Why I Will Not Watch Avatar
Monday is movies. Today is about Avatar. Kinda. Just need to clear something up...
I will not watch Avatar. And I will not skip it and just watch Avatar: The Way of Water. Nor will I hold out for 2027’s Avatar: The World’s Longest and Most Expensive Screensaver So There!
I say this as someone with a Letterboxd page detailing the 8200+ movies I’ve seen (memory fades, so there’s a thousand or so lost to time, no doubt).
I say this as someone who is currently watching Someone’s Knocking At The Door. A movie released the same year as the original Avatar, but maybe you never saw it, or heard about it? In its opening scene a waster shoots up while watching a stag film, then opens the door to a nude woman who transforms into a grotesque male demon mid-shag, and starts sodomising him with a comically large penis.
I say this as someone who, yesterday, watched the 1978 “Video Nasty”, The Toolbox Murders. Which is rapey and pervy and horrible, but if you can see past that – and I can! – it’s a rather wonderful, lean, efficient proto-slasher.
I say this as someone who watches every waste-of-time short film that appears on Disney; as someone who owns Bully and Gummo and Brown Bunny and Trash Humpers and Shakes The Clown on DVD. Someone who has been to The Room on the big screen twice within just a few months and watched it several times at home. Someone who collects novelisations of films, that’s where a hack-writer churns-to-order a cheap, quick, cash-in “novel” version based on a movie script. (I’ve even got one which is a novelised take on the 90s film version of Dracula, which is itself based on the original novel). I’ve got novelisations of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Saturday Night Fever (again, the original film was based – very loosely – on a feature article, so who you gonna turn that into a novel?)
I say all of this as someone who has lost count of the number of times I have watched The Toxic Avenger – but once found a dodgy stream of an audience-taped upload of The Musical Version of….The Toxic Avenger. And watched the absolute shit out of it!
I say this as a person who once went to five films in a single day. (It was the film festival, but still. I had to leave one 10 minutes before the end, and later rent it on DVD to catch it up, so I could rip across the road and get into another movie).
I say this as someone who recently dropped a surprising truth-bomb to my wife that, actually, as much as I love music – and am somewhat known for being a music obsessive – I love movies more. Way more. Far more. If I had to choose movies over music I’d choose movies. No question.
I am someone who, after all, recently sold about 7/8s of a thousands-deep vinyl collection, and basically kept only the movie scores. On top of that, I started buying CDs again (in 2021, years after ditching my entire collection) but I only buy movie scores and soundtracks.
I am also someone that started a DVD collection in 2022!
I am someone that worked in a video store, back when DVDs were still very brand new, and I took home a new preview tape (or two) every single day, and watched the entire concert/documentary section of the store in a little over two months.
I read scripts of movies I haven’t seen. I have soundtracks of movies I’ve yet to watch. I used to sneak into my mate’s film-class lectures, attending more of those than most of the ones for classes I was actually enrolled in.
If a film is available, I will watch it. When a film gets released, I watch it or make a note to get to it. I write down ideas for movie sequels that haven’t happened but should happen. Who else out there thinks it’s a brilliant idea to see where the Juliette Lewis character (Kate Fuller) from From Dusk Till Dawn has ended up, and where she’s at 30 years on? She could be played, of course (and brilliantly), by Juliette Lewis.
I say all of this as someone who went to Pulp Fiction six times on the big screen when it was released, including three days in a row, same theatre, same screening time.
I say all of this, and I’m really just scratching the surface.
Visitor Q is my Love Actually.
Dear Zachary is The Notebook, in my world…
I watched every single Saw film in a two week stretch. Unlike everything else I’ve said here, I’m not proud of that. But it still happened. And recently too, just last year in fact.
I say all of this as someone whose favourite Christmas movie is Silent Night, Deadly Night.
And yet, I will not watch Avatar, nor Avatar: The Way of Water.
Because, quite simply, one must have standards.
The Smurfs had a better plot than Avatar. And a better villain. And better blue people