Despite what you may think of Avatar, I think we can all agree that it is certainly a BIG movie, and pleasing to look at, in the way that if you did anything with half a billion dollars and invited people to watch would be a sight to behold, even if it was just stapling half a billion dollar bills to a wall and splashing paint on it. And, as unchallenging as the Halliburton-colonizing-Fern-Gully plot was (because, clearly, the plot was sort of an afterthought to the focus on visual sparkle), Cameron at least paid some homage to narrative logic, with slight tinges of character development, at least enough so that I’m happy to hand over my blood money to him rather than this guy or the people who make
the only picture I could find that seemed appropriate
exponentially more offensive movies such as this. And by blood money, I mean literally blood money, as I used a movie pass I received from giving blood on Court Street, which means James Cameron didn’t actually get any of my money, but Michael Bay or Dwayne Johnson didn’t even get a timeshare of my eyeballs. But I digress.
The movie has made, as of press time, 100 thrillion dollars, a special kind of dollar Cameron had printed to enhance 3D PREZ EFFEX. Maybe it will win an Oscar for Best Movie of All Time, if the vice president gets a vote (he doesn’t).
All of this discussion is moot anyway, seeing as this video is the best thing that will ever happen with James Cameron’s name attached (that’s right, I said it, Piranha Part 2: The Spawning). It’s Aliens, retold in epic rap form, as most high art ends up retold.
Courtesy of RoboMayhem. Throw Oscars at this video or award none at all this year. Someone please tell Sigourney Weaver to stop trusting evil space corporations.
Inverted Soapbox 
Dear Tim,
Unfortunately, I think you are incorrect about Cameron paying some homage to narrative logic, unless you mean “homage” in the way we use it at work, where it means imitating stuff that was once great. Cameron has created an imitation of a narrative here.
I still don’t get why everyone’s okay with that. The man made a movie where almost nothing worked on a story level. And that’s fine–we have dozens of movies that come out every year where nothing works on a story level, but we don’t hold them up for Best Picture. Avatar should win every visual award there is, fine, but Best Picture?! Best Director?! That’s like saying, “well, you can either have a good story, or you can make it look cool,” a theory that many movies, among them Lord of the Rings and Star Trek, have thoroughly disproven. We’ve let James Cameron off the hook in this weird self-congratulatory way that makes my blood boil.
Also, I was on the subway, reading someone’s TIME over their shoulder, and there were two charts, one with the top-grossing movies of all time (Titanic #1, Avatar #2) and then a chart below with the top-grossing movies of all time ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION: Gone with the Wind #1, Titanic #6 and Avatar #26. So maybe, maybe we’re not all as crazy blinded by the fact that a movie that looks good and sounds phony is fine but not great as I think we are.
Bitter rant OVER