Avatar hype may have confused some moviegoers, but may have been on point
After procrastinating for several weeks, I finally got to see Avatar this weekend. Before I went, I saw a lot of people saying things like, “It was good, but not life-changing.” That really gave me a lot of food for thought, because no one ever expects a sci-fi action blockbuster to be life-changing. Aliens is perhaps still the sublime specimen of the genre, but no one would say they expected the movie to deeply affect them before they saw it, so why would anyone expect more from Avatar?
It makes me wonder if a great number of people were mislead by the hype surrounding the movie. A lot of the hype did proclaim the movie would be revolutionary. Yes, it was beautiful, and yes, I felt the 3D was a lot more immersive than I had expected, but the movie itself was a textbook example of a hero epic, just like Star Wars, The Matrix, or anything else inspired by Arthurian legend. That might be the catch, though: The hype wasn’t really about the movie.
Consider the long-lasting critical acclaim for Citizen Kane. What a lot of people say is that it was the first movie to leverage motion picture technology in a way that hadn’t been done before, but later became the standard. Some people say the movie was great, but when I personally look into what people say, I hear more talk about the film’s technical accomplishments. In a way, I think it might be possible that Avatar will be the Citizen Kane of 3D film. And if it does, I could live with that.