'Avatar' and the Death of Storytelling

As people gush most Avatar, allowing the example to make up for a plot that seems to yield most fans disappointed, I wonder: By purchase into this full love-the-pretty-visuals bend, are we serving to end the art of storytelling? Actions hit a reaction. Money talks. Merge those digit together and it seems same we're sending a loud and clear communication to Hollywood that we don't tending if the news sucks as daylong as everything looks pretty. It would sure statement for the neverending barrage of crappy, big-visuals, big-action features.

Of course, it's not so cushy to meet cut a flick same Avatar. It's been buzzed most for eons. It has infiltrated television shows and plastered its communication nearby and far. We've got to see it. The peculiarity is likewise high. At the same time, however, how the frak crapper saint Cameron hit grilled this news up for a decade, inactivity for profession to grownup up with his vision, and not poverty the news to be killer? How crapper he not at small work that playscript into a modify that crapper at small begin to competition the visuals it's matched with? It seems same an insult. Sure, as Todd Gilchrist spinous out, the man isn't known for his stories. But they usually don't hit the push, the marketing, and the instance that this digit did. While inactivity for that profession to meet your needs, why not intend whatever trusty opinions and hone the script? Make apiece word, apiece moment, and apiece environs parallel the example of Cameron's cinematic eye -- envisage what the flick would've been then.

The production budget was enormous. It was a project that took a decennium to complete. If we can't wait 10 years to alter us solid storytelling, digit of the most base essences of cinema, that doesn't prognosticate so substantially for Hollywood's cinematic future. Long-gestating projects are a different cinematic creature than something same Transformers, which got a sequel apace to capitalize on the box office, which was meant to be null but goofy spectacle. At small those maize flicks hit the defence of pace and fluff.

What could Cameron hit done? It seems every likewise ultimate -- workshop the script, intend advice from trusty names, place kindred effort into every aspects of the film. But there's also the cinematic world at large to consider. Do you conceive we're approaching the modification of storytelling, and how crapper we avoid it or fix the problem? Must we rob ourselves the pleasure of beautiful films in protest? Thoughts?

For more on Avatar, its news and the disputable aftermath, see Elisabeth Rappe's Geek Beat, "Bury My Heart on Pandora".