Bitter and disillusioned, Jake Sully is still a warrior at heart,despite losing his legs serving in the Marines. All Jake ever wanted was something worth fighting for, and he finds it in the place he least expected: on a distant world. Jake has been recruited to join an expedition to the moon Pandora, which corporate interests are strip-mining for a mineral worth $20 million per kilogram on Earth. To facilitate their work, the humans use a link system that projects a person's consciousness into a hybrid of humans and Pandora's indigenous humanoids, the Na'vi. This human-Na'vi hybrid – a fully living, breathing body that resembles the Na'vi but possesses the individual human's thoughts, feelings and personality – is known as an "avatar."
Review - The Truth Behind the "Best Film of the Year"
In 1939, The Wizard of Oz was released, and forever changed film in its use of colors as opposed to black and white. Now, color is expected in every film like air is expected to be there when we wake up in the morning. For the last 15 years, it's been said that James Cameron's cinematic opus Avatar would be the next Wizard of Oz, in terms of its visual effects. And adding that the film will be made available for viewing in 3D, the hype definitely got around fast. Now, it's out in theaters. And once everyone sees it and the hype dies down, we will all see the movie for what it is: immersive, worth seeing, but no masterpiece.
Props must be given where they are due, and the alien world of Pandora is absolutely amazing. It's all in the details: every last plant, animal, and scrape of environment has had work put into it, and it's those details that engross you into the world. Avatar is no doubt a powerhouse of a sci-fi fantasy. Many have tried and think they have created a world on screen like Cameron, but only Cameron has.
Having an entirely CG character is usually a huge drawback to a movie. Cinematic embarrassments like Jar Jar Binks, Blarp and the vampires from I Am Legend are little more than stains on the underwear of visual effects. There are exceptions however - the CG that helped to create Gollum, Davy Jones and King Kong became tools that an actor could use to convey a character correctly. Zoe Saldana's performance in Avatar can be safely added to the latter list. All of the Na'vi body and facial expressions are perfectly portrayed, but Saldana's Netiri writes a new chapter in CG performance. When she's angry or agitated, they exactly capture her performance. She's amazingly expressive, and on a side-note, delivers the language of the Na'vi flawlessly.
If you can, see Avatar in 3D, it's the icing on the cake. When Na'vi climb and run through trees hundreds of feet in the air, you get a real sense of height. When Jake walks through the Pandora forest, every leaf, branch, and bit of dust and spit pops off the screen. And needless to say, the flying battle is really something (though not nearly as grand as Cameron made it out to be: "the best cinematic battle in decades"? Far from).
Avatar Story Recalls Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas
However, the fact is that once you remove the visual aspect of the film, you aren't left with much. Though the aliens look realistic, they are still aliens, and thus, are still fake. The lines are also not the greatest, writing wasn't the point of the movie. Not that the characters aren't well-developed, but rarely is it the dialogue that helps define their dimensions. Some of them don't even have the luxury of dimensions - walking cliches like Ribsi and Lang's characters are nothing you haven't seen before, but done better. Weaver is always good, but this just makes me miss her golden years because she too, isn't given a whole lot to do.
And as far as the overall plot goes, it's very been-here done-that. If you took Pocahantas, Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, etc, changed the setting and key characters names, it would be the exact same movie as Avatar. And that is probably the biggest disappointment. Some might say the story and the dialogue isn't the point of a movie like this. And they may well be right. But you would say the same thing about a big dumb, pointless, summer blockbuster action movie, which Cameron and Avatards will tell you, this isn't. So then why does it feel almost exactly the same? Having a weaker plot doesn't make it a complete film, anymore than weak visuals does. For example: IMAX was the preferred delivery for The Dark Knight, and it blew everyone away visually. However, it lost none of the power in the story and overall film outside of IMAX, even on a normal at-home television. It's still every bit as intoxicating as it was in the IMAX, because the writing is up to par with the visuals. The same can not be said of Avatar. When it eventually hits home televisions - outside of its preferred delivery - it will still be good, but not great. And certainly, not "the must-see holiday movie". It isn't even that now.
Still, Some Visuals Do Disappoint in Avatar
Ironically, the film exudes amounts of laziness in the visual department. That's a real problem, when your big selling point is visuals. Specifically, the mechs were disappointing. They looked like they were designed by a Saturday morning cartoon artist, who just went for the biggest cliche possible when you hear "big robot". In its simplicity came speed in the battlefield, but generally people think of a big lumbering robot anyway. Maybe they were trying to avoid THAT cliche, but didn't mind the human characters or the story falling victim to the same fate? Also, there was one time when Jake was talking to his rival Na'vi, and he responded not in the Na'vi language, but in Japanese. Some have even reported hearing Latin thrown in there here and there. Certainly, there are Latin and Japanese people out in the world watching this movie - Did Cameron think no one would notice? But the biggest insult in terms of showing overall laziness, is the recycled sound effects. Almost every time an alien roared and howled, you are called back to other great sci-fi/adventure films that you could be watching instead. One scene in particular involving Sulley being chased through a forest, you'll lost count how many times you hear the T-Rex roar and Velociraptor calls from Jurassic Park come out of the alien beast's maw. Most of the time they are tweaked a little so it's harder to notice, but then there are times when they don't even try. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal in a review, but because the film has built up so much hype for itself, everyone is falling in love with it, and so much attention to detail has been made elsewhere in the film, that calls attention to little details as well. The fact that it has been nominated for Best Sound Editing is insult to injury.
Final Thoughts: It's worth seeing, but only if you are willing to fork out the extra cash and go for the dorky looking 3D glasses. It's incredibly long, but not without high entertainment value. Just go in knowing as little as possible, and you'll be asthetically pleased.
Avatar is a 2 out of 5.
- Released December 18, 2009
- 20th Century Fox
- Written and directed by James Cameron
- Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, Peter Mensah, Wes Studi, Stephen Lang
- Rated PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking
Caleb Laulusa - I began writing video game reviews for an international website that sadly, went under before any of my work was published. I also found ...
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