Out of Touch: Avatar opens and I don't care

By now, I'm sure somebody has already told you how much their "mind has been blown" by the latest James Cameron flick. But I'm finding it difficult to muster up even a little bit of desire to see it myself. I don't know if, "You're not in Kansas anymore," a line from the trailer, in which the delivery sounds like it was taken directly from a late 90's video game, is what turned me off. Or maybe it's the really gigantic blue people, which is apparently "the realest CGI of all times!!11" Unfortunately, the look of them reminds me of video games too. And when you throw in that Rain Forrest, it's what I imagine a FernGully video game might look like. Perhaps, I'm not willing to live in the now, or something, but the best CGI to date, still looks like shit to me.

But besides all that, at it's core, Avatar just looks like an expensive Aliens rehash. A crew, on a mission, having to face a superior group of species, in a totally impossible mission. In one of the best examples of things going full circle, Michelle Rodriquez, whom every role she has ever had, reminded me of Vasquez from Aliens, seems to actually be playing Vasquez for Cameron in Avatar now. I'm actually wondering if Paul Reiser makes a cameo in Avatar, just to double cross this crew, and remind us all what an asshole he is.

Throw in what looks like a Dances with Wolves love story, and call this thing Dances with Aliens. And since this is the year of the colon in movie titles, Dances with Aliens:How I spent $250 mill during a recession to make an Aliens sequel with giant blue things fucking at FernGully. A little wordy, but I think The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford showed us, literal movie titles, literal to the point of absurdity, fucking rule.

Now I loved Aliens. So you may wonder why I'm bitching. Well, besides the rehash aspect of it, if Aliens came out today, and I'm looking at it's appeal for the first time as an adult, maybe I wouldn't have cared about that one either. Maybe the only reason I enjoyed Aliens, was I saw it as a kid, where I wasn't as judgmental. Sure, I still enjoy it when I catch it on cable, but maybe that's because it's working on some sort of nostalgic level for me. Or maybe, just maybe, Aliens really is awesome, it's just a better movie than Avatar, and something about that Avatar trailer revealed that to me immediately.

Then again, Avatar might be a movie worthy of it's hype. Maybe I'm just a miserable fuck, that got cynical and snobby along the way, and it's me that's the problem. Maybe it's nothing like Aliens, or Dances with Wolves, looks nothing like FernGully and I'm just projecting these things unfairly after seeing a two minute trailer and some TV spots. This is all very possible. I am all those things. But no matter who's fault it is, mine or James Cameron's, the fact of the matter still is, Avatar opens this weekend, and I don't care. I guess I'm out of touch.