[IMG:L] Welcome to Counterpoint with Cargill. Each week, we’ll take a look at a popular topic making its way around the movie blogosphere and explore some different viewpoints. Let’s get started!
There is obviously no bigger story in the film world right now than Avatar. After a huge opening weekend that might have (depending on which estimate you believe) recouped most of its budget and set the film on track to be one of the highest grossing of all time, every aspect of Avatar is being discussed and debated online. And no one is more acutely aware of that fact than my friend Devin Faraci over at CHUD. Devin painted a target on his back this weekend by harshly reviewing the film in the face of overwhelmingly positive reviews (84% on Rotten Tomatoes, an 8.9 out of 10 on IMDB after 35,000 votes, and a Cinemascore of an A) with his brutal opening salvo “The game is not changed.” Now by “harshly” I mean to say that he gave it a rough 6.5 out of 10. That’s good-but-not-great territory.
But try telling that to the Avatar lovers. He’s been deluged with hate mail, bitter comments and God knows what else. And I’ve been there. We all have. Every once in a while one of us finds some flaw with something almost universally praised and we, as critics, you know…criticize it. My Achilles Heel is Coen brothers-directed movies. I don’t hate the Coens; I just don’t like all of their films – something of a cinematic hate crime to Coen brothers fans. And while I often end up simply dissatisfied with their films, after a while a weird thing happens – something I like to call “The Titanic Effect.”
Titanic was a good movie. No, really. If you want to argue, I dare you to go back and watch it. Sure, it has its problems, but it was good. Unfortunately for those of us who recognized those problems, the film was regarded as a modern masterpiece. It won 11 Academy Awards and smashed worldwide box office records, netting a since unthreatened $1.8 billion in theatrical distribution alone. And as everyone began to scream about how it was the second coming of film, cinephiles began to complain about DiCaprio’s stiff acting, Jack’s near stalker-like sense of romance and the film’s final moments in which Rose returns to an afterlife with her boyfriend of three days rather than her husband of 70 years.
And as people began to shout them down, they began to hate the film more and more. Titanic ceased to be a really good but somewhat flawed movie and began to become crap, refuse, a cinematic trough from which the cattle of mediocrity fed again and again. Now try bringing up Titanic in a conversation with critics, film students or alpha moviegoers of any kind and listen to the moans, wails and bile spat in its direction.
The Titanic Effect: a wave of negativity washing over a film not as a result of the film itself, but in response to seemingly undeserved or unwarranted overwhelmingly positive critical response. Something about the combination of bitterness of the seemingly slavish adoration of a flawed work coupled with the increasingly better-researched and reinforced arguments creates a divide that pushes both sides further and further away from one another. Rather than finding common ground, they become opposing forces and repel until their opinions no longer resemble their initial response to the work.
This has happened a few times in the past decade, most recently with Peter Jackson’s King Kong. I’m beginning to get the feeling that Avatar might be headed down that road. When someone has to write an almost immediate response to his review’s reviews…well, something weird is happening. It will be interesting to see how the critical community, as well as the film community as a whole, shakes out over this.
Check out last week’s Counterpoint with Cargill
