One podcast I listen to made an interesting comparison between Avatar and Star Wars.  Each movie raised the bar for blockbusters, as well as working in a genre that can be described as Space Opera.  A little too easy and facile for Science Fiction, but set in a future universe.  In fact, both movies rely heavily on the mythology of the American West as background, though Star Wars uses a lot more Eastern martial arts iconography as well.  But the real comparison was about the effect the movies had on the industry.  It’s undeniable that movies before Star Wars, or many that are actually contemporary, but were in production before Star Wars broke all box office records, look cheap now.  No matter what your memory is of the special effects, if you go back and see it now, it will look fake.

No doubt that’s what Cameron meant when he talked about his movie.  Hopefully he was not talking about the story.  So, will every movie in the blockbuster/space-opera genre be in 3-D with flawless CGI? Will budgets continue to push upwards of $400 million dollars?  Seems likely.  On the other hand, will Avatar go down in our collective memory the way Star Wars did?  I find that very doubtful.  Technical advances may have had a great influence at the time Star Wars came out, but that’s not why we remember it now.  After all, as soon as it was out, everybody else set out surpassing it.  Matrix made a similar leap in visual technique, but little else about the movie has lasted.

Star Wars had something else that was special, something that even George Lucas could never find again.  Though nobody could call the acting great, the relationships between the characters were inspired.  Obi-Wan is still an archetype, and Darth Vader is synonymous with ultimate bad guy.  Princess Leia was the perfect damsel in distress, who could also kick some ass.  But the key was really the hero.  Instead of just focusing on the “chosen one”, Star Wars kept balancing Luke with Han Solo.  Han Solo was fun in a way that Luke could never be.  Neo was never fun, the hero of Avatar could never catch that magic.  Nobody in the sequels had it.  Maybe it was just Harrison Ford, but I also think the character of the co-hero lifted some of the seriousness that oppresses adventure movies when the film-maker starts thinking about making art.  Lucas could be as serious as he wanted about the Force, destiny, and the themes of good and evil and fatherhood, without drowning the old-fashioned serial-movie fun, because Han Solo was always there.

It seems odd that one movie could have given the modern standard examplar of three cultural archetypes, but Star Wars did it.  Darth Vader, Obi-Wan, and Han Solo are always with us.  You can pull out any of those names and describe someone, and you’ve covered that topic.  I can’t imagine any character from Avatar will be that memorable even a year from now.

Piranha II is James Cameron’s first feature movie, and Avatar is the most recent.  How has his moral message and story-telling evolved?

In Piranha II, you were likely to get killed by a carnivorous flying fish if:

• You are female and naked.
• You have sex unconnected to romance.
• You’re a somewhat ridiculous older woman.
• You are an ethnic side-character.

Also, if you’re ex-military, you’re instinctively evil, even when you try to be good.  if you’re a corporate person, you’re stupidly evil.

Things have gotten a lot better for naked or semi-naked women/aliens in Avatar, and only good people have sex, which is romantic as heck.  On the other hand:

• Military is still evil.
• Corporations are stupidly evil.
• Michelle Rodriguez? Dead.
• Sigourney Weaver? Dead. (well, she does get instantly recycled into a giant tree, so that’s something)

Apparently, according to Cinematical, people are going to IMDB and giving Milk a rating of “1″,  just because it’s gay-themed and was nominated for best picture.  The evidence is that the IMDB rating dropped sharply after the nominations were announced.  Brokeback Mountain saw a similar decline.  I suspect that Cinematical is correct in assuming that a lot of hateful people are just going to IMDB and giving Milk the lowest score without ever having seen it.  The drop is large.

But if I wanted to be sure, I would want to see the drop in ratings compared to all the other nominated movies.  Also, if possible, I’d like to see  the number of new ratings compared to changes in ticket sales.  What I think we’d see is that all of the nominees show some decline.  When a movie is first released, the people who see it are the ones for whom it was made.  (unless bad marketing brings in an audience who think they are seeing something different).  Milk played to people who like Sean Penn or are interested in the story of Harvey Milk.  Slumdog Millionaire played to the independent theater crowd, or people who like international films, and possible fans of the director.  But once these films are nominated, a lot of people go see them who were not part of the original crowd.  People who usually watch action movies, or romantic comedies, or whatever.  This crowd will probably be less impressed.  So ratings should fall to some extent in any case.