Sunday, December 20, 2009

"Avatar" ~ 3/10

Of course with such a budget, there _has_ to be something good.
But what ?

The story is way too simple, completely expected and manichaeic ; the imaginary world, fauna, and flora involved are beautifully created but never very far from existing exotisms (so not that much imaginative), and finally it almost sounds immoral : using so much money just to recreate an historically wrong metaphor about Americas' and America's births, and the many wrongdoings perpetrated at these different times - after all, in "Titanic" they did not take the right to make such historical changes, and the boat _did actually_ sink in the end... Or did it not ?

This movie might be very well done technically (above all when it comes to the subject of 3D, and especially the depth of field that comes up with), but ideologically it's a big crap : hippies and tree huggers only get by if helped by a Marine ! Maybe was it even a consumable insult ?

What's the point in quoting two of the most important pro-environmental filmmakers of our days (Godfrey Reggio and Hayao Miyazaki), just to show that war is the answer and solution to an environmental and geopolitical issue ?

...

2010.01.22 : After some long thinking over this awfully immoral movie, I decided to lower my vote from 6 to 3/10. The world does not deserves such Hollywood propaganda trying to make you believe they care about environmental issues. Hence, 3 points lost for immorality.

"Astro Boy" ~ 3/10

This movie might be the biggest insult to a major author (hence, Osamu Tezuka here) since "I am Robot" featuring Will Smith (it does still hurt when I write about that shit !).
Even with great voicing actors such as Nicholas Cage and Bill Nighy, the movie is just fun enough for some 4 year old stupid children who would not give a shit about what one of the most important mangaka did create.
Tezuka's manga influenced the entire production of comic books in his time, and since this very formatted media has not seen many changes, one may say Tezuka is still influencing the biggest part of the current comic books production, 20 years after his death.
The most horrifying fact, according to me, might be that such a bad movie is hiding Osamu Tezuka's own production as an animated-movie director ; he was one of the best directors ever in this field, even if his best works were not the old series adaptations of "Testsu-wan Atom" ("Astro Boy"), but short films he made at the end of his life, such as "Jumping".