I'm still expecting Matthew to appear and give a review of Avatar that paints it as proof of the death of culture as we know it.
hey now, I don't believe that was necessary.
I have a feeling that when I do finally see it that I will respond similarly to Kurt. This is what I am anticipating, not because I await his reviews to make sense of my own feelings (though when we do not disagree I tend to assume that I missed something - if only because the general spread of our taste seems the most consistently similar. However, his taste is far more refined and well-informed than my impulsive and brutish love or hate responses.). From what I have seen of the trailers I expect that I will also agree with much of what Jesse and Tripp said (the storyline and characters sound like the standard blunt instruments of the Cameron armoury).
Despite my occasionally loud and unwelcome rants in defensive of unpopular opinions, I am neither a contrarian nor an elitist, and there is no reason to anticipate a negative response to all things popular with the great unwashed (you may be confusing me with another canuck).
Particularly in the case of James Cameron...
I was a huge fan (Aliens, Terminator) in the first couple of years of high school...and owned just about every film of his on vhs at the time. I am sure I've mentioned a million times how in grade seven or eight I transcribed by hand - with pen and paper - the entire script of
Aliens?
The noble-natives-vs.-the-evil-white-man/single-good-white-man-learns-to-lead-the-native-insurgency plot has had me cringing in advance for weeks now...but some long dormant part of me is curiously proud of Cameron overwhelming expectations and finding post-Titanic success at the cinema. I absolutely expected for there to be a knee-jerk pre-emptive backlash against whatever bloated epic he churned out, no matter how many years he waited.
Interesting that Tripp mentioned the effects in Titanic being subpar. I recently viewed Titanic with Rifftrax commentary and was actually impressed that the fx stood up somewhat. Those effects of 1997 certainly aged better than the CGI of The Phantom Menace (1999) to Revenge of the Sith (2005).
The story, characters and script of Titanic remain hilariously abysmal. Timelessly so.
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