This is what James Cameron sees when he closes his eyes.

Okay. I think we can all agree that James Cameron is a deeply annoying blowhard: something about his face—like a smug, puffy kitten—and his Titanic and his enthusiasm for Bill Paxton and his propensity for announcing that he is like the Thomas Edison of fine wines of Fabergé eggs of filmmaking of the future. He is silly. He drives me crazy. I don’t want James Cameron on my phone, or in my hot tub, or—god forbid—next to me on a plane (I would prefer a snake under all three circumstances!). I do, however, as it turns out, desperately want James Cameron in my movie theater. (Except for sometimes. But this is not one of those sometimes.)

I fully expected to dislike Avatar, because I make it a policy to dislike things that deeply annoying blowhards just won’t fucking shut up about (see also: Jesus, kombucha, Tiger Woods). However, a curious thing happened when I sat down and actually watched it. That thing was called “THE BEST MOVIE ABOUT GIANT BLUE CAT PEOPLE EVER TO SHOOT INTO MY SKEPTICAL EYEBALLS.” Cameron didn’t lie: This movie rules.

Here’s the situation. The story is as simple as it gets—Cameron really doesn’t do subtlety. Avatar is FernGully meets space meets The Air Up There (these cat people totally reminded me of the really tall dude in Kevin Bacon’s Africa-meets-sports classic The Air Up There—is that racist?). There’s this alien jungle planet called Pandora, where a spunky space industrialist (Giovanni Ribisi) is mining for the world’s valuablest nonsense mineral (called, for realsies, “unobtainium”) with the help of the U.S. Army and Sigourney Weaver, Reluctant Scientist (and Terrible Actress). It’s suuuper awkward, though, because the biggest unobtainium chunk EVAR is right underneath this really, really big tree where the aforementioned very tall magical blue cat people live! So what’s a spunky space industrialist to do? Why, have Sigourney Weaver breed some hybrid human/cat-people avatars (called “avatars”) to infiltrate the cat people and trick them into moving their entire civilization, of course! Because diplomacy is #1! (Gigantic bulldozers are #2.)

So. The main avatar is piloted (via science pod) by one Jake Sully (Sam Worthington, Hot Australian), a bewheelchaired marine who doesn’t give much of a shit about cat people, but who REALLY gives a shit about getting his legs back (they can do that in the future—but apparently in the future, veterans still have shitty benefits). “There’s no such thing as an ex-marine,” he grumbles hotly. “Even if you’re out, you’ve always got the attitude.”

Jake Sully, in his big blue avatar body, goes to the cat people and he’s all, “‘Sup” (hot), and they’re all, “Meow?” (not really), and he’s all, “Yup, I’m the chosen one” (or something), and the great Earth Mother is all, “Jake Sully! ‘Bout it, ’bout it!” (paraphrasing), and he goes through their complex warrior training and initiation (much like Kevin Bacon in The Air Up There!) and comes out the other side a fully certified cat-person jungle-parkour dino-wrangler. The cat people are all spiritually in tune with the environment and stuff, the human people are all greedy and bulldozey, and Jake Sully still wants his legs back—so what’s a human turncoat in a blue cat body to do when the bulldozers come? Awesome stuff, as it turns out. Just a whole bunch of awesome, awesome stuff.

Make no mistake: Avatar is ridiculous. It’s the kind of movie where people are always telling other people that they are “not in Kansas anymore” and saying splendidly cartoony things like “I was going to have to take it to a whole new level” and “If there is a hell, you might want to go there for R&R after a tour on Pandora.” There’s a slightly uncomfortable level of exotification going on—the cat people are your basic noble-
savage earth worshippers with African accents and peaceful wisdom. And it’s pretty clumsy in the Indictment of the Modern American Military department (“Our only security lies in preemptive attack,” says the evil colonel with the 40-inch neck, “and we will fight terror with terror”; the words “shock and awe” are used). But I’m going to have to go ahead and say fuck all that, because of one thing: JAKE SULLY IS CONSTANTLY BEING CHASED BY A MONSTER.

Avatar—at almost three hours—is literally never not exciting. The creatures that inhabit Pandora’s stunning glow-stick jungle (it’s basically Blacklight Poster: The Movie) will blow your mind up: skinless dogs, dino-rhinos, lizard-lions, everything fast and alive and terrifying AND CHASING YOU. I had the adrenaline shakes for the whole ride home. And even if he’s not much for complexity, Cameron knows how to structure a story. Avatar is a magnificent piece of entertainment. I might even allow him in my hot tub for this one. (But DON’T GET USED TO IT, CAMERON!) recommended

Lindy West was born an unremarkable female baby in Seattle, Washington. The former Stranger writer covered movies, movie stars, exclamation points, lady stuff, large frightening fish, and much, much more....

103 replies on “I Hate James Cameron, but I Love His Movies”

  4. Lindy West, you are my hero. By the way, I now work at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, and do you know what they have here? That’s right, Araipaima. They are as scary and terrifying as you say, and I’m pretty sure the other fish in the aquarium are in fact scared out of their scales.

  6. apparently, James Cameron was the first to post. Lindy, a splendid review! Just superb darling, I’m sweating. bahaaaaaw! (ashes cigarette)

  8. The definitive big box-office smash of the year, and the Stranger sends their lulzy fucking intern to cover it? To quote Lindy West, “WTF??! Okay that’s the MOSTEST AWESOME DECISION EVAR!!!!”

  9. Whoa, whoa. No need to shit-talk Kombucha lovers. There’s a reason we always talk about it, it fucking amazing! Tiger Woods, ok, that’s reasonable

  13. Oh sweet fucking Jesus, King Kong was boring. Anytime there’s a big CGI monster fight and you say “This is still happening?” is time to pack it in.

    Will I see Avatar based on the review? Mmm, probably not.

  14. I once thought Lindy West wrote rather humorous movie reviews. The problem is her style wore thin very quickly but she’s a one-trick pony. Now she both bores and annoys the shit out of me.

  18. I worked on Avatar here in New Zealand,and yes you are right….James Cameron is a blowhard too say the least!…I won’t divulge what the majority of his crew thought of this asshole but lets just say….the movie is pretty wicked all the same!

  19. Saw the movie last night. I too had low expectations, but guess what? Cameron hit one out of the Ballpark here!!

    Excellent movie, enough action to keep it good, enough romance to satisfy the teeny boppers (and they actually glow just like New Moon), plus a really over told story about greedy Humans and the depths to which they will sink to acquire things.

    I saw it in 3D and it was done well. None of the crappy flying in your face every few seconds like “Final Destination”.

    Cameron better hope that word of mouth works very well because this hog cost over $500 million dollars to make. It will take several weeks of blockbuster weekends to make that tidy sum up.

    I wonder if he bought any Carbon Credits to offset all the computer processing power that went into this?

  20. @3 There was some “boobage” in the movie, but it was not blatant and most of the time it was coverd in beads and necklaces in the style of some African Tribes you see in National Geographic in the 60’s.

  21. Did Cameraon really call the McGuffin material in Avatar ‘unobtanium’? That was used a couple of years ago in ‘The Core’, a rather poor movie with a fairly good cast, including Delroy Lindo, who called his McGuffin propulsion material ‘unobtainium.’

  27. Dearest Lindy,

    If it somehow were biologically possible, I would ask you to have my children. Well, after marrying me, depending of course which state you live in.

  28. Question Lindy: Do you think the trailer properly represents the film? Because frankly every time I see the trailer I just laugh at how horrible & cheesy it looks…..
    but If you really think its great maybe I’ll check it out…

  29. This is good news. As soon as I heard about this project (years ago), I knew it could only go two ways: Mindblowingly Awesome or Amazingly Atrocious. Cameron doesn’t do mediocre.

  30. Andy @ 29:

    Have you seen the trailer in the theater recently, like in the last 2 or 3 weeks? They re-cut the thing from the first trailer I saw, which made it look about 40% more awesome in my opinion.

  31. ps. If you were an engineer, chemist or probably involved in any science you wouldn’t be amazed by unobtainium…..we use it all the time in lame, lame work jokes….

    god I hate nerd jokes…..

  37. @7- that episode of South Park was awesome, i like how they started making fun of Glenn Beck then somehow tied this movie into it.

    Sigourney Weaver’s interview on “The Daily Show” actually got me more interested than i would have been with just seeing the previews.
    click!

  40. I love that people get bent out of shape about your reviews. Taking a movie like this any more seriously would be offensive. I’d probably pay $10 see most anything that cost $500M. I’m gonna see it drunk.

  42. i needed some mike and ikes. i went to the HUB. the mike and ikes weren’t there in their usual spot. instead: double stacked raisinets. a very nice staff person went back into the vault and got me some mike and ikes. i walked back to my office wondering why i would be so much happier if i got a bag of original fruits mike and ikes that happened to be all strawberry (the freakish chances!) than if they actually just *sold* a bag of mike and ikes that were only strawberries. i made it to my office. i pulled up slog. there is red chunky mike and ike on my screen now because of Lindy. i eat the red ones first and save all the strawberry ones for last.

  45. I’ve never read one of West’s reviews before and if this is typical I’m never going to read another. There’s so much unnecessary literary tap dancing in her writing the subject takes a back seat.

  46. Titanic could have benefited from a giant Lizard-lion chasing Leonardo DiCaprio around.

    At least until the ship was well on its way towards sinking.

  50. After months of anticipation I bought “King Kong” like the day it came out, also “Team America”. I was extremely disappointed both times, to put it mildly. (In “Team America”‘s case, probably the worst big budget movie I’ve ever seen!) Even though I probably will get burned again, I really hope “Avatar” lives up to its hype. From Lindy’s review, and a couple others I’ve read today, I think I’ve got a chance.

Comments are closed.