A new weekly feature on handles. Name yourself carefully lest Sonic and I mock your handle mercilessly!
To start, observations on the nature of handles. A handle is about self definition, naming yourself for an entire segment of reality. Pretty heady stuff! People go for the unique, the funny, the intimidating. Here at fns.com we appreciate the multifaceted handle. The handle that can be read and interpreted in multitudinous ways.
I’m a bit giddy with the prospect of using more than one sentence to talk about a film, so excuse me if things are slightly fragmented.
It took an hour or so for me to get into the right frame of mind to enjoy Avatar. Once I stopped worrying about the narrative in any way, things really clicked for me. The cliché-a-minute plot and ham-handed politics receded into the background and I just let the pictures and noise wash over me. The best analogy to the experience that I can think of on short notice is The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. The story gets you from room to room, spectacle to spectacle and is otherwise disposable. There is no event in the plot that is not foreshadowed at least 30 minutes in advance; no matter how violent events may become they are never confusing and rarely even remotely surprising. I enjoyed Avatar much more as an amusement park ride than as a piece of cinema.
To that end, seeing it in 3D IMAX was certainly the way to go, as I imagine it upped the “constantly exploding in your face” factor a great deal. Like some folks, I had a bit of a headache after the show; maybe I’m not made for that brand of 3D, which had me seeing double every now and then. Maybe I’m not made to watch 3D for two and a half hours. Who knows?
Spoilery thoughts after the break.
Dear Skynet,
When you created your incredibly evil human-slaughtering 2-wheeled Termicycles, why in the name of Steve McQueen did you give them handlebar grips, shift levers, brake levers, and the rest of the control systems that would allow a human being to ride them?
Just askin’. Cause, y’know, you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you’d left off even one of those many components. I mean, if you wanted to.
Love,
-ssr
