AVATAR is the most brilliant, 3-dimensional, mind-blowing film unlike anything you've ever seen wrapped around the most banal, 1-dimensional, blow-your-brains-out film you've seen a dozen times before.
So stunning are the already-legendary visuals that it's impossible to give this film a bad rating. Only an idiot would fail to recognize that director James Cameron's work here literally changes the game, and that is no understatement. I am in my 30s. I was 5 when "Star Wars" came out, so I was too young to know that this is what it must have felt like to see a whole new world, down to new plant life and language.
But then there's the script, a Frankenstein-like patchwork of well-used Hollywood action, Western and war cliches mixed with often-bad dialogue and the most heavy-handed helping of liberally political, anti-war finger-waving I've seen in a long time. AVATAR makes "The Hurt Locker" look as though it was directed by George W. Bush. Which is funny, because its director, Kathryn Bigelow, and Cameron were once married. I don't know what her politics are, but these two movies make them the James Carville and Mary Matalin of the film world.
Even if you haven't seen the film by now, you have probably heard that it's the story of a band of Americans who come to occupy a planet called Pandora. If the symbolism of the planet's name isn't strong enough, Cameron has them looking for a substance called "unobtanium." Hmm...when you open Pandora's box looking for something un-obtainable, there's bound to be trouble, right? See, you get it.
The audience is never let on as to exactly what unobtanium will do for the Americans, other than being told that it is a valuable energy resource. Cameron loads his space ships with dueling factions: the military personnel who will take a by-force approach to occupation (aka the Republicans?) and a team of scientists led by the always fantastic Sigourney Weaver who have come to understand the indiginous people of the planet, the Na'vi, and stress the need for understanding and peaceful cooperation with them (aka the Democrats). The third party - though one more closely alligned with the former than the latter - are the corporate hacks, represented by a comically-smug Giovanni Ribisi, who is only interested in the bottom line, the dollar. Just get the stuff, because they want it and we'll profit. Though set over a century ahead of ours, the modern connections are easily apparent.
The scientists have been using Avatars to get to know the Na'vi people and, hopefully, to gain their trust. Since the air is poisonous to humans anyway, the scientists have created Na'vi bodies and activate them by having members of their team lay down in contraptions that look like a cross between an MRI machine and a coffin. (The Na'vi people, by the way, look like a cross between Jar Jar Binks and a Smurf at a "Cats" audition.) One perfect candidate for the Avatar team is marine Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington. (There has been a lot of critical flack about Worthington's performance, but I actually bought all of it and thought he did a great job.) Sully, after all, is paralyzed from the waist down and, in his Na'vi avatar body, can move freely - and then some.
While getting to know the Na'vi, Avatar-Sully must train to be one of their warriors and ends up falling in love with one of their women. I saw this movie before when it was called "Dances With Wolves." Hell, there's even a buffalo hunt-equivalency scene here where Sully is trained to select and tame a multi-winged, flying dinosaur-looking thing. By becoming one of them, Sully learns that this unobtanium will will be unobtainable because it sits beneath the main tree that this Na'vi tribe lives in. He is instructed to get them to move somewhere else, or else. Here, Cameron pours on the Native American-relocation subtext.
At this point, we're maybe an hour into a 2 hour and 40 minute movie, and yes, that is one of the film's problems (though I'd be lying if I told you that I ever got bored, tired or checked my watch...James had me at "I see you"). And since Cameron is a master at blowing shit up, the military personnel on the ship, led by a hilarious performance by Stephen Lang, who literally looks like a G.I. Joe action figure, all top-heavy with chiseled muscles. Lang's Colonel decides to go in and bulldoze the rainforest (that's what it looked like to me) and take it by force. The phrase "shock and awe" is actually used verbatim to make sure that audiences can see the comparison to Iraq/Afghanistan and oil.
It is also at this point that two things become clear. The first is that Sully's mission to learn the ways of the Na'vi was a complete red herring in the film, a construct created out of necessity to set up a love story because they were going to invade anyway. The second thing that becomes clear is that, from this point on, all military personnel will only speak in borrowed, macho, summer popcorn film-cliches for the duration of the film. You can almost FEEL Cameron throw the script out of the window at this point, or maybe this is where he simply stopped writing, content to let the actors spout off phrases like "I've got a gun too, bitch" ("Aliens") or "looks like diplomacy failed" (take that, W.!). You get the sense that Cameron had "I'll be back" in there somewhere as well but cashed in his last modicum of restraint to keep the too-familiar phrase out.
AVATAR, in the end, is about the Native Americans, about Vietnam, and about Iraq. It has a stronger environmental message than did "An Inconvenient Truth" (where was Cameron when Al Gore needed more than a powerpoint presentation to spice that one up?). But, again, I must be fair and come back to the visuals. They are groundbreaking, stunning and effective. Even when your brain tells you that you seem to be going from action sequence to action sequence and nothing is progressing in terms of story, you realize that you don't care, so long as it looks like this. And that's definitely how I felt.
In the end, I think only time can put AVATAR in its true perspective. Today, it is the most amazing film that has ever been made from a technical standpoint. I walked out of the theatre thinking: how can this film NOT be the Best Picture winner this year? What does any other film have or do that can even compete (not including the screenplay category, the one category that AVATAR hasn't a soldier's chance in Na'vi to win)? How does this film not manage to satisfy both the warmonger and the peacemaker, the action film buff and the romantic? It's got EVERYTHING!
And perhaps the biggest compliment that I can pay AVATAR is that it is, at this moment in time, officially the very first film I have seen that made the use of 3-D relevant and not a complete waste of my time. I agree with film critic Roger Ebert when he says that 3-D always seems to be saying: "hey, watch this! I'm in 3-D!" It's a gimmick. It takes you OUT of the film. Cameron is the first director to harnass it. He uses it to bring you in. He provides depth with it instead of using it to have actors stick stuff out toward the audience. What a novel concept. So integrated was the use of 3-D in AVATAR that the friend I went with commented after the film that he wasn't that impressed with the 3-D because he didn't really notice it. That's exactly what did impress me about it. I stand corrected (though I still left with the same headache that all 3-D movies give me).
I have to sum up my review of AVATAR by saying that I truly believe that once the technology on display here is seen as common-place, this movie is going to look spectacularly average because its limitations and cliches in the story and dialogue departments are going to stick out more. But until that day, and while there is no other movie in existence like it, it seems difficult not to say that AVATAR is amazing, and one of the few things out there worth driving to a movie theatre for to pay whatever they're charging these days.
3.0 out of 4
So stunning are the already-legendary visuals that it's impossible to give this film a bad rating. Only an idiot would fail to recognize that director James Cameron's work here literally changes the game, and that is no understatement. I am in my 30s. I was 5 when "Star Wars" came out, so I was too young to know that this is what it must have felt like to see a whole new world, down to new plant life and language.
But then there's the script, a Frankenstein-like patchwork of well-used Hollywood action, Western and war cliches mixed with often-bad dialogue and the most heavy-handed helping of liberally political, anti-war finger-waving I've seen in a long time. AVATAR makes "The Hurt Locker" look as though it was directed by George W. Bush. Which is funny, because its director, Kathryn Bigelow, and Cameron were once married. I don't know what her politics are, but these two movies make them the James Carville and Mary Matalin of the film world.
Even if you haven't seen the film by now, you have probably heard that it's the story of a band of Americans who come to occupy a planet called Pandora. If the symbolism of the planet's name isn't strong enough, Cameron has them looking for a substance called "unobtanium." Hmm...when you open Pandora's box looking for something un-obtainable, there's bound to be trouble, right? See, you get it.
The audience is never let on as to exactly what unobtanium will do for the Americans, other than being told that it is a valuable energy resource. Cameron loads his space ships with dueling factions: the military personnel who will take a by-force approach to occupation (aka the Republicans?) and a team of scientists led by the always fantastic Sigourney Weaver who have come to understand the indiginous people of the planet, the Na'vi, and stress the need for understanding and peaceful cooperation with them (aka the Democrats). The third party - though one more closely alligned with the former than the latter - are the corporate hacks, represented by a comically-smug Giovanni Ribisi, who is only interested in the bottom line, the dollar. Just get the stuff, because they want it and we'll profit. Though set over a century ahead of ours, the modern connections are easily apparent.
The scientists have been using Avatars to get to know the Na'vi people and, hopefully, to gain their trust. Since the air is poisonous to humans anyway, the scientists have created Na'vi bodies and activate them by having members of their team lay down in contraptions that look like a cross between an MRI machine and a coffin. (The Na'vi people, by the way, look like a cross between Jar Jar Binks and a Smurf at a "Cats" audition.) One perfect candidate for the Avatar team is marine Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington. (There has been a lot of critical flack about Worthington's performance, but I actually bought all of it and thought he did a great job.) Sully, after all, is paralyzed from the waist down and, in his Na'vi avatar body, can move freely - and then some.
While getting to know the Na'vi, Avatar-Sully must train to be one of their warriors and ends up falling in love with one of their women. I saw this movie before when it was called "Dances With Wolves." Hell, there's even a buffalo hunt-equivalency scene here where Sully is trained to select and tame a multi-winged, flying dinosaur-looking thing. By becoming one of them, Sully learns that this unobtanium will will be unobtainable because it sits beneath the main tree that this Na'vi tribe lives in. He is instructed to get them to move somewhere else, or else. Here, Cameron pours on the Native American-relocation subtext.
At this point, we're maybe an hour into a 2 hour and 40 minute movie, and yes, that is one of the film's problems (though I'd be lying if I told you that I ever got bored, tired or checked my watch...James had me at "I see you"). And since Cameron is a master at blowing shit up, the military personnel on the ship, led by a hilarious performance by Stephen Lang, who literally looks like a G.I. Joe action figure, all top-heavy with chiseled muscles. Lang's Colonel decides to go in and bulldoze the rainforest (that's what it looked like to me) and take it by force. The phrase "shock and awe" is actually used verbatim to make sure that audiences can see the comparison to Iraq/Afghanistan and oil.
It is also at this point that two things become clear. The first is that Sully's mission to learn the ways of the Na'vi was a complete red herring in the film, a construct created out of necessity to set up a love story because they were going to invade anyway. The second thing that becomes clear is that, from this point on, all military personnel will only speak in borrowed, macho, summer popcorn film-cliches for the duration of the film. You can almost FEEL Cameron throw the script out of the window at this point, or maybe this is where he simply stopped writing, content to let the actors spout off phrases like "I've got a gun too, bitch" ("Aliens") or "looks like diplomacy failed" (take that, W.!). You get the sense that Cameron had "I'll be back" in there somewhere as well but cashed in his last modicum of restraint to keep the too-familiar phrase out.
AVATAR, in the end, is about the Native Americans, about Vietnam, and about Iraq. It has a stronger environmental message than did "An Inconvenient Truth" (where was Cameron when Al Gore needed more than a powerpoint presentation to spice that one up?). But, again, I must be fair and come back to the visuals. They are groundbreaking, stunning and effective. Even when your brain tells you that you seem to be going from action sequence to action sequence and nothing is progressing in terms of story, you realize that you don't care, so long as it looks like this. And that's definitely how I felt.
In the end, I think only time can put AVATAR in its true perspective. Today, it is the most amazing film that has ever been made from a technical standpoint. I walked out of the theatre thinking: how can this film NOT be the Best Picture winner this year? What does any other film have or do that can even compete (not including the screenplay category, the one category that AVATAR hasn't a soldier's chance in Na'vi to win)? How does this film not manage to satisfy both the warmonger and the peacemaker, the action film buff and the romantic? It's got EVERYTHING!
And perhaps the biggest compliment that I can pay AVATAR is that it is, at this moment in time, officially the very first film I have seen that made the use of 3-D relevant and not a complete waste of my time. I agree with film critic Roger Ebert when he says that 3-D always seems to be saying: "hey, watch this! I'm in 3-D!" It's a gimmick. It takes you OUT of the film. Cameron is the first director to harnass it. He uses it to bring you in. He provides depth with it instead of using it to have actors stick stuff out toward the audience. What a novel concept. So integrated was the use of 3-D in AVATAR that the friend I went with commented after the film that he wasn't that impressed with the 3-D because he didn't really notice it. That's exactly what did impress me about it. I stand corrected (though I still left with the same headache that all 3-D movies give me).
I have to sum up my review of AVATAR by saying that I truly believe that once the technology on display here is seen as common-place, this movie is going to look spectacularly average because its limitations and cliches in the story and dialogue departments are going to stick out more. But until that day, and while there is no other movie in existence like it, it seems difficult not to say that AVATAR is amazing, and one of the few things out there worth driving to a movie theatre for to pay whatever they're charging these days.
3.0 out of 4
I liked it. But, its Fern Gully with people...am I wrong?
ReplyDeleteand thanks James Horner for taking the theme you did for Titanic, changing 2 chords, and calling it the theme for Avatar.