Now here is where I sign my death warrant and destroy any credibility I may have established for myself in the past. I was underwhelmed. I politely ask that you put your torches and pitchforks down temporarily while I try to justify my idiotic statement. Let me begin by saying that this film is one that should be seen. This film has, without a doubt the greatest visual effects in cinema history, and the 3-D just adds another level of epicness, putting you right into the world of Pandora. James Cameron knows how to make action (after all, this is the 3rd time that he has made the most expensive movie ever made). However, there is a far longer list of things that Mr. Cameron does not know how to make. The first thing that comes to mind is story.
We open to space, the final frontier, where Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has just arrived at Pandora, to continue a mission that his twin brother was involved in before he was killed. In a narration more irritating than Bella’s from Twilight, he tells audience (who isn’t paying attention because the space ship looks sooooooo cool) that he is continuing his brother’s mission because as he says “because he wanted something worth fighting for” but the movie tells us “because we paid him a lot of money and he is just a pawn marine with the intellect of a flea”. From there, we get introduced to the planet of Pandora, again showing the amazing achievements of current special effects, and we also get an introduction to the story’s main villain, Miles Quaritich (Stephen Lang), who, when not lifting weights, or shooting guns, spits pure testosterone onto his enemies and then beats them to death with his brass balls. Continuing on our tour, we come across Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), a scientist who studies the planet, Dr. Max Patel (Dileep Rao), a scientist who…sciences? And Finally we come to Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), all the evil from corporations put into one man. He explains that the humans are on Pandora to gather a mineral called unobtainium, and the largest deposit is under the village of the Pandora natives called the Na’vi. So Jake is going to go on a mission to try and negotiate the na’vis’ relocation with their leader…wait, wait, wait. The humans are trying to obtain a mineral called unobtainium…ok, just had to ask again.
So this crack commando unit (without Mr. T) goes to the forest. Due to Jake’s idiocy, he gets separated from the team and is left to get killed by the cast of Ferngully. He eventually comes across a na’vi called Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). She takes him to the village and once again, due to Jake’s idiocy, he survives. Neytri’s father, the leader of the tribe, insists that Jake be taught the ways of the na’vi because he is a soldier, and dumb soldiers can be taught things, but smart scientists can’t (I’m paraphrasing, but yeah, that’s pretty much what he says). So then Jake Learns the ways of the na’vi and begins feeling bad about the whole, forcing them out of their home bit. (It was around this point that I realized that this was not Avatar: The Last Airbender).
My first complaint about this story is that it isn’t all that interesting. I walked into the theater pretty much knowing what would happen, and the story didn’t do I anything I didn’t expect. I knew what to expect, not only because it follows the routine movie formula, it is the plot of many other movies. In fact, let’s take a look.
1) Delgo: One group of people run out of resources on their planet and then invade another one. The natives are not too happy with this and then one man, stands against the group trying to prevent war on the people. He fails and war happens, but he is able to end the war with the help of the girl he falls in love with and they live happily ever after. Also they fly on dragon-like creatures that are essentially the same as banshees, live on a world with floating mountains and big-ass trees, and the natives look like off-color elves.
2) Pocahontas: Guy works for Big company, that is traveling to a foreign land so that they can mine for some mineral and get rich. Thing is, the natives seem to be standing in the way of their success. Guy meets natives and after spending time with them, he realizes that they are not savages, but people who just want to defend their homes. He also falls in love with the chieftain’s daughter and together, they solve the conflict.
Dances with Wolves: A man who used to fight for those who fought for power, comes across the natives of the land, and is kind enough that he is accepted into their tribe. He realizes that the natives are hurt by those he previously held allegiance to, and tries to help the natives. He also falls in love with the chieftain’s daughter and together, they solve the conflict.
4 Ferngully: A group of spiritual people who live in the forest are under attack from industry and big business that is destroying their land. One ignorant human stumbles into their colony, and eventually learns how what he has been doing has been destroying theses people’s lives. He also falls in love with the chieftain’s daughter and together, they resolve the conflict.
5 Braveheart: A group of people are attacked by a larger more powerful force, that feels that they are superior to the others. This group doesn’t surrender, and despite the fact that they are outnumbered, and don’t have the weapons that their enemies do, they fight against them because the enemy may take their lives, but they can never take their freedom. Also, the main character falls in love with the daughter of a king. (This movie apparently hates the gays too.)
6) The Last Samurai: Guy fights for people with technology on his side. He gets captured by another group who’s ways seem odd to him, but he learns to respect them and eventually sides with them to defeat the people he originally fought for. Oh, wait, no love interest.
7) Star Wars: Return of the Jedi: Big bad large powerful group wants to take over, but some humans understand that its wrong. They side with ill-equipped seemingly savage beings who inexplicably are able to overcome the technologically superior. Also the main character falls in love with the daughter of a queen and together, they resolve the conflict.
8) An Inconvenient Truth: Mankind’s greedy nature, and their need to increase industry and technology will lead to the destruction of the environment, unless someone, who has experienced mankind’s need to expand, puts a stop to it. Also the main character falls in love with the daughter of the queen and together, they resolve the conflict.
9 Terminator series: This shouldn’t count since its Cameron’s own work, but still. Greedy company obsessed with advancing technology and gaining recourses and such. Leads to war between man and machine.
Now Avatar has made over 1 billion dollars and has received critical praise. Delgo was one of the top financial disasters in cinema and its critical reception was on par with Batman and Robin. It seems like they have the same boring contrived story (except it works in Last Samurai and Star Wars). Could it be that the fact that this film just had better writing and better visual effects.
Oh the writing!...oh. the writing. Let me first say that James Cameron is an accomplished writer in the action and comedy genres. Hearing Arnold’s one-liners is more angelic than the voice of Neytiri- I mean Pocahontas. Regardless, Cameron’s writing is a bit stale in the dramatic movies. Some of the writing is just not believable, mostly the entire romantic subplot between Jake and Neytiri. And Jake’s narration becomes very irritating through the 3 hours. But the worst writing comes from Cameron’s strange perception of nature and spirituality. The na’vi’s ideas of the planet and their god, and their specials bonds, and their trees makes less than no sense. The spiritual side makes Jehovah witnesses sound like brilliant scholars. The nature side sounds like an en even more nonsensical version of Transcendentalism. Cameron at least takes the story seriously unlike many of the bigger-budget movies this year (Transformers 2, 2012), but the writing still lacks a lot of the energy in many action movies. In other words, watching Michelle Rodriguez fire on a ship and say “opps” doesn’t have half of the entertainment value of Arnold shooting a missile with a terrorist on it while saying “You’re Fired!” It doesn’t go for the catchphrase, but for epic lines instead (which is fair considering how this movie seems to take itself more seriously than “Precious”), but the issue is that the writers fail to capture the epicness. Some of the monologues sound as simple and irritating as the morals learned at the end of an episode of Hey Arnold (Not to disrespect Hey Arnold, but epic was not their strong point). The simple dialogue just detracts from the scene and makes it sound very normal rather than what someone might hear in the final battle for an entire planet in the future. Its like talking modern-day slang in a movie in medieval England.
(Immediately after typing this sentence, Ian realized that horrid memory of years ago when he viewed “The Black Knight”, a movie which committed the very sin Ian described. After a long struggle in court, Ian was found “not-guilty” of attempted murder of Martin Lawrence. He then returned to his home computer and wrote about the characters of the film “Avatar”)
No matter how immersed you be in the planet of Pandora, or how amazing the fight scenes look, you need to be compelled by the characters. If you don’t care about the rebels, then the Death Star fight in Star Wars seems pointless. My indifference towards the Ewoks makes Return of the Jedi my Least favorite of the Trilogy (coincidentally, Return was the one I compared to Avatar). The characters of Avatar are boring, some are ridiculous, and some have less appeal than Howard the Duck. Jake Sully is just some military man with the thought process of a Transformer 2 soldier. Neytiri is…kind? Or something? Quaritich is so overwhelmingly badass, there is a real scene in the film were he discusses why he keep the scar on his face while he lifts weights and then immediately after, steps into a death machine of awesome. It’s cool at first, but there is no real character, he is just evil for the sake of being evil and has no reason to passionately hate the na’vi since, as Jake says in those essential asides of his, all the military guys are just guns for hire. Grace and Norm (played by Joel Moore, star of such masterpieces as Grandma’s Boy and The Hottie & the Nottie) don’t do anything except for adding some exposition and telling the audience the nature of the planet. Apart from Jake, Neytiri, and Miles, none of the characters add anything useful to the story at all. The acting does not do much for its case. The motion-capture technology used definitely helps to show the actors performances, but the acting is as blank as a CGI face, so it is not a massive achievement.
This movie was also three hours. That was unnecessary. It’s a simple plot. Hell several movies have the same plot and finish the story in under half the time. Some scenes go on forever just to give the audience a cock-punch at the end. Like one scene involves a na’vi ritual where they all huddle up, pray to their blue, fury god, and do some odd song and dance. They do this so that something will happen to the thing they are all praying around. The scene finishes, the ritual didn’t work, and everyone moves on. Presumably, the director’s cut will have the audience stare at CGI grass grow for the first hour. You may be saying to yourself “Now Ian, surely you jest. Perhaps some scenes may be unreasonable, but to suggest that genius filmmaker James Cameron would make us stare at nature for an hour is simply preposterous”. Well person I envision wearing a monocle with a large moustache, you are going to be unpleasantly surprised by the first act. After some painful dialogue used to establish the story, Cameron gives us around 20 pointless minutes of Pandora nature. We spend almost a full 2-minutes of Jake fucking with some plants and helicopter lizards (for clarification, touching the plants makes them emit a cartoon sound effect and then shrink faster than Rick Moranis in a 90’s comedy. And the lizards are small creatures who have helicopter blades on their back, causing then to fly away faster than Rick Moranis’ popularity after the 90’s). and for chewing up more of your precious time, I present to you 100 bad subplots. Do to these sidequests Jake embarks on, it takes about 2 hours because stuff finally blows up. For example, Jake needs to learn about the na’vi culture. I guess that means the audience needs to learn about it too. This means that we need to spend five minutes listening to Neytiri talk about how the bond between a na’vi and a banshee is like…magic or something and the bond is something you can see in their eyes. Then we get another scene of Jake wrestling a banshee, then one of Jake flying a banshee. Jake does not use this banshee at all in the final battle.
By the time we reach the film’s climax, I was bored out of my mind. The final battle was good, but nothing that changed the way I look at movies. The final battle scenes from Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and the series finale of Hey Arnold were considerably more epic mostly because I cared about the characters in the scene. But as far as special effects go, yeah, these are the best in any film.
This film has unquestionably changed cinema, though I would argue that it has changed it in a way that will lead to unhappiness. Studios now know what is sure to get them money. Special effects, 3-D, and futuristic. Story you ask? I don’t know, kids today haven’t seen Citizen Cane, right? Use the story, make it actiony somehow and make sure we can make it 3-D.
God help us all.
The hype for this movie was entirety, and in all other ways, inconceivable. The after effects are even more astounding. People are having what is being called post-Avatar-depression. Essentially, some people, after seeing Avatar, become depressed not because the film was bad, but because their lives are boring, consisting of nothing but sitting at the computer or writing dumb movie reviews, and are nothing near as cool as the film Avatar. People are taking this shit seriously! It even is getting protested by the LGBT (lesbian gay bisexual and transgender people) because quote “there are no homosexual characters in the film”. This example seems to capture the batshit insanity that is going on around this film. No film has had this big an impact on the masses, and I really feel left out. I saw this film, and I just couldn’t fathom how people are idolatrizing and curiously sexually aroused by this film. I used to be the guy who would chastise that rebellious jackass who claimed that
-Why should I care about Jake Sully or any other character?
-What are some examples of good writing in the movie?
-Why should I be interested in the story?
-(follow-up) Why should I be interested if I’ve seen the story and know what happens?
-Where are my pants?
-What makes this worth remembering at all?
-What makes the action scenes any better than a run-of-the-mill lightsaber battle or city siege.
-Why should the movie have been 3 hours?
-Where is Rick Moranis today?
-(follow-up) Anyone have his number? He seems like a cool dude.
-What makes Pandora more imaginable than Naboo?
-How do you not get pissed off with names like Pandora, and unobtainium?
-Just name something cool besides the CGI.
Now the CGI is amazing, and it deserves credit for that. And the movie at least has dignity, giving us actual people (though uninteresting) rather than things like 2012, where we got John Cusack giving one-liners throughout the apocalypse. This film is not bad, just unoriginal, somewhat stupid, a moral that is violently shoved down your throat, boring, and long. That sounds bad, but most of what I say sounds unpleasant. In actuality, this movie is going to change movies for the worse, and is far from one of the best movies of the year. But I say see it anyway. Unless your life is boring. Or you are a particularly hateful gay person.
Final Rating: 5.5/10
P.S. I didn’t even touch upon the weird hair tentacles. I’m quite proud of myself.
