Avatar: The Death of Narrative

On the basis that most people like to be kissed before they’re screwed, let me start by saying a few nice things about Avatar, this winter’s blockbuster movie and already the highest-grossing film in cinema history. (I thought Pink Flamingos was pretty gross but apparently this one takes the biscuit). Is it worth seeing? Absolutely. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Would I recommend it? Yes. Decent acting? Good enough. Amazing special effects? You betcha. Gripping story? Er… No. Time to assume the position, Mr Cameron. You see, Avatar is to storytelling what Jive Bunny was to rock-and-roll. It is the death-knell of an era, the triumph of plagiarism, the total abdication of original thought.

Before I go any further, I need to make a brief distinction between plot and narrative. Plot is the whole, narrative the vehicle that carries it. It’s the same distinction that exists between ‘story’ and ‘storytelling’. At least, that’s the definition I’m using today.

The Inspiration

James Cameron, you see, has had the decency to acknowledge his plot’s debt to Dances With Wolves. And I can live with that. If you can’t come up with an original story of your own then you might as well borrow someone else’s. So once Avatar’s baffling, clunky, and unnecessarily-complicated first twenty minutes are out of the way, you can sit back and confidently predict exactly what is going to happen next. On a scene-by-scene, shot-by-shot basis. Which is, I suppose, entertainment of sorts.

Harsh? Maybe. After all, it’s getting incrementally hard to be original these days. And, if you believe Christopher Booker, there are only seven stories in the world anyway. As a thriller writer, I’m constantly having to abandon seemingly good ideas when my research reveals that someone else has had them before me.

Last year, I wrote a synopsis for a story about a criminal who receives an unexpected pardon from a prison governor, only to find that he is the quarry in an organised manhunt, run by the governor and his rich buddies. Great idea? I thought so too. Right up to the point when my research led me to a film by Ernest Dickerson called Surviving The Game, itself based on a short story by Richard Connell. (The target in the film is a vagrant rather than an ex-con but, otherwise, the conceit is the same). Having never of heard of either, I suppose I could have protested my innocence and continued – but that was hardly going to wash with the rest of the industry.

So into the bin it went, and I moved on.

It happens all the time. But not, apparently, in Hollywood, where remakes – like cover versions in music – are an acceptable part of the diet. Some, of course, can be highly successful. I enjoyed the second Thomas Crown Affair enough never to have bothered with the original. Similarly, I imagine that there is an entire generation of cinema-goers, who have never heard of Dances With Wolves, let alone seen it. So, no, the fact that Cameron has remade a perfectly good Oscar-winning movie doesn’t bother me. No, what irks me, what makes me want to grind my teeth to dust is the laziness, the apathy, the sheer bloody…lassitude of the narrative.

Rather like Jive Bunny remixing Great Balls of Fire with The Twist, Cameron has pilfered the defining images from a number of blockbuster movies and badged them as his own, telling his story through a collage of other people’s work.

The stampeding dinosaurs are straight out of Jurassic Park. The toruk pouring down the mountains are cringingly reminiscent of Gandalf liberating Helms Deep in The Two Towers. (And if the sight of Jake Sully on Toruk Makto doesn’t remind you of a Nazgul riding its fell beast then you clearly haven’t seen the Rings trilogy). Colonel Quaritch’s robot has stepped off the set of Transformers, while the semi-naked Neytiri is a not-too-distant cousin of Mystique from X-Men. Plugging in and out of a parallel world? I give you The Matrix. Hero under pressure in the jungle? Easy: jump over a waterfall.  It worked in Apocalypto, The Last of the Mohicans, and Tomb Raider. It worked in Predator. It even worked in George of the Jungle for crying out loud. I could go on. Avatar, you see, is the ultimate ‘me-too’ movie. It’s a big blue mash-up.

Why? What the hell was Cameron thinking?

It’s time to talk about Unobtanium. Just as this elusive mineral holds the key to the invasion of Pandora, so it holds the key to Cameron’s plagiarism. Unobtanium. A little joke, perhaps? I don’t think so. (If it is, it’s very little). No, I think it’s a concession. A confession, even. A white flag admitting to the audience that the writer’s pen is flaccid to the point of impotence. “Look, guys: screw the storytelling. I couldn’t be bothered with it so I just borrowed a bunch of stuff you’ve seen before. There’s a cowboy who turns in’jun because a bunch of greedy Yanks are tearing the place apart to find some sort of hard-to-get mineral. That’s all you need to know. What’s that? What’s the mineral called? The hell should I know what it’s called! Unobtanium, for all I care. What it’s called doesn’t matter. Christ! You haven’t come here for the story, have you? This isn’t a goddamn book, you know. Now shuddup and concentrate on my special effects. Look! A plant that behaves exactly the same as coral. Cooooool, huh?”

Storytelling. It’s just as important as the story itself. Especially in a remake, where you know what’s going to happen. And it deserves better than to be tossed aside with such contempt in the biggest movie of all time.

Good. I’m glad we’ve cleared that up. And yes, I know what you’re thinking. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But, sod it. If you’re reading this, James Cameron, then pick up the phone, bud. I wanna write your next script.

Patrick Woodrow

Patrick Woodrow

writer and author of

Double Cross and First Contact

This reveiw first appeared on

Patrick Woodrow’s website as his January blog post, also find so much more from him.

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