Cinema, verité

I just got around to watching Avatar last week. I was pleasantly surprised, finding a better movie than I was expecting, with some decent character development and a story that was perhaps somewhat obvious, but not really "eye-roll" worthy. Then I finally got around to watching Inglourious Basterds tonight, and again I was pleasantly surprised. Tarantino delivered a tight, entertaining movie (even considering its running time [around 2:30]), not the sprawling mess of a film I thought I recognized at first glance. And just that quickly, Inglourious Basterds moved up the ladder, knocking Avatar down a peg on the list of best movies of last year.

That judgment led me to consider the long plight of special-effects-laden sci-fi epics--a class of film long on success and influence, but short on critical respect. Ever since Star Wars--you know the one I'm talking about; episode numbers be damned--changed movies in America (and around the world, really), received a Best Picture nomination, and then lost to Annie Hall, a string of wildly popular, commercially successful, and visually innovative films have come and gone without receiving much respect come awards season beyond some statues for their technical merits. Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Dark Knight spring to mind as examples of special effects spectaculars that hit the theaters as blockbusters, bringing new dimensions to movie-making that, taken with their financial successes and widespread cultural impacts, would have made any one of them arguably the film of the year at their respective times of release. Yet only The Return of the King actually won the Best Picture award. All the others came up short--some as nominees, others out the running entirely. Avatar is just the latest to join that list of big movies that couldn't.

This track record has always seemed unfair. Many of these films far outpaced their contemporary competition in any number of facets. One can certainly argue, for instance, that Jurassic Park, for all its flaws, was destined to have a far greater cultural impact than that other 1993 Spielberg film, the one that actually did win the Best Picture Oscar: Schindler's List. That Schindler's List is a fine movie and influential in its own right is undeniable. But by many a metric, one would be hard pressed to argue that Schindler's List had a greater impact than Jurassic Park. The latter represented a quantum leap forward in the art of special effects, bringing new technologies to the art of filmmaking that continue to evolve and change movies to this day. (Avatar is almost a direct descendant of Jurassic Park, in this sense.) And that comparison, between Jurassic Park and Schindler's List, is one of the narrower battles. Few people today would rank Gandhi ahead of E.T. on their list of favorite movies. And while Annie Hall is a fine movie and fondly remembered, any argument that its impact on movies and our culture outweighed Star Wars would be laughable.

Given these examples, the temptation may be great to view Avatar in a more favorable light than Inglourious Basterds. Its long term impact on film will likely be greater, given its advanced special effects and (perhaps) its 3D presentation. (I'm not sold on 3D as yet.) It is likely that sequels will be forthcoming, and future directors will be taking its cues when making big, blockbuster special effects entertainments. Inglourious Basterds will not have a similar impact. (The odds of it inspiring a string of violent, highly cinema-literate war movies are, shall we say, unlikely.) So why, then, do I rate Inglourious Basterds as a better movie than Avatar, having just watched them back to back?

Two reasons. One, Inglourious Basterds is simply a better overall movie. Better dialogue, better characters, better story. Avatar was fun to watch, but just not up to that snuff. Two--and here's the meat of the matter--Avatar's impact almost certainly will be bigger in the long term, for the reasons previously stated. Yet, taking the long view, that influence is not automatically destined to be positive. As with Star Wars, Avatar is likely to spawn a host of imitators and descendants, most if not all of which will be something much less than the original. (In the case of Star Wars, included among those poor imitators would be its own prequels.) The new technologies and techniques created by James Cameron will be bequeathed to a host of unworthy followers, whose ill-conceived offspring will assault our cinemas for years to come. How many bad movies will waste our viewing hours, annoy us with their saturation advertising, and clutter the shelves (or disk space) of our libraries in the future, all because someone tried to make the next Avatar? As likely as not, we'll suffer no such indignities thanks to Inglourious Basterds.

That, then, is the problem with special effects sci-fi spectaculars. The very thing they hang their hats on, the engine which drives their ascent from the middling ranks of genre up to the heights of movie-making, is the same thing that ultimately sullies their environment. Their very own innovations are what eventually drags the level of their genre back down into the abyss from whence it came--and thus makes the future climb that much steeper. In that way, what appears at first glance to be an unfair lack of respect may in fact be nothing more than justice served ahead of its time. And so, any filmmaker who wishes to rise to the top through the ranks of the sci-fi genre may find the effort leads to an ending which is ultimately--if you'll forgive me for indulging in le mot juste--inglorious.