Avatar cost over $230 million to make. The director James Cameron held out for years so that the 3D technology for the movie would be available. And this isn't the 3D you remember from you're childhood (if you happened to grow up in 90's). There isn't that cheesy pop-out effect that's been used for the past couple decades. Instead the images seem almost to pop-in, creating the 3D effect. And while I was impressed with the effects, the story line seemed a little too...predictable. The movie has many themes that speak to issues that America deals with today and has dealt with in the past. The industrialized Earth with no reverence to nature destroys the forests in the name of business and profits. The battle between a Western culture and a native population reminds us of our past with Native Americans and our continuing obsession with Manifest Destiny. But none of these topics were really new or original to me. Anyone who has studied history or read an environmental article can easily pick up on these themes. And when people remember Avatar in the future, its going to be remembered for its groundbreaking effects and not its thought provoking plot.
A Clockwork Orange is not for the faint of heart nor the impressionable mind. The movie chronicles Alex and his "droogs" (Russian for friend) as they commit graphic and sadistic crimes they dub as ultra-violence. Eventually Alex is apprehended, experimentally rehabilitated, and ends with the reemergence of his true psychopathic will. The movie scrambles with you mind and its preconceived notions of morality, hero and villain, and free will and leaves you helplessly sorting through the mess. It inverts your ideas of a hero as you find yourself sympathizing with Alex, even as he commits incredibly inhuman crimes. You wonder if the ends justify the means, as the experimental procedure robs Alex of his free will and forces him to become a morally good person. Its the kind of movie that makes you so thoroughly confused that it takes days to really mull through everything you've just witnessed. The movie did such a powerful job of morally confusing its audience that in Britain multiple copycat crimes arose, resulting in a ban that lasted for decades.
So what is progress? As the technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, more and more of the cinematic experience is the result of computer graphics and dazzling effects. The industry seems to be moving a direction that is more reliant on computers and less reliant on humans. It doesn't seem to farfetched to think that soon movies will only require human voiceovers, and then eventually no humans at all. But is that progress? I think that the real power of the arts is that it speaks to the truly human part of us, causing us to view or think about the world in a new way and thus allowing us to grow. And without that human element, the viewpoint the movies are supposed to invoke becomes fake and loses its value. So I guess I'll still take the thought provoking movie over the visual dazzling effects. And while the 3D effects of Avatar may be impressive, I have a little secret. I can see in 3D all the time. And its better and best of all its free.
Works Citied:
New York Times, "For All Its Success, Will ‘Avatar’ Change the Industry?"
New York Times, "British Test 19-Year Ban On 'Clockwork Orange'"
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