UPDATE: Now that we’ve actually seen Avatar, don’t miss our Avatar Podcast: “Are We Human, or Are We Panther?”.
Fenzel: I wonder how the Avatar article I wrote [Ed. Note: Fenzel wrote "5 Reasons Avatar Will Suck" before seeing the movie. —Ed.] is going to hold up, now that Avatar is actually in theaters. James Cameron’s probably gunning for us. So, if I get killed by a liquid metal killer robot, you all know why.
Mlawski: The funny thing is, I spent this morning reading all of the early reviews for Avatar, which were all ridiculously positive. But none of them said the plot, characters, or writing was any good. They all boiled down to, “Oooh! Pretty!”
So we can have a situation in which the movie is a big critical hit, yet Pete’s article is completely right.
Belinkie: I wonder if the movie is a lame cliche, but at the same time, it’s a well-written lame cliche. Like, the plot moves along quickly, the dialogue is sharp, the jokes work. So Pete’s article might be completely right, but it works in spite of those issues.
Perich: You mean, like Star Wars? Star Wars: A New Hope was groundbreaking visually and is a lot of fun, but let’s never forget that the writing is really (really) bad.
Belinkie: I’m going to straight-up disagree with you. I’m not even a Star Wars fanboy, but them’s fighting words.
Star Wars is an extremely well-plotted movie, with some amazing characters. Seriously, how do you look at a screenplay that invents Darth Vader and Han Solo, and declare it really really bad writing? If you mean it has some cheesy DIALOGUE, well sure. But that doesn’t make the writing bad, in this case. I’d say the cheesy dialogue is part of what makes the movie so much fun, and therefore part of its goodness.