2010 has been alright hasn’t it? Or has it? Rather than focus on the positive side of this year I cannot help but be a pessimist and ruin it for the rest of you by compiling a list of why 2010 has been shit.
Avatar
OK it’s the biggest film ever but because of that fact many are treating it as the best film ever (it’s not). From a technical perspective it is one of the most important films ever made and will be forever notes as one. Despite this it’s far from a perfect film or even a great one. A forgettable film has been made unforgettable thanks to the hyperbolic reaction it has received.
It’s really annoying to listen to someone banging on about how brilliant Avatar is and how they’ve seen nothing like it. We’ve all seen it, every last one of us and as a result it’s something we can talk about without being afraid of being put down with “you fucking mug, what you doing watching that gay thing”. Usually a sci-fi film would illicit this kind of reaction from the average un-geek man but not Avatar, it’s like it has diplomatic immunity. I know people who liked Avatar but would never see Star Trek in a million years because it is unrealistic! People like Avatar because other people like Avatar, or Coldplay syndrome as it‘s more commonly known.
It has had two cinema releases this year and two DVD releases with another due out next year, if you don’t like it you can’t escape it and while I quite enjoyed it at the cinema I’ve since gone on to hate it because no matter where you turn there is an advert for it. Two sequels have been announced already and I fear I will have to go through the pandemonium twice more.
The thing is, the film doesn’t warrant any of this, it’s just not very good. It is too long, the dialogue is atrocious, the acting is bad, and the plot is unoriginal. The special edition had an extra 8 minutes added, why? It was long enough already, don’t make it longer! In between the action scenes we are treated to a wonderfully dull dialogue, it’s truly awful and feels like they forgot all about it and wrote it an hour before they started filming though if that actually happened it may have came out better. It’s the script that makes the actors look bad but Michelle Rodriguez would look bad either way. All through the film there are echoes of Aliens and the plot rips off Pocahontas, Princess Mononoke, Dances with Wolves and even the Fast and the fucking Furious to an extent! The effects may look great but the actual film is something completely different and the Academy Awards should have really picked up on this before they nominated it for best picture.
Alan Wake
Alan who? Alan Wake was a game on the Xbox 360 this year that had received quite a lot of hype and while it got some very good reviews I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Excited that a game actually had a written story and even promoted that fact I expected something that I never got. Alan Wake and his wife go to a small town not to dissimilar to Twin Peaks, his wife goes missing, weird things happen, there’s twists and turns and in the end nothing is explained and it doesn’t make sense.
All throughout the game Mr A.Wake narrates as if it were a novel, the problem being it’s the most boring novel ever written, but still not as boring as Alan himself. Promoted as TV show-esque, the game fails to feel anything like a TV show, yes there are cliff hangers at the end of each level (I mean “episodes”) but there is no suspense created as you can immediately find out what happens next by simply pressing A. You spend most of your time walking or waking up in the middle of a dark forest in which you have lost your torch and gun (again), or you might talk to a few kooky yet inevitably dull “characters” and you’ll definitely fight the same enemies again and again throughout the entire game.
Alan Wake deserves criticism because while it looks like a good game, and for a while it makes you think that, it just isn’t fun to play and you’d be better off just watching a real TV show, speaking of which…
Lost
Six fucking years of my life! ARGH! Lost was brilliant, I will stand by that statement but I can’t escape the fact that it was also shit, I’ve never seen a show like it and probably never will again. It seemed so intricately planned, the writers declaring they had it all worked out well in advance, the discovery of the others, the hatch, the Dharma stations, Jacob, the other others, it was an unfolding mystery that asked more questions with each new answer, until we found out about Jacob that is.
From around season four it looked like Lost was getting silly but buoyed by Damon Lindelof’s earlier admission that it all tied together in the end I kept watching and by season six when it was really silly I was still watching with a devout faith that would make a catholic blush. Then came the episode “Across the sea” which is probably the worst episode in the entire six seasons, gone was my faith, it wasn’t an all mighty epiphany but a humble realisation that it wasn’t going to end the way I wanted it to and that the many questions asked weren’t going to be answered.
As I woke up extra early on a Monday morning to watch the finale it turned out I was right, it didn’t end well. Six fucking years of my life! ARGH! Initial confusion turned to eventual anger as I struggled to come to terms with the lame ending, I didn’t sleep for days and it was weeks before I showered, I ended up living as a savage in a nearby woods (might not be true). I have several hundred still unanswered questions and “oooo it’s all a bit mystical” just doesn’t count as an answer in my mind. That said the very final parting shot was near perfect and there were some very well written episodes, particularly the Desmond ones. But still, six fucking years of my life! ARGH!
To be continued…
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