...or shall we just burn the faithless scum?

Avatar fans trying to identify a possibly dissenter

In a way I'm even more glad than my detractors about some of the less-than-positive Avatar-related posts falling victim to a database disaster at Shadowlocked. From the moment that I posted anything less-than-rhapsodical about Avatar on the internet, after the August 2009 previews, I felt like I was talking my way out of ever being allowed to express an opinion again.

I wonder if my print review of the movie in this month's Fortean Times will provoke as many furious letters to the editor as the online review evinced scathing comments? Some examples...

"The more I read your drivel review the more I want to knock you out. Your jumping at scant threads to bash a movie that you're obviously incapable of understanding. "

"This review is terrible. Infact [SIC], this isn't a review, it is simply bashing the movie and it's creator. It sounds like you have a personal vendetta against James Cameron."

And you should have seen the comments on the now-lost Shadowlocked posts about Avatar. By now I've probably written about twenty features about this movie, and even the few features which were neutral in terms of opinion seemed to draw out the suspicion of comment-assassins who suspected that I might not be 'of the flock'.

You'd think I drew a moustache on Allah - am I going to need fake papers in the future? A new identity?

The interesting thing is that this level of fanatical fanboy defensiveness is normally associated with popular properties that are under immense critical attack, or which have huge fan-bases that are proving inadequately numerous to support the product in question commercially.

Instead, we are talking here about an uber-blockbuster from one of the most commercially successful and popular directors of the last few decades. Did he really need such help to 'save' Avatar?

I never thought that there would be any money, kudos or acclaim in knocking this movie, and for a number of reasons, I really didn't want to. For one thing, I am a fan of James Cameron, and was sorry that he pulled a 'double-Kubrick' wait between Titanic and Avatar. Having loved the Terminator movies, Aliens and The Abyss, and really enjoyed Titanic and True Lies (as well as long having admired the man's early visual effects and production design work for Roger Corman), I figured that whether he went for something new or something familiar, Avatar was going to be really worth a look.

I wanted to like Avatar. And I am not going to go over the reasons yet again why I didn't really think it was that great once I saw the final product. Suffice to say that with an 83% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, broad critical acclaim, a bursting coffer of box-office takings and prodigious interest from the Academy Awards, this was one bandwagon where no-one needed to get out and push. Even now that the snarliest Avatar fanboys agree that the movie's trailers and previews were less-than-helpful to the final product, it's well to remember that the comment-threads from the internet were awash in early September with the sentiment: 'Yeah, it looks a bit dodgy, but I'm still going to see it'.

Avatar was never in trouble, despite its voracious need to recoup development as well as production costs.

So I am still baffled by the reactionary kicking that any of its few critics receive. It's as if the Avatar fans (dubbed in more unkind outlets as 'Avatards') have modelled themselves on their Twilight-loving brethren, and dedicated themselves to total support, total commitment and total eradication and hatred of those who don't embrace their views.

Did I miss something? Was Avatar a Tolkien book before it was a movie? Or a hit comic? A fireside favourite on camping trips? As far as I'm aware, all those people telling me to stick my head in the oven last autumn didn't know anything more about the finished film than I did, and I was only commenting on the same previews and trailers they had seen.

Perhaps Avatar fans, like me, found that they had to work a little to suspend disbelief when the movie segued from live-action to CGI, and anyone who raises this point threatens to strain the gossamer of that suspension. Perhaps the fans know damn well that the king is fully clothed but they'll F***ING TEAR YOUR HEAD OFF if you dare to suggest he may be in the altogether.

Perhaps they were just movie-goers who needed cheering up this year and found Avatar sufficient to do the trick. I never had any problem with that. I want all movies to be great, and I want people to have great experiences even at movies that I don't personally like. But since opinion is subjective, you can't be 'wrong' about Avatar if you happen to think it wasn't the greatest movie ever.  

And if you need take any further action than casually dismissing critical points of view that don't accord with your own, you might be a victim of Avatar's mass-media-hypnosis; you might find that it'll take a year or two to disassociate yourself from that and judge the movie on its merits. When you do, I sincerely hope you love it as much as you did in the cinema. But I do wonder.