OK Avatar, you’ve had your fun. Avatar has been top of the weekend box office forever now, but enough’s enough.
You can stop now. Because, sure, Avatar is all pretty and inoffensive and broadly spiritual and all that nonsense, but this week you all went to see Avatar instead of Legion – a film about a swearing old lady turning into a giant spider and crawling across the ceiling of a diner until a man blasts her down with a shotgun. It’s a film about Paul Bettany trying to kill God with a machine gun, for crying out loud.
And yet you all went to see Avatar, a film about a forest that lights up like a Samsung HD TV commercial, instead. You people, honestly.
Here’s our problem with Avatar. When a film reaches the top of the weekend box office, it deserves praise. Even more so when it remains at the top of the weekend box office for a second week. Three weeks and it’s a sensation. Four weeks and it’s a phenomenon. But when a film has been weekend box office number for as long as Avatar, it means one thing – that people are watching it again and again. This is undoubtedly a bad sign.
There’s already a preposterously detailed Wikipedia page about the Na’vi language. And soon there’ll be Avatar conventions, where people dressed up like streaky Blue Man Group outcasts will argue ferociously with one another about the atomic density of Unobtainium while Zoe Saldana quietly curses the fact that she agreed to star in Avatar and a Star Trek movie in the background. It’s going to be appalling, and we’re blaming you for this.
But anyway, here’s the US weekend box office top five…
1 - Avatar (Of course, one of the reasons why Avatar is so successful is because of all the religious overtones it contains. For instance, our favourite part of the bible is the bit where Jesus rides a massive pterodactyl and everyone beats the shit out of the giant robot, so imagine how delighted we were to see that recreated onscreen) $36,000,000
2 - Legion (Seriously, though. How can you have seen the Legion trailer and still decided to watch Avatar? Look at it! An ice cream man turns into a demon and another man gets strapped to an upside-down crucifix and explodes in a giant ball of pus! You people.) $18,200,000
3 - The Book Of Eli (A bit like Legion, except no old ladies turn into spiders so there’s no real reason for you to watch it) $17,000,000
4 - The Tooth Fairy (Imagine if The Rock was the tooth fairy! Wouldn’t that be hilarious? Apparently not, no) $14,500,000
5 - The Lovely Bones (We’ve long held the belief that the fatter Peter Jackson is, the better his films are. With this in mind, we get the feeling that The Lovely Bones was made on a diet of Ryvita and tap water) $8,800,000
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
It was a pretty good movie, though, effects-wise. People have told me it was lacking in the plot department.
I only went to see Avatar to see if it had a one single thing going for it at all, that and I had about 4 hours I needed to kill. I hated the trailer for it, it looked sh1t, the ultrahype surounding the movie convinced me, but I had 4 hours to loose.
So out of pure curuiosity, I went & watched it.
The trailers went on forever, but I was there to waste time.
I watched the movie, the special effects where, of course, out of this world, but it was intentionally a SFX movie.
The plot’s recycled (it’s pocohontas in space) and there are so many in jokes and references that I don’t know where to begin.
And yet, somehow from all this comes a film that’s truely great.
It’s beautifully crafted, it’s cameron at his very best.
The in jokes and references are mostly subliminal, only there if you spot them.
The acting was far better than I dared to hope for too.
Saldana (Neytiri) deserves an oscar, but won’t get one as the academy are squiffy about motion capture performances.
I never, ever go see a movie in the theater more than once, not ever. But I’d go back and see Avatar a second time, no wait, I did!
Look what you’ve done to me Cameron.
And as for those Blue Man Group outcasts? “Eywa ngahu” as we say.