The who Avatar hype machine is beyond insane. When it was people claiming how awesome it would be because James Cameron was Directing it was silly. When critics and other in the industry started buying into the hype it was surprising. When reviews started saying how awesome it was despite critics usually flaying alive any film with such a heavy focus on special effects over plot it was stupid. When people got abused by Avatards on internet forums for saying they enjoyed it but it wasn’t ‘all that’ it was pathetic fanboyism. When Avatar’s initially didn’t blow the box office away and we got headlines like “Avatar almost breaks records” it was ridiculous. And when people started naming their kids Pandora (presumably they will have a stalker named Adrian when they get older) and getting depressed because they couldn’t live in the CGI world Avatar had created it was simply sad. Now I am beginning to think money is involved.

Avatar is in the race for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Yes it should be a sure thing for just about every technical award going but best picture? Come on! I like Avatar, it is an amazing film to look at and it is entertaining in a superficial way but that in no way means it deserves to be recognised in this fashion. I’m no movie critic, I only watch films that I expect to enjoy. That is my prime reason for watching films but it does help when they are well written, acted and directed. However I am under no illusion that some of the films I enjoy are not great works of art and I don’t expect them to be recognised as such. Avatar is no great work of cinematic art. It isn’t the best Science Fiction film of the last year. It wasn’t even the best film for its month of release. How can it possibly be recognised as Best Picture? The upside of course is that should it win a high profile award then the Academy might get over its prejudice against genre films.

My theory is that this is about mass rationalisation. So many people have gone along with the hype and hysteria that the whole industry now feels Avatar needs a worthy accolade to justify said hype and hysteria. Technical awards and viewer voted awards are a given and expected so it has to be given an award of note. Otherwise too many people who pride themselves as being cinema connoisseurs will be outed as little more than simpletons impressed by anything shiny or whatever is cool.

Still it wouldn’t be the first time James Cameron got himself a bag load of Oscars for a tedious love story wrapped up in fancy special effects.

And here is everybody’s favourite Star Wars Prequel reviewer to highlight the good and the bad of Avatar:

Part 1:

Part 2