Cameron can be a good director, but the Mass Effect story is too good for him to produce a viable end product with. None of his film "successes" are terribly thought provoking films. He specializes in pseudo-bland plots with flashy, expensive visuals. Sure, the Terminator movies were good but not very thought provoking, just action really. The same for Aliens, and the style was just continued from H.R. Giger's designs and Ridley Scott's portrayal in the first movie.
The Abyss had potential to be cool but the plot just took a dive towards the end and it turned out to be a whimsical little jaunt under the water as it ended. Plus the line "They...must of done something to us!" when the underwater creatures brought all of the surviving humans straight to the surface without having them all decompress and die was a huge script cop-out that made no sense and crapped in the face of all plausibility. I would almost prefer all the characters die as a story alternative. Any director who read that scrip and didn't ask someone in Hollywood to rewrite it in a more creative, plausible fashion than pure deus ex machina comes out as sketchy in my book. (Thank God I don't work in Hollywood)
Avatar was pretty much as other have said, kind of junk food for the eyes. It was tasty to look at but under the surface was one sickly panda. Actually, some of the visuals I thought were uncreative and somewhat crappy to tell the truth. Dammit, here I go again...
-First off, a freakin' moon with an atmosphere and copious amounts of water COULDN'T exist around a gas giant. The tsunamis would wash the planet from the tidal friction of the gas giant. Plus the radiation coming off a gas giant (assuming it's somewhere around the size of Jupiter or Neptune) would be lethal to any Earth-based life.
-Secondly, what was the deal with the flying mountains? Is this fantasy or sci-fi? Okay, maybe they are filled with the element the company is mining. If so, wouldn't it be easier to mine those than start a war with the native inhabitants? Also, the "vortex" that screws up the instruments in these stupid mountains somehow doesn't mess with the link between the Avatar machines and the people using them? There has to be a signal transmission based on story elements, like when Jake is exposed to the Pandora atmosphere.
-Third, you really named a hard-to-get mineral in your story "Unobtainium"? Really...Durr hurr hurr. Wow, I hope the audience gets it! That's clever! At least Element Zero sounds better in the Mass Effect story, at least it's somewhat vaguely hinting at a scientific basis for a naming convention.
-Four, you named the planet Pandora...really? Mr. Cameron's middle school level literary references I guess are intentional since the movie is PG-13? Gotta bring in the kiddies I suppose and make a wider profit margin.
-Fifth, yeah, others mentioned Pocahontas...so ditto.
-Sixth, yep...the forest looks like a forest on earth. Aside from a few bioluminescent plants, the forests are filled with earthlike ferns, trees...hell, most of it is just filler from earth. Did the art direction team get lazy and pull out the fluff-o-matic?
-Seventh, relates to point six because it's about the creatures in Avatar. Some of the creatures are pretty cool, the flyers are nicely designed for example. But the basic designs are pretty much just carried over versions of crap you can find on Earth. Ooo...look, it's a horse with six legs, not four! Oh wait, a panther with six legs, not four! Wait...why don't the Na'Vi have six limbs too since they should be on the same evolutionary chain as most of the other mammals? Doh!
-Eighth, Cameron's "living planet" idea is pretty goofy. Lem's novel Solaris published in 1961 did a better job and had a deeper story. In Cameron's Avatar it makes no sense that creatures are all linked up via a huge neural network. Why would evolution occur and why would the creatures feed off each other? Isn't that somewhat self-destructive to life? You would think a communal concious would steer lifeforms along a path where there would be no predators or prey and a very linear, short but hardy food chain would exist composed largely of plant life. The only thing I can imagine for the creatures existing off each other in Avatar in such a condition would be if all the animal life was engineered on Pandora by an alien race which left after making it all...which also makes no sense (Unless it was the Na'Vi and they somehow lost all their tech).
I'm cutting myself off there. In summary, Cameron isn't hard science fiction, he isn't medium...hell he isn't light science fiction. He puts just enough tech in his movies to keep them from being straight up high fantasy. Most of the tech is just there for visuals, not for story. Mass Effect has tech, it has some goofy story elements too that lend themselves more towards fantasy than sci fi. But, Mass Effect has a serious plot, it is rooted in science fiction despite being a space opera. I'm pretty sure Cameron would slaughter the finer points of the story by just making a visually appealing pseudo-sci-fi-fantasy with a bland script. Just think "Titanic In Spaaaace!" but of course the Normandy is the Titanic and the Collector ship is the iceberg.
Modifié par Ryllen Laerth Kriel, 01 juin 2010 - 06:37 .
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