JustinGibbs.org

It seems I wasn’t the only one to visit the theaters over the Christmas break. A science fiction fan I had to catch Avatar. It was entertaining but as everyone says, the plot and story fail in many ways. What was interesting was seeing how Cameron was able to cover up those holes and still give audiences an entertaining experience. I utterly hatted Titanic, but Cameron is able to pull from basic story structure, dramatic techniques to pull us in. He did it with Titanic and again with Avatar.

To see how much of an art this is, just compare Avatar to the other film I saw over the break, Sherlock Holmes. I can’t fault them for trying to make Sherlock Holmes an action star, but I can fault them for their utter lack of character development. The movie starts out more like a sequel, as if we’ve already been introduced to these characters. Even if you’ve read the books, the movie should still get me to empathises with these characters. Guy Ritchie seems more happy to play with the unnecessary fighting scenes than trying to build empathy. He did have his work cut out for him though, the great part of a Holmes novel was the explanation at the end, but in a movie that is too late. But Guy Ritchie didn’t even make an attempt at making up for that when he crafted one of the weakest and laughable villains I’ve seen in recent memory.