What does Avatar’s record breaking profits say about the state of American cinema? . . .   I am not sure but apparently you can dress Fern Gully and Dances with Wolves up with pretty graphics and make a  lot of money.

Avatar made 11 million dollars . . . this weekend . . . in Italy.

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Drew Dixon

Drew Dixon is editor in chief of Game Church. He also writes about videogames for Paste Magazine, Relevant Magazine, Bit Creature, and Think Christian. He hosts the Christ and Pop Culture podcast The Digest with Tyler Burns.
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4 Comments

  1. What it says is that people still like visual splendor.

    I’m curious, not having seen it. How is Cameron’s editing. Does he allow your eye to take in the bigness of what he’s made (as he traditionally has done) or has he adopted the kind of jump-cutting that makes Michael Bay movies so obnoxious? Transformers, for instance, was a visually unintelligible mess during the action sequences.

  2. Or it could say that they like it enough to overlook a horrid plot.

    I have seen it and was impressed by the visuals which were huge rather than jump-cutting for the most part.

    The plot was so bad though (and not just that I disagreed with some of the messages) that it was difficult to watch. Nearly every aspect of the plot played out exactly as I had expected.

    I think it should win two academy awards:

    1. Visual Effects.
    2. Most Unoriginal Screenplay.

  3. You can’t get any more profound than a military commander who, cup of coffee in hand, says to his fighter pilot, “Let’s make this quick. I wanna get home in time for dinner.”

  4. I don’t know that I’d call it a “bad” plot. Predictable. Unoriginal. But I think to call it bad would be a little unfair. There are some very enduring themes present. After all, a “foreign” being becomes “one of them” to “help them see the light and save them.” Familiar, right?

    Now I’m not defending the sometimes cheesy/lazy dialog, and I’m not trying to nitpick. I’m just making the point that there are some plot arcs/themes that are generally (universally?) appealing. And sometimes, that’s what I want.

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