Oscars 2010: The Hurt Locker vs Avatar

The internet buzz on Avatar ultimately had it right – bad story, impressive visuals – and athough the naysayers figured that its faults would turn it into a box office turkey, obviously this wasn’t the case. It’s even nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, going head to head with a film that it could barely be more different from – The Hurt Locker. Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq drama seeks to presents things as they are for a bomb disposal team, and, despite starting out with a
 feeling not a million miles from an episode of Star Trek (is Guy Pearce playing the man in the red top or not?), goes on to be just that. It’s utterly gripping. There’s no good and bad, there’s just is, lashed together into a taut narrative based on embedded reporting, punctuated by flashes of kinetic cinematics that remind you it’s not a documentary. It’s only taken $16 million, presumably not including DVD sales off the back of the Oscar buzz – but then it cost 11.

Avatar has taken $2 billion and counting, on a budget of $237 million. It’s putting Fox way in profit, and re-draws what were narrowing lines between the cinema and home viewing experience. The movie’s a fairground ride, an uninteractive video game on top of a B-story written either with a misguided social conscience or tech-hippie laziness. That’s not to say it doesn’t create a believable alternate world, but the visuals are the most persuasive part of that argument, not the writing.

What you end up with, though is a transformative piece of cinema, at least so far as the industry is concerned. This is where the cash is at, folks – this is the future of blockbusters. The worth of the Hurt Locker is more social. There are other Iraq war dramas – Redacted, which Bigelow’s film makes look cheesy (which it isn’t) springs to mind – indeed, there are other and better war films, but were you to choose worth over commercialism, The Hurt Locker would seem to be king. (Or would it?)

The almost-story behind those Avatar and Hurt Locker nods

It’ll be a big shock if either Avatar or The Hurt Locker don’t take this year’s Best Picture Oscar, but what’s almost an interesting story is that their directors used to be married. James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow were legally bound from 1989 to 1991. So it’s almost interesting to speculate on what they might think about going head-to-head – except that they’re not married anymore, and haven’t been for nearly 20 years. So it’s more a bit of trivia that you probably wish you didn’t know. Annoying, isn’t it? The trivia equivalent of an earworm. Ah well.