The AVATAR films and scores
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I’m seeing the new movie on Wednesday. I have high expectations. Unlike most of the “hip” crowd, I think the previous two films are absolute masterclasses. Pure cinema! I think James Horner’s score for the first is one of the best things he ever did in his life and career. I like bits and pieces of Franglen’s sequel, although the album needs serious whittling to work.
Currently listening to Franglen’s score for the third. The album is ridiculously long at 2 hours and 11 minutes, but I’m sure it’s possible to whittle this down to a decent listening experience, just like the previous one. So far, it’s like the last one — Franglen approximates Horner’s ethereal/spiritual music quite well, but the action music is incredibly generic. Most of it needs to go.
I stand by my assertion that it should have been James Newton Howard who should have “inherited” this franchise from Horner. One James to another James, as JNH is an expert in these particular sounds. Franglen has always had limited scope as a composer, in my opinion, despite his previous connection to Horner. But under the circumstances, he’s done reasonably well.
I hereby open this thread to all opinions on the AVATAR films and scores. I’m aware they have their fair share of haters.
I only saw the first one and it felt like “3D effect showcase”. A lot ado about nothing storywise so to speak. “Smurfs in Space” as we said back then 😉 I warmed up a great deal with the “Horner best of” since then and like it very much. Haven’t heard Franglen’s follow up once yet either. Not familiar with him, heard only his MAGNIFICENT SEVEN he completed with Horner’s material and found it not that convincing. Well, like the movie itself.
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN was a disaster. I refuse to believe Horner finished that the way he wanted before Franglen took over. It sounds so uninspired, so untypical Horner.
There are very few film directors who managed to setup a believable and original extraterrestrial world building. George Lucas managed to do that in his six Star Wars movies, sometimes better sometimes less. Ridley Scott and H.R. Giger managed to do so in Alien.
Avatar has a few good world building ideas, but overall in my view Cameron fails in that regard due to his all too romantically sticking to this Buffalo Bill Native American blueprint and his all to obvious “in this biotop everything is connected physically” design. Because here he didn’t invest much creativity the whole setup appears quite cheap even though on the surface it looks expensive, but not original.
And the music with its lion king etno sound plays an inglorious role in this cheap appearance.My view. Sorry.
Ah, ja…. AVATAR. I remember. December 2009 was one of those moments. I walked into a theater, sat down, and James Cameron shoved a pair of plastic glasses onto my face. AVATAR wasn’t just another blockbuster, it was a shift. The first 3D movie in a long time that actually mattered. Before Cameron, 3D was a gimmick. After Cameron, it was gospel. Everybody wanted 3D. Studios scrambled, theaters retooled, and suddenly every popcorn flick wanted to leap off the screen. The before-and-after line was drawn with these tall blue people.
At that time, Cameron had already made the most successful movie ever made, TITANIC. I remember how before TITANIC came out, everybody thought Cameron was nuts to make a superexpensive film about the TITANIC, as all previous movies based on the TITANIC had been flops. Cameron proved them wrong. Before AVATAR hit the screen, everybody thought Cameron was nuts to make such a superexpensive science-fiction movie that had no established pre-base, like Marvel or Star Wars. Cameron proved them wrong again. AVATAR became the most successful movie of all time.
But why? That’s the interesting thing… why? Because, as Thor points out, “they have their fair share of haters”. Probably more than most other hyper successful franchises. Sure, Marvel Superheroes or STAR WARS etc. all have their detractors too, but they have nevertheless all also their fanbase who is ready to step in and defend these movies. Who defends AVATAR (besides Thor)? These movies are so hyper successful, yet pop-culturally, they practically left no imprint. People either seem to hate them or shrug them off, but they have not weaved themselves into our cultural fabric. We know quotes like “I am your father”, “I can see dead people”, “Hasta La Vista, Baby”, “We gonna need a bigger boat”, “Why so serious”, “My precious”, and so on, and we immediately know which movie is meant. Is there a single quote from either AVATAR movie that has become a pop-cultural reference marker? I cannot think of one.
Again, I wonder why? I simply wonder why because Thor has opened up the thread here, so I try to grapple with the question while I write this.
So let’s look at the story of the first AVATAR movie. It is ridiculous. It is DANCES WITH WOLVES light in outer space, with lanky blue aliens preaching ecological sermons while riding dragon-birds instead of horses. It was silly, yes… but silly in the way a carnival ride is silly. You know it’s absurd, but you strap in anyway. Because Cameron, I have to concede, knows how to sell spectacle. And what spectacle it was: Pandora glowing like a fever dream, every leaf and vine painted with phosphorescent precision. Man, that movie looked just GREAT on the big screen in 2009, it was feast for the eye. And James Horner’s score soared above it all, a symphonic halo that made even the most derivative plot beats feel mythic. Yes, I really love Horner’s music for AVATAR.Fast forward thirteen years. AVATAR: WAY OF THE WATER. Cameron doubles down. People wonder, is Cameron nuts? AVATAR was surely a one-trick pony, a mostly forgotten hit of its time that took people in just because of its then daring 3D. No one would care. Cameron proved them wrong. Again. I have to admit: hats off to you, Mr. Cameron! And I enjoyed AVATAR: WAY OF THE WATER. Even more than the first film. True, sadly it didn’t have another James Horner score, I’d have loved that, but the visuals? More gorgeous, more intoxicating than the first movie. The ocean sequences shimmer like liquid jewels, every ripple a hymn to technology and obsession. The story? Just as ridiculous, just as silly as the first movie. Gimme a break. Some more evil Earth people with lots of machines (that’s what tells you they are “evil”) exploiting the planet and stealing the land of the indigenous tall blue Indians… I mean Native Pandorians, who live in peace and absolute harmony with absolutely EVERYTHING. Except for the evil Earth people with machines. Sheesh…
But here’s the trick: it doesn’t matter. Watching WAY OF WATER felt less like a movie and more like a vacation brochure for paradise. I wanted to stay forever on those beaches, swim with those creatures, breathe that impossible turquoise air. Cameron built a Paradise resort planet and charged admission in IMAX. I don’t know if it’s correct to say I love the movie, but it is correct to say I loved watching it. I loved to spend the time on this fictional planet. I did’t much care about the plot, my favorite scenes were just the Pandorians living on the beach, swimming, boating, and having a great time. I want to GO there. And Cameron let’s me stay there for a couple of hours.
Now I haven’t seen FIRE AN ASH, but something I already noticed from the second movie is now even more obvious with the third movie coming Because something curious stirred. Watching the water tribes, I couldn’t shake the déjà vu. The sleek aquatic people, their rituals, their shimmering architecture… did I not see something like that before? Ah, yes, it felt lifted from Nintendo’s very successful THE LEGEND OF ZELA: BREATH OF THE WILD. These water Pandorians were like the Zora. And now, with the next installment promising fire and ash, the parallels sharpen. If the water people were Zora, then surely the fire clans will be Gorons. Nice. What’s next? The Rito as Pandorian sky people? Or better yet, the Gerudo as desert Amazon Pandorians. 🙂
But that’s fine, I’m not saying Cameron “steals”. The AVATAR movies obviously just “absorb”. They are a very simple mythological playing field, filled with the familiar and known, processed with expert CGI and industrial imagination until it comes out bigger, louder, shinier. Cameron is an architect of sensation, and I’m sure he knows the story on which he hinges all of this is silly. Or maybe he doesn’t, I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t care. I know I don’t really do either. Because he’s selling immersion, not narrative. And he’s good at it. The first two movies were immersive. He let’s me spend a couple of hours on a dreamlike planet where life is better. And I like to spend the time there. That’s the genius of AVATAR.
(And it inspired me to write a lengthier than normal forum post…)
(And it inspired me to write a lengthier than normal forum post…)
Just a little 😉 Maybe you should write some posts on the main site instead of having your essays buried here in the forum!
Does anyone remember the demo programs on the C-64 or Amiga computers? No actual content just technical showcases of what is possible. That’s how the first movie felt like a bit.
Also the whole 3D hype never really got me in general. Maybe also because I wear glasses and wearing glasses on top of glasses is feeling a little inconvenient. But I always felt it didn’t really add much to the movies besides a gimmick.
Just a little 😉 Maybe you should write some posts on the main site instead of having your essays buried here in the forum!
Haha, it did become a little lengthier, maybe it can be repackaged as a website article. But I do find the AVATAR films quite interesting. They are a cultural phenomenon.
On the one hand, they are as successful as any Marvel Superhero movie, as any STAR WARS film, as any Harry Potter film, but on the other hand, nobody admits to liking them. So what is going on? So that inspired me to explore my own thoughts about it while writing the post.
I’m afraid I have not even explored the main site articles here all that much, as my bookmarks take me directly to the forum.Good posts!
For me, it isn’t so much the story in AVATAR that’s important. That isn’t original at all, it’s basically just a riff on Pocahontas. Rather, story is just a mechanism through which we can enter a world to explore. Or as Nick put it above:”[Cameron is] selling immersion, not narrative”. The AVATAR films are closer to an amusement park attraction that way, it’s about being engrossed. To achieve this, Cameron constantly oscillates between ‘pulse down’ (action pauses to let you take in the surroundings) and ‘pulse up’ (tightly edited action sequences with lots of kinetic energy). These are very bodily films, to put it that way.
I’ve always been interested in films that communicate more through visuals and sound than narrative (although both obviously exist at the same time). As such, there is actually a link between “arthouse” auteurs like Antonioni or Tarkovsky and Cameron. Like Antonioni’s exploration of SPACE as a character/entity, or Tarkovsky’s exploration of visceral tempo. Although the films are widely different, there are some similar basic ideas that have to do with what film can do as a medium beyond mere storytelling.
Yep, I agree with Thor here. Maybe he writes more from the head and analyzes it intellectually (I didn’t make the connection Antonioni-Tarkovsky-Cameron, but I like it), and I wrote my little “essay” (you could also call it a rant) about the AVATAR movies from the hip so to speak, but our impression of the AVATAR movies isn’t so far apart.
There is not much depth to AVATAR: WAY OF THE WATER (which I personally preferred even to the first movie), but the surface is just something I want to touch again.
For me, it isn’t so much the story in AVATAR that’s important. That isn’t original at all, it’s basically just a riff on Pocahontas.
There are thousands of great movies with simple ridiculous ripped off stories. Avatar might have been if Cameron would have had a more original vision of extraterrestrial world building. For me it’s a far too obvious one-to-one transition.
Just make them blue, give them tails but keep the hairdo and weapons, but replace some of the horses by dragons.No. That “paradise” did not captivate me. Maybe I am too much of a nerdy science fiction fan to let Cameron get away with such cheap world building. Or maybe I am too woke in the meantime to feel comfortable with such blunt caricatures of native people.
What made it probably extra problematic were my high expectations. As I said, I was a science fiction fan and a huge fan of Cameron’s previous movies.
Yes, a friend of mine said once, you see in Cameron’s movies that he is not the intellectual type. His scripts miss certain depths and psychological sophistication. But that never bothered me because his movies were full of great ideas and the staging of the action was perfect. At least until Avatar.
Like in all his previous movies there wasn’t much of a story and the characters were more or less just clichés. Fair enough. But for the first time the staging and world building ideas didn’t convince me at all.It’s of course very subjective whether or not one connects to the world of Avatar, but there’s no denying the fact that he DOES spend a lot of time constructing a world for us.
It’s like with me and Wes Anderson. There’s no denying he has a very unique style; he creates very unique worlds. And it’s all very well done. I just can’t connect to it on any level – his particular approach to quirk just alienates me and irritates me most of the time (whereas in the case of Tim Burton, I actually like the quirk….go figure).
Yes. In the end it’s a subjective thing if such a spectacle resonates with you or not.
I am by the way rather camp Wes Anderson than camp Tim Burton.
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