james cameron’s avatar is a wonderful movie experience, especially in 3d, but…
like most hollywood movies nowdays it is a combination of a lot of copies of what has already been tested in other media over decades.
what hollywood sells is a commercial interpretation, or better said, adjustment, or what already becomes an accepted norm.
this is good cause that is what good entertainment is about, but a bit annoying when the audience starts to be convinced that hollywood movies are original. by default they can not be original, especially today. they can be original in project management, technology, how much money is invested and made, the scale of projects is unique, the marketing and production is amazingly huge, but by default they can not be original creatively (or what we use the word creative for anyway).
one movie which seems original to me is star wars and space odyssey: 2001. i have not researched much how george lucas, arthur c. clark and stanley kubrick got their ideas but since 2001 was made in 1968 and star wars: a new hope in 1977, i can guess that these were much more original.
already ridley scott’s alien, which is an amazing movie, starts to be a bit less original. the story is great and dan o’bannon is always a genius (love his stuff on heavy metal) but a lot of design and concepts still takes root in comics, fantasy illustration and books.
moebius, and other artists like him from the same period, influenced a lot of aesthetics which we are still consuming. i do not have time to figure out who is behind moebius, there must be someone, maybe a decade or few decades before him.
anyway…
nowdays there is so much already readily available, almost archetypal content, which just needs to be combined in a sometimes more, sometimes less commercial matrix, which merged with technology gives birth to amazing entertainment.
this is how apple, hollywood and bunch of other powerful production centers work. this is how pop music works, in a way.
what i wonder about is where can we actually find original content today? is it harder or easier to find it?
i consume a lot of content, as much as i can, and i am utterly bored. he more of it i see, the less interesting it is. there are less and less and less of original thoughts, concepts, design, shapes, colors, question, feelings, relationships, characters…
the big productions will not take risk to make stuff which is original. simple as that.
they will take hundred times less risk than two decades ago or thousand times less risk than 50 years ago. they will take million times less risk than 500 years ago.
there is no risk in james cameron’s avatar.
it is a wonderful film, i enjoyed it very much, but there is no risk.
sure he will say there is risk, but really, i do not see it.
i crave to see people who take risk and this is why i will love a free video of a young person doing a scary jump over a huge hole, just as much as i love avatar.
risk makes us remember we are alive, no risk is like being a machine… avatar seems like a perfect machine, but still a machine.
maybe, soon, machines will make movies for us so we can be 100% satisfied.