One Year Later - A reaction to James Cameron's Avatar

I didn't find myself blown away.


James Cameron let me down by not giving me a new story but instead rehashing an old, tired, warn out story. Stop me If you've heard this one. Military man is sent to make peace with the natives. It works too well and he becomes integrated with the populous. The military machine then is angered when he changes sides and tries to kill them any way. The natives are beaten back until they won't be beaten no more and rise up and scare away the machines. Ferngully. Pocahontas. Dances With Wolves. Smurfs. It's not like the comparisons don't hold up well. I can point that they are all about the white man falling in with the non-traditional natives as well. Now the biggest argument I've gotten is that maybe this generation needs that message. I argue that anyone old enough to know a message when they see one and willing to make a difference because of it, will be old enough to remember at least one of those movies, if not all of them and that this argument isn't valid. I don't want to go into any more specific plot points of this movie, mainly because it hurts my head to remember something I didn't like, but also because the movie was never special enough for me to care. which leads me to my next points...

Characterization. This movie really doesn't have much. Aside from Jake Sully, no seems to be able to remember any characters names. Now Jake does grow and follow a very traditional heroes journey growth structure. And his two human partners follow similar ones as well. while not ideal, it is still better than they have a predictable arc than no arc at all. But let us look at the rest of the characters. They all remain static. The Na'vi all learn that with a tiny number of exceptions, Man can not be trusted. The humans running the military and the corporation still think they are better and that the Na'vi are just savages. Other than those three, no one in this movie has any change. This movie spends two and a half hours trying to grow three characters who complete their change about half way through the movie. All the movie has is plot. That isn't to say that can't be done, just that it's boring. The movie is also a little insensitive in basically saying that unless you can download yourself into a new body, if you are in a wheelchair you aren't fit to do anything heroic. I was really excited about a movie with a disabled protagonist(which this fact was downplayed in the trailers) and was also an action movie. I had hope. But ultimately the movie leaves the potential for commentary about how disabled people are just as effective as non-disabled are but the movie instead was bored with what ti had and just existed.

The acting. Everyone in this movie seems to be bored. None of the acting(except the crazy archetype military leader) have much emotion or reaction. The actors don't seem very invested in their roles and this might be partially do to all of the green screen effects that they had nothing to work with. The acting isn't bad, like most of this movie, it just isn't good either. And the one military leader that isn't bored is chewing scenery and being hammy. I will give props to Sam Worthington becuase I found his turn of being downtrodden and being excited to be good, I just wasn't entirely convinced. Also Giovani ribsi may have been playing an archetype, but he played it up to par and I would like to see more of him as subtle, slimy, greasy villain types.



The graphics look phenomenal, TODAY. Five years down the line, ten? This film will act much like Jurassic Park did and less like The Matrix and Star Wars because the story doesn't hold up. His landscapes,his aliens all look great. The machines look fake(which is surprising) and that's unacceptable because you have created the entire environment. The one good thing I can say about the haphazard effects of the Star Wars prequels is that all of their effects, despite X different teams building it, all look seamless. I believe that all of the CGI comes from the same place. Here, when I look at the quality of the world and the quality of the Na'vi and then compare them to the gunships and the Mech I am simply not impressed and can easily tell they are different. And moreso, once I see this in full 1080i I expect the difference to become even more apparent. So everything that this movie hypes, I.E. graphics are the entire reason this movie exists. Why couldn't they just do R&D to create this technology and then apply it to movies that would actually have some merit to them?

Directing? It's James Cameron. He knows what he's doing.

Ultimately, the movie is a decent scifi film, pretty mediocre though, and I suggest District 9 much more. C-

a note: I went into the movie excited and ready to love it, and I'll admit that when I first watched it I was taken into the movie and just experienced as a good experience. But after a day of thought it slowly fell more and more apart until I realized I was reacting the same way I did to another flawed movie, Jurassic Park. The difference? Jurassic Park is fun on subsequent viewings. Avatar was not.