If the movie Avatar was so awesome, then why didn’t it win the Best Picture Oscar?

I’ll admit it.  No, I did not bother seeing Avatar.  I know, I know – I’m usually a firm believer in the rule: if you don’t see it/read it/experience it, you shouldn’t judge it.  Usually.  But there are special cases when this rule should be broken.  Here is my impression:  Avatar comes across as the prodigal love child of Fern Gully and Starship Troopers in which the dirty old uncle, George Lucas, rubbed his grubby little hands all over it.

Now here’s the challenge:  Do you remember Fern Gully?  Little fairy shrinks blonde dude, have adventure together, and dude returns to normal with respect for the awesome power of trees.  Do you remember Starship Troopers?  That was the one where giant bugs were killing people and Doogie Howser played a scientist for all of ten minutes and there was a scene with co-ed showers.  And here’s the big question: do you remember the last time George Lucas produced something of value?  (Poor George, I imagine that burn-out as trying desperately to write something in between his sessions of pleasuring himself to images of Leia in that gold bikini while clamping his nipples with safety pins.  Gross, right?)

But I really haven’t enjoyed going to the movie theater in years.  Special effects just don’t do it for me.  I want a horror movie to scare me.  Don’t try and make me puke, don’t have the main character turn out to be the killer with schizophrenia.  I want my dramas to have real complexity.  Which means: no sports, no over-the-top racism and at all costs, no Kevin Costner.  If the Science Fiction/Action world wants to recapture my respect, can we please not use overgrown tribal smurfs to make weak criticism against corporate greed?  Oh James Cameron, I hope all those billions of dollars help soak up your bitter little tears.

————

Jonathan’s fiction has been published in Velvet Mafia and the anthologies Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader as well as Wilde Stories 2008; he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and will be graduating from the MFA Program at American University in May 2010.