This week I watched two science fiction films and got me thinking
It
started with the sequel to Avatar, which I got curious about because
the original film was a cultural phenomenon that led to a brief flurry
of 3D movies.
I liked the experience of 3D, possibly because it
made me sentimental about the time I saw Creature From The Black Lagoon
as a small child.
3D worked well with the alien landscape of the
Avatar movies and there were films like Life Of Pi that I regretted not
seeing in the cinema to enjoy the effect.
However, it always
seemed like the 3D novelty wasn't going to last and I was aghast that
the local Roxy Theatre in Leeton spent tens of thousands of dollars
investing in it.
Cinemas had largely abandoned the format by the
time the sequel to Avatar arrived and I'm curious whether there will be
any 3D screenings of the third film in the series.
One thing I
liked about the original Avatar story was the way it contained elements
of Metropolis, particularly the use of a robot to infiltrate resistance
to capitalist industry.
The titular avatars are attempting to
support mining on the alien planet and the sequel takes the colonial
narrative into the sea, where it presents a version of the whaling
industry.
It's kinda grim, given how whaling persists today, but the audience gets to cheer the big fish smashing boats.
The next film I watched was Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which is a Luc Besson film I had missed.
He's a director who would probably have been cancelled for various reasons if he was American.
There's
a curiousity about the themes in his work for me, since I first
reviewed Leon The Professional and thought the relationship between that
character and a girl was also unlike the material from Hollywood.
Valerian
is a natural successor to the successful film The Fifth Element, which
again has a big age gap between the central characters, and in many ways
I thought the recent film was more polished and better paced.
As I reflected on the two films I watched this week I found myself admiring the sci-fi elements from Valerian over those in the Avatar sequel.
Besson's
film had so many more wow moments, where I'd shake my head at the
imaginative twists, and it was surprising to see Herbie Hancock in there
too.
Afterwards I read Wikipedia to see what I could learn and was surprised to read
the French director had been influenced by the first Avatar film:
Then I read an interview with Besson where he criticised Hollywood movies for being too dark.
It prompted me to reflect on how much angst appears in American stories, and I appreciated the fun I'd had watching Valerian.
France has a great reputation for film and sometimes
I find myself wishing that Australia had stronger quotas for local
content, because our film industry has diminished in recent years as US
productions gain tax-breaks to produce their blockbusters in our
country.
There are many qualities of our local stories that I wished could be represented in more movies.
Another
film I watched this week was Two Hands, which was called an Australian
version of Goodfellas but really deserves to be recognised without that
US lens.
