The second "Avatar" trailer
arrived this last week, and while I'm still fighting over it in my head, with my
reasonable and nerdy sides rolling up their sleeves and scrapping ("Floating
mountains look stupid!" "But they could be explained by superconductor deposits ... more
interacting with the magnetic field!"), I also can't help but think that
watching anything from "Avatar" on your computer is one of those classic
mistakes of medium mismatching object, like viewing The Sistine Chapel on a
ViewMaster slide or taking in Wagner's Ring cycle as performed by finger
puppets. You can suggest this movie looks awesome (a contention I agree with, in
part) or you can suggest it looks silly (again, a contention I agree with, in
part) but you cannot suggest it looks anything but big.
And, in
our wait-for-the-DVD age, isn't it nice to know that some directors are still
shooting for, and thinking in terms of, the big screen? And even nicer when they
are not named "Michael Bay?" Cameron's taking the whole canvas here, and it
looks like he's working hard to deliver -- never mind the whole 3D thing,
either, which, again, isn't a factor in these squinty on-line tiny iterations of
"Avatar" we've been given. Yes, the plot looks suspiciously familiar -- somebody
smarter than I could probably write a treatise at this point about how many big
fantasies from baby boom-era directors seem hell-bent on not only revisiting the
Vietnam war but making our heroes the scrappy, lower-tech, wildly outnumbered
opposition struggling valiantly against the militaristic, high tech status quo
forces of evil ("Star Wars"? Check. "The Matrix"? Check. "The Lord of the
Rings?" Even with the WWII parallels in the original book taken into account,
check.) "Avatar" looks like part and parcel of that bizarre tradition and while
that's part of why it looks so overly familiar, it's also why I'm perversely
fascinated by it. Even with all the hype -- Comic-Con footage (which I missed),
"Avatar" day (ditto) and mega-word count New Yorker profiles of Cameron -- I
tend to think the proof will be in the pudding, and the "Avatar" trailer looks
like a whole lot of pudding will be coming our way. I'm still not
convinced "Avatar" will be the game-changer it's supposed to be -- but I'm
waiting until the full game on the big screen starts before I make my mind up. Close
