Avatar vs Star Trek

Here at Reviews In Depth we like to go deep on every topic imaginable. We live in the depths! Whether we’re reading Tolstoy or watching Big Brother, we’re always thinking hard about what we’re seeing. It’s what we do, it’s why you’re here reading. So the same goes for when we’re sucking down popcorn and watching sci fi schlock. In fact, science fiction schlock happens to be this reviewer’s favorite kind of schlock. It’s got lasers, shooty bangs and mind melds, and gives one the tantalising hope that it’s a relatively close possible world to boot. So there are few greater pleasures for me than to talk about two of the biggest sci fi releases of recent times: Star Trek and Avatar. I’m going to tell you why Star Trek is a much better movie than Avatar, box office takings not-withstanding. This is something I think most of you reading will already know. In the reviews, the Star Trek script was widely praised, while Avatar’s script has been widely panned. But as it is with standard reviews – they never run deep enough in explanation for our liking.

Before I start bagging out Avatar, it’s important to recognise what is good about it. In actual fact, as a piece of science fiction I actually think it’s superior to Star Trek. It has more interesting concepts. Let me explain what I mean.

What often happens in science fiction is that good narrative art is sacrificed on the altar of the concepts that the writer is interested in. Most of us science fiction fans put up with this because we’re so in love with these ideas and the wondrous things they inspire in our imaginations. So the first half of Frank Herbert’s Dune is as tedious as hell but we put up with it because of this idea of a guy that is trapped by his own knowledge of the future; William Gibson’s characters are pretty dry and uninteresting, but they are decked out with crazy implants and have chats with artificial intelligences existing somewhere in cyberspace. The main part of the hook with these concepts is their originality – that mind blowing element that really makes us think about what it means to be human and conscious and all that stuff.

Star Trek used to have this moxy – this was Gene Roddenberry’s legacy. Black women kissing captains, world peace, handheld communicators, beaming up, Scottish Engineers, etc. Even the Next Generation had something to contribute here: robot rights, the borg collective mind etc. Not much of it is particularly hard science fiction, but much of it was innovative even if only from the perspective of a mainstream TV audience.

The new Star Trek doesn’t really add anything to this stock of conceptual machinery. The only thing I hadn’t seen before was Red Matter – a red goop that in very tiny quantities can create black holes. But what the hell is red matter? Why did Spock have a giant goddamn ball of it in his ship? Why would you concentrate the destructive power capable of destroying a million suns in a single, underpowered spaceship? But this lack is okay, because – as I’m about to argue – the narrative in Star Trek is tight.

Avatar, which has a woefully executed narrative, does make a certain sci fi conceptual contribution – the GAIA like super consciousness of the planet and the direct ability of native creatures to interface with that consciousness, as well as each other. The science fiction premise here is interesting. What if the sorts of informational transmissions structures that we are currently developing and implementing in our own society, arose naturally out of an evolutionary and purely biological process? This is a cool idea and, along with the spectacular visuals, was the only saving grace of this otherwise a fairly average movie.

So what DOES Star Trek have that Avatar doesn’t?

Let’s start with the openings.  Star Trek leads off with an opening that they call In Media Res.  It starts in the middle of things – a battle between a federation starship and a giant unknown vessel.  It’s interesting, exciting and visually spectacular.  Key aspects of the narrative are well foregrounded, including the main villain of the story, and the heroic death of James Kirk’s dad – an important factor in the development of Kirk’s character.

The next couple of scenes build on this character development.  We see the childhood versions of Kirk and Spock – with Kirk driving his step father’s car off a cliff, and Spock facing torments from his peers on account of his half human heritage.  Both these scenes resonate strongly in an emotional sense.  They are conveyed dramatically and not expositionally, further drawing us into the movie.  What matters most however, as we will see shortly, is that the aspects of character revealed in these scenes serve to drive the plot later on in the story.  Every aspect of their character that is revealed to us is necessary to that story.  And it’s this element which makes the overall journey so satisfying to the viewer.

A young Spock gets upset

Avatar’s opening, on the other hand, is about as interesting as dried peanut butter.  It opens with some narration from our protagonist – Juke Sully.  Narration is usually a terrible way to start a movie, unless it is used in such a way as to hook us in some way.  An example of good opening narration is the movie Pitch Black.  Riddick’s narration in this movie is such that it is both in character and engaging.  Jake Sully’s narration, however, is neither.  He starts relaying various bits of information about what it’s like to be in cryogenic sleep, but in this context, the information is completely irrelevant and serves no purpose.  Riddick also muses about the nature of cryogenic sleep, but in so doing we learn vital information about his character – that he is a murderer and all round bad person.  This is the hook that draws us in.

Sully’s narration has no such hook.  We learn that he has a twin brother that is dead, and that he is a ‘grunt’ – but we don’t care because we just see 2 seconds of a guy that looks like him being zipped up in a body bag and we have no reason yet to give a shit.  We learn that he has been travelling for 6 years – also irrelevant.  We learn his destination: Pandora, a place you grow up hearing about but Sully never figures he’d be going there.  Honestly – who cares what he thought back in day?

The scene then flashbacks to the moment he is recruited in his brother’s stead.  The recruiter explains how they need someone with the same genetic information as his brother who wass a scientist.  Now these bits of information are relevant to the plot (but only in a weak sense as I’ll explain shortly), but it is completely unnecessary to mention them here.  What’s more, by revealing this information the story is deprived a potential hook that might have made the beginning interesting in some way.

Only five minutes into the movie, when the shuttle is flying over the landscape, are we given information that IS important.  The shot of the giant open cut mine right in the middle of the forest nicely foregrounds the coming conflict and does it with simple economy and without narration.  Still, we’re five minutes into the movie, and there is still no hook, no curious aspect which drives us to want to know more.  This lack of anything really driving our interest or curiosity doesn’t ever change throughout the whole movie.

Juke Sully waking up from cryogenic sleep - someone wake me up please?

What James Cameron should have done instead is to just cut the first five minutes (and probably more).  Our first scene is a brief shot of Sully arriving on the shuttle, pulling himself along in his wheelchair.  Rather than having told us that he is a grunt, it would have been much better had he arrived in the avatar lab with all the scientists expecting him to be a scientist.  Then we would have gotten a nice dramatic scene with Sully feeling uncomfortable, and the scientists being upset that they have been given a dupe.  This in turn would have provided a hook… why has a grunt been sent to do a scientist’s job?  It would also have provided a rationale for Sigourney Weaver’s character (Dr. Grace Augustine/Ripley)  to confront the company administrator Parker Selfridge.  If she hadn’t known that Sully was a dumb grunt then going to pick a fight with Parker at this point would have made some sense.

As it is, however, not only do we already know he’s a grunt, because we’ve been told, Grace knows it too – because she got told sometime previously as well.  She goes off to have her fight with Parker – but it makes absolutely no sense why she does.  Why didn’t she have this fight earlier?  They’ve been waiting for him for six years after all.  Why is she bringing it up as though it’s the first chance they’ve had to discuss it?  Why does he have to tell her about the mining operation and its purpose as he does?  Surely she already knew this?  The whole scene is completely retarded and makes no sense at all.

Worst of all, however, none of those aspects of these characters really matters to the overall plot.  Unlike star trek with its tight connection between characterisation and plot – the fact that Sully is a grunt, doesn’t really drive the narrative at all.  The same major plot points could all have gone the same way whether or not he was a grunt, a scientist – or whatever.  The one small significance it has is that it makes him more predisposed toward doing the evil commander’s bidding in the early stages.  But it wasn’t particularly necessary.  After all, the commander does offer him his legs back as well – that would have served as sufficient motivation either way I would have thought.

In Star Trek the various qualities of the characters are essential to the resolution of the various plot lines.  It’s  because Spock is a character that is half human, with human emotions that he struggles to contain, that Kirk can later goad Spock into attacking him.  By so doing, Spock realises that he is emotionally comprised and gives over command of the Enterprise to Kirk.  This key plot development is explicitly foregrounded in the opening scenes of the movie.

In Avatar, there is nothing essential about Sully’s character that drives him to make the decisions that he does.  He is more or less a blank slate that makes a bad choice at the beginning of the movie and makes a better choice later on.  This leaves one with a rather deep dissatisfaction when watching the set pieces of this movie.

The lesson of the story is make sure the character elements of your story drives the plot.  Star Trek does it – and wins.  Avatar doesn’t and loses.