way in a deserted house with a guy carrying a machete. The second film is a straight action film. It's a war with an unusual foe, and so it really works like a war film in a lot of ways.

Naturally, with the success of the first two films, more sequels appeared. Specifically, there was Alien3 and Alien: Resurrection. The first of these was directed by David Fincher, who was so disgusted by what happened with the film that he wanted to have his name removed from it. Fincher has since gone on to have a tremendous career, but Alien3 started it out on a very wrong foot. In truth, it’s not a terrible film. It’s actually okay, but it starts with two strikes against it, namely the first two films in the series. Had it been a stand-alone film, it would have something of a following for no other reason than the kick-ass critter. As the third film in one of the greatest science fiction properties ever made, though, it falls woefully short. The fourth film is really better not mentioned any further. For my money, the series ends after the second film.

Why to watch Alien: Because it’s freakin’ awesome!
Why not to watch: Lambert needs a punch in the kisser.

Why to watch Aliens: More of what made the first movie great, plus a shit-ton of great quotes.
Why not to watch: Where the series went after this film.

A Night to Remember

Film: Titanic
Format: DVD from Yorkville Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

For what it’s worth, the movie Titanic has developed a reputation for being overrated. It won a shit-ton of Oscars, but ever since, it has become a movie that one feels slightly embarrassed admitting to liking or even watching. I’m going to buck this trend. I like this film. It’s long, it’s overblown, it’s melodramatic and silly in places, but it’s a damn fine film.

If it’s a spoiler to you that the Titanic sinks, then you don’t deserve to watch anything ever again. Seriously. Either that, or you’re 12 and you shouldn’t be reading this blog anyway. We start not in the 19-teens, but in the late 90s. A crew is investigating the wreckage of Titanic, sending robotic submersibles down the decks to look for salvage. Specifically, the crew, led by Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) is looking for a huge, heart-shaped blue diamond called La Couer de la Mer, or The Heart of the Ocean. They pull up a chest from the stateroom of the man who last owned the gem, but it is not inside. What is inside, though, is drawing of a woman wearing the necklace that held the stone.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., an old woman (Gloria Stuart) sees a report of the progress of the dive at Titanic and sees the drawing that has been discovered. She puts through a call to the discovery ship, asking if they have discovered the gem. Since no one knew about the gem, the crew is intrigued, and invites the old woman and her granddaughter out to the site. Once there, she claims that the woman in the drawing is her. They ask for her story, and she tells them. And, through movie magic, we are taken back to 1914.

We meet our major players immediately. Rose (Kate Winslet) is a young woman who is engaged to Cal Hockley (Billy Zane). He is exceedingly wealthy, and in stereotypical movie fashion, he’s also a complete bastard. Rose’s family has, essentially, lost everything but its name, and this marriage will save them financially. They are heading back to the States on Titanic’s maiden voyage. Meanwhile, on the docks, a couple of wastrels named Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Fabrizio (Danny Nucci) win passage on the ship in a poker game.

I’ll cut to the chase here. Rose, terribly unhappy with her fiancé and the life that looks to be ahead of her, considers suicide in the form of jumping off the back of the ship. Jack happens to be there and talks her out of it. Accused at first of attempted rape, he is instead given a sort of hero’s welcome by being invited to dinner in the first-class dining hall, where he is condescended to and derided. However, naturally, Rose falls for him.

The rest of the first half of the movie consists of continual reminders that Caledon is a bastard and that Jack is poor and noble. It would be improper to suggest that the two men fight for her affections, since only Jack has them, but Cal has money and power, and does what he can to make Jack’s life hell. When Rose poses nude for Jack to draw wearing nothing but the necklace (remember that drawing from the start?) Cal arranges for his valet Spicer Lovejoy (David Warner) to put the diamond necklace in Jack’s coat, and accuses him of stealing it.

The second half of the film, or at least most of the second half, is all about the sinking. This is beautifully handled. We see the iceberg, and we get to see the ship filling up with water. It takes more than an hour for the ship to go down, and this feels very much like it is handled in real time. Multiple little dramas play out as the ship sinks. The major drama, though, as it has been through the entire film, is Rose’s attempt to save Jack, Cal’s attempt to keep Jack off a lifeboat and save himself (primarily) and Rose (secondarily).

The aftermath of the sinking is particularly disturbing, like something out of George Romero’s nightmare. As one lifeboat sails back to look for survivors, it passes through a floating graveyard of frozen bodies in one of the most gruesome things I’ve ever seen.

The actual sinking of the ship is what you pay your money for with this movie, and it does not disappoint. It is terrifying in places, tragic, and awful, and was worth every penny James Cameron put into it. And really, that should be enough drama for any film. And yet, we’ve got a whole lot more movie going on here with the love story and the fate of Jack and Rose. It’s almost too much.

*** SPOILER WARNING ***

It’s worth noting that the film ends in one of the biggest dick moves in cinematic history. Rose still has the gem, and the night after she tells her story, she walks up on the deck and tosses it overboard. Seriously, she could just as easily have extracted it from her bag and given it to her granddaughter and allowed her family to live like damn kings and queens for the next five generations, but instead, it’s relegated to worthless bauble status, or it’s more important to make a gesture toward a guy who’s been dead for 80 years than help her actual family. I do enjoy this movie, but this really cheeses me.

*** END SPOILERS ***

If I had to guess why this movie has, since its triumph at the Oscars developed a reputation for being an embarrassing film to enjoy, I’d venture that the main reason is that damn Celine Dion song. It’s not fair to the film to associate everything about it with the French Canadian harpy and her Svengali husband. The song is pretty damn terrible, after all. But so what? The movie is great. There are perhaps no great truths revealed here, or anything that couldn’t have been told in a much shorter story, but again, so what? Titanic is a chance to get your romance on, to see a grand story, and to see some brilliant effects work and a very scary and realistic ship sinking.

Why to watch Titanic: Romance, death, love, and life on the grandest scale.
Why not to watch: That song will go on and on and on and on.

The Alpha and Omega of Special Effects

Films: Avatar, La Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon)
Format: Campus Cinemas (Avatar), internet video on laptop (Voyage).


Let’s start with my coming clean. I watched Avatar yesterday, not today. However, it didn’t really fit with the Nosferatu-based theme of Tuesday, so I figured I would wait and talk about it today. I was, evidently, one of the last six people to see this movie, since it’s been out for several months and has brought in something like the GNP of half of Europe in ticket sales, merchandising, advertising tie-ins, and everything else.

The visuals are the first, last, and only sell here. The story that is told is one that has been told before, over and over. Except for the very young, those who never see movies, or the very thick-skulled, there is nothing approaching innovation in terms of the story, the story telling, or the message at the heart of the film. Want to see it summed up in one sentence? A man learns to value and appreciate the savage but noble people who are very different from him and helps them stand against the corporate, machine-based oppression of his own people.

Chances are good that you’ve already seen Avatar, so I won’t go too into detail about the plot. Our main character, Jake (Sam Worthington), has lost the use of his legs as well as his identical twin brother. His brother had been hard at work on a top-level project on a moon four or five light years away from Earth. Jake agrees to go take his brother’s place on the moon, called Pandora.

So, once we get to Pandora, we’ll have good guys and bad guys. The good guys are Jake, Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), Norm (Joel David Moore), Trudy (Michelle Rodriguez), and Dr. Max Patel (Dileep Rao). These good guys are either the scientists running the Avatar project, or their friends. See, humans can’t breathe the air on Pandora. So, using genetic clones of the giant, blue humanoid indigenous life, the Na’vi, humans can plant their own consciousness in an alien body and run around on the planet. The most important of the Na’vi in terms of the story is Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who is quite naturally the daughter of her tribe’s leader Etyukan (Wes Studi) and the tribe’s seer Moat (CCH Pounder).

Jake’s job is to infiltrate and gain info on the Na’vi, because they live right on top of a huge cache of minerals that can solve Earth’s energy crisis. This mineral is called unobtanium. No, seriously. The bad guys want it, and are lead by corporate goon Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) and military hardass Colonel Miles Quartich (Stephen Lang). Jake, of course, learns to appreciate the beauty of Pandora and the Na’vi people, and all hell breaks loose when the military and corporate bad guys decide that they want the minerals and it’s time to destroy every goddam thing on the planet to get it.

Sigh. It’s little more than Dances with Wolves or The Last Samurai. An outsider becomes part of an insular, tribal group that is far down on the technology scale from those oppressing them. The outsider learns to love the simplicity, the “noble savagery” of the indigenous folk, and helps them stand up against their technologically superior but morally inferior enemies.

The problem is that this shows the world as two extremes—on the one hand, we have the bad guys who are a stop-at-nothing, obtain-the-valuable-polluting-resource, we’re-better-because-we-have-stuff bastards who are uncaring, unthinking, and unfeeling. They are bad because they don’t respect the land or the people. Certainly people like this do exist. But not everybody who works for a logging company, a mining operation, or any given factory is a heartless bastard actually looking forward to raping the land. On the other side, we get Jake, the scientists, and the Na’vi, who are so in touch with their world and their environment that they may as well be carrying non-polluting signs that say “Root for Us!” In fact, the Na’vi are so in touch with their world, that their long queues hide a nerve bundle that they can use to jack in to other creatures and the plants of their world. They can, for instance, hook up to their horse critters and control them mentally through this connection. It’s like they’re walking around with their own private Wi-Fi, and there’s a terminal everywhere.

Where’s the middle ground? Where is the “We’d like some stuff from your planet, but we’ll try not to screw it up too much” opinion? Oh, that’s far too nuanced for a film like this, so it simply doesn’t exist.

What does exist is the incredible visuals. They are astonishing, although there are times when it’s evident that the Na’vi are animated. They move well and look good, but there’s something about the mouth movements during speech that sometimes looks unnatural. Despite these little glitches, though, the world of Pandora is beautiful, and beautifully rendered. Okay, with the floating mountains it does look quite a bit like every Yes album from the 1970s, and the bio-luminescence of everything is cool for about 10 minutes and annoying for about two hours. That said, the visual wow is present.

But that’s it. The story is a retread, and predictable to boot. I knew exactly how the film was going to end a good twenty minutes before it did, and chances are that you did, too. The message is one I’ve seen over and over, and it’s applied with all of the delicacy of a sledgehammer. It’s a stereotypical supermodel of films—big, pretty, and dumber than a fencepost. It is the definition of style over substance.

*** STOP! SPOILER TIME! ***

Out of deference to the six people who still haven’t seen Avatar, I’ll spoil the ending here, but will place it under a warning. The moment Sigourney Weaver’s character was injured and the Na’vi had a way to heal her by essentially uploading her into the white fiber optic tree and downloading her into the body, I knew what was going to happen. She wouldn’t make it, because if it worked, there’d be no “tension” for when they tried it next. At that moment, I also knew we’d see this ritual again with Jake’s crippled body and his own avatar. The music would rise, his human body would die, the camera would pan over to his blue Na’vi face and…the eyes open, end film. I saw it coming, I knew it would happen, and it did. If you didn’t see that coming, shame on you.

*** RESUME NON-SPOILERS ***

When I was a kid, my parents spent three weeks in Kenya on a camera safari. During that time, my mother had her birthday, and the guides presented her with a cake. As it turns out, that cake was actually a frosted elephant turd. And that’s my opinion of Avatar. You can frost the hell out of a dumb story with all the pretty visuals you want, but at its heart, it’s still just a really dumb story. All of the pretty pictures in the world don’t change the fact that it’s unoriginal, predictable, and, essentially, an elephant turd.

So why did I watch it? Because you know it’s going to show up on this list sooner or later, and I wanted to see it on the big screen. I decided to act preemptively.


Sitting at the other end of the special effects spectrum is Georges Melies’s La Voyage dans la Lune, or A Trip to the Moon. Made in 1902, it’s arguably the first science-fiction movie, one of the first to use any sorts of camera trickery, and one of the first to have even something of a coherent plot, although this really isn’t so easy to follow. There are no title cards beyond the name of the film, and no dialogue described throughout, making it essentially a mime show.

We have a group of astronomers who look more like alchemists with their robes and pointy hats having a meeting. The leader of this group proposes a trip to the moon in a bullet-shaped capsule fired from a huge gun. Five of the astronomers agree to go on the trip, and they launch themselves with the assistance of pretty, shorts-clad women. On the moon, they watch Earthrise and take a nap.

While they are sleeping, women appear in the stars and planets and snow begins to fall. The astronomers take shelter in a cave, where they find huge mushrooms growing. One of the astronomers uses his umbrella to compare its size to the mushrooms, but it takes root and grows into a large mushroom itself. Then, a group of Selenites (moon critters) shows up and attacks. While savage, the Selenites are fragile; a single hit from an umbrella turns them into a cloud of dust. However, the astronomers are captured and dragged before the Selenite king.

The astronomers loose themselves from their bonds and attack and kill the king. They run back to the capsule and one pushes the capsule off the edge of the moon, grabbing hold of a rope himself. The capsule splashes into the ocean and sinks, then slowly rises to the top, where the astronomers are heralded in a huge parade. Sadly, this footage is missing from the film and is considered lost, although a nearly complete version was found in 2002. Still, for the available versions, you’re not likely to see much once the capsule splashes down.

This is not a movie in the traditional sense. It is blocked much more like a stage production, and the sets and props are very reminiscent of a stage play. This makes sense—with nothing else to compare it to, early films like this one did have a sort of staged drama feel to them. What’s worth watching here is not the obvious rudimentary stage and film craft, but how advanced some of Melies’s techniques were for the time. Early in the film, for instance, the astronomers are given telescopes to hold. These suddenly turn into stools for them to sit on. Certainly, today, we understand that the crew stopped filming for a minute, replaced the telescopes with stools, and started the camera back up. But in 1902, this was new, innovative, and startling.

More impressive are the battles with the Selenites, who really appear to vaporize in a cloud of smoke and dust. For its time, this kind of effect was unheard of, and would influence dozens of nascent filmmakers in the years to come. Melies was perhaps the first to truly understand what the film medium could be capable of doing and of pushing the known boundaries as far as he could.

With a running time (depending on the version you locate) between eight and 15 minutes, there isn’t a lot to see here, and it goes by pretty quickly. But real filmmaking, real cinematic storytelling, real cinema started here. It is charming, innocent, and sweet with its goofy professors and moon played by a man with whipped cream covering his face. It’s also silly and impossible to take seriously on its surface. So don’t, but do take it seriously for what it really represents.

Why to watch Avatar: Boy-howdy pretty.
Why not to watch: Putting a wedding dress on a pig doesn’t mean it stops being a pig.

Why to watch La Voyage dans la Lune: It’s charming and innovative.
Why not to watch: It’s awfully silly.