A Whole New World: Tron, Avatar and Dances With Wolves

For what seems like forever now, but has only been a few months since it was released, critics and reviewers have been comparing Avatar with Dances with Wolves, and I was going to follow that trend since I recently watched Dances with Wolves as part of our watching of AFI's Top 100 films. But after watching Tron I found some similarities and perhaps false hopes that I can relate between the two.

Tron seemed like it would be a revolution in cinema. In fact, many Disney animators feared the film would put them out of job when computer animation took over. Now almost thirty years later the film industry is in what seems like a similar state, brand new CGI technology that's threatening to change everything, and on top of that a new 3D craze that some people are saying will change the way we see movies. But what's going to change? The slow tick forward of CGI since Tron hasn't put anyone out of business, (Disney brought back it's hand drawn animation department.), not every film is made with CGI, for the majority of the film industry CGI is still a tool like anything else. And that's what people aren't understanding. 3D won't change anything, except films made for that format. There may be more 3D films, and now those films will be made better, but it isn't going to change every other film. Avatar is changing things, but only in the way that The Matrix or Jurassic Park did; by pushing the technology forward.
Tron and Avatar share something else similar; the basic story structure of films past. In the case of Avatar it's Dances with Wolves or Pocahontas. In Tron, it follows the "lost in a different world" stories of Wizard of Oz and Chronicles of Narnia. (The books had been around for decades.) In Tron, Flynn is sent into the computer world by the Master Control Program, which runs the whole world like a dictator. Flynn meets characters that resemble people in the real world, just like in Oz. He has to master the world, unlocking things, winning battles and ultimately defeating Master Control. In the end, he changes the whole world, freeing it from the oppression of MC, much like Dorothy defeats the Witch or in Narnia they defeat the...witch...and everything is the better for it. I don't fault the film for it's simple story. The tale of a hero going into the underworld is as old as time. It's found in every religion and mythology.
Just like Avatar, the filmmakers made a whole new world, completely animated, plopping in real live actors. In Tron their faces stand out so much, because all around them the world is like a computer. In Avatar, the actors stand out because all around them is the most beautiful world that bears no resemblance to reality. Some people have said that it all blended together so smoothly that you couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't. These people are liars. They know the difference, you know why? Pandora doesn't exist. It ALL looked fake. It was like staring at a video game for 3 hours. Have you ever played a video game and thought, "Wow, that looks pretty real." I have. But I know it isn't real. Even the most realistic games still don't look "real." Looking at something like the last Legend of Zelda game, it kind of looks real, but only when you're just looking at that and nothing else. The 3D glasses serve a second purpose besides tricking your eyes into seeing the screen in 3 dimensions; they block your view from everything else in the theater. They act like blinders, so all you see is the screen, and with no point of reference to anything else it looks real because that's all your eyes are seeing for 3 hours.
I chose this Avatar poster in particular because it has Jake Sulley across from the Navi girl. Look closer at it. At first it all looked real, right? Now compare it to the rest of the page, or even look away, then look back. It's fake, totally fake. Look even closer....even Jake Sulley's face is fake. It's all fake, and it shows more than people are willing to admit. I will say this, Avatar looked good. The painting is tremendous. But when you make a totally fake world, it still looks made up. (Compare Tatooine in the original Star Wars to some of the new worlds in the Prequels.) As I was sitting in the theater, it felt like I was watching someone's video game. And just like when you're watching someone else play a video game, it got boring. Who wants to see someone else jumping through trees and flying on...flying things...for 2 hours straight. There's only so many trees or flying things that you can see and still keep my interest.
Obviously they've come a long way since Tron,  where their world amounts to box shapes and circles with shading on one side, but Avatar's graphics aren't the be all end all yet.
And neither is the story. I related many times while watching and since where Avatar copied some story element or visual element from past movies, including some of Cameron's. One that I haven't heard mentioned is when Jake and the Navi kill a Pandoran dear, and they thank it. It's an almost shot and dialogue rip off of Last of the Mohicans, where Natty and his Indian brothers kill a deer and thank it for providing them with sustenance. But of course, since the Navi are basically Indians, there will be some crossover between them and Native Americans. Except in Avatar there is absolutely no realism or depth to them or their culture. It's like a 14 year old came up with them. A 14 year old who fantasizes about tall cat women. There is no real culture to these people, except in their tails, which literally....literally connect to the world. Literally they are connected to the world. (Literally.) They fly and dance, but yet never does it seem like they live in a "real" world. The Native Americans lived in a pristine, beautiful and balanced world before the Europeans arrived, but it was by no means perfect. They still had to fight to survive; winters were cold, disease was always present, and other tribes were always encroaching on their resources.

Which leads into the next portion, comparing Avatar with Dances with Wolves, (which as much as I love to do, it still annoys me to do it.). In finishing the last point, DwW shows a well-rounded portrayal of a well rounded people. They hunt, they fight, they kill. They live in a real world. They have real reason to fear John Dunbar and other whites, but yet they're strong and fearless. They also love and care. It shows, when they come across the herd of buffalo that were skinned. You can feel for them, and the horrors that this new world of people will bring. Most of the similarities between Avatar and Wolves is in the details, some being eerily similar. John Dunbar. Jake Sulley. They sound similar, and at points in each movie their names are almost like a plot point, or at least the movie pauses for a moment when they're said.
Everything else similar is attempted by Avatar but accomplished in Dances with Wolves. All the way from the depth of the main character, and the other characters, to the complexities of the world. The one part I really actually liked in Avatar is when they send for other tribes, and for once you get a broader picture of the workings of this world, and not just the fantasy of the one tribe.
Breaking down Avatar piece by piece and comparing it to Dances with Wolves would be a futile effort, they're different films, and not even in the same realm. Avatar is cotton candy, while Dances with Wolves is art. Except, Avatar doesn't sit back and act like cotton candy. It thinks it's an art film that has meaning. But like hotel art, it's meaning is so apparent it's like clear water, you can see right through it because it's how they say...on the nose.
A few quotes from Avatar....
"This is why we're here: because this little gray rock sells for twenty million a kilo" (This lost it for me, I was out at this point.)
"Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world, and in here is the dream" (This is as bad as the narration in Platoon.)
And that's what gets me about this film, it treats the audience like their stupid. Like they can't understand what you're doing or trying to get across. Sometimes art needs explanation, but there was never real art that spelled out what exactly it was. Spelling out "Forest" isn't art. Painting a forest is. So that's where Avatar is left. It's cotton candy, and the medicine that James Cameroon thinks he's sneaking into it to get us to think about the environment or the war in Iraq...we got it. Loud and clear...you aren't an artist, you're a candy maker.