Jake Sully arrives on Pandora to work as an avatar-driver, replacing his twin brother who was supposed to ship out but was killed just before departure. Sully is a paraplegic ex-marine who rapidly finds himself enjoying his life as an avatar, since it allows him to walk again. During a mission into the jungle, Sully becomes separated from the rest of his team and meets up with a local native tribe, who (after some initial culture clash misunderstandings) take him under their wing and train him in their ways. Whilst Sully gets to know the Na'vi better he finds himself being pumped for information of possibly military value by the colony's military commander, Colonel Quaritch, whilst Dr. Augustine uses his position to gain fresh scientific knowledge on the Na'vi. Eventually, when the colonists decide that the negotiations are not proceeding to plan and they need to take military action to secure the unobtanium, Sully finds his loyalties being severely tested.
Avatar is director James Cameron's follow-up to Titanic. Fourteen years in the writing and over four years in production, Avatar mixes live-action footage with cutting-edge, state-of-the-art 3D and the very latest developments in CGI. Visually, the film is stunning, with the attention to detail and vibrant colour schemes of the jungle scenes being nothing short of jaw-dropping. The CG characters don't quite blow the viewer away in their level of realism as much as say Gollum in The Lord of the Rings did, but Avatar does represent a significant evolution from even that impressive technical achievement.
The film is a sumptuous visual banquet built around an extremely familiar story. How much you enjoy Avatar will likely depend on your experience of previous traditional archetype action movies. Younger viewers will likely thoroughly enjoy the whole package, whilst older viewers may find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer number of movies, books and video games that Avatar seems to liberally borrow from to construct its story. Star Wars, Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai are obvious touchstones, as are Cameron's own movies, with elements of Titanic, Aliens and The Abyss all on display. The battle mechs used by the company for security seem to have been airlifted in from The Matrix Revolutions, whilst a stirring pre-battle speech seems to have been cut-and-pasted in from the script for Braveheart. Game players may find the underlying premise highly familiar from several of the Final Fantasy games (VII in particular). Fans of books will also spot strong similarities to the Poul Anderson novella Call Me Joe, whilst the French SF comic AquaBlue shares strong storyline and concept ideas with the movie.
In short, you've probably read, played or seen this story several dozen times before.
However familiar the story, it is quite well-executed in this instance. Some story elements are underdeveloped, and 'unobtanium' sounds like a placeholder in the script that was accidentally left in, but the actors perform their roles more than adequately, with the performance-capture work doing a great job of converting the great jobs by Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saldana (the movie's stand-out performance by a mile) into their 3D equivalents. Sam Worthington is adequate as the lead, but is not as charismatic or expressive as might be wished. He does convincingly handle the action sequences, however. Michelle Rodriguez is basically playing Vasquez from Aliens but does a great job as well, delivering an enthusiastic performance, whilst Stephen Lang redefines 'badass' as the chief villain, Colonel Quaritch, a character so ludicrously hardcore it goes way beyond parody and almost becomes Art.
Cameron's love of gadgets, vehicles and technology is also on full display here, without quite tipping into the disturbing fetishistic realm of Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer, thankfully. Cameron also delivers some good action sequences, with the climatic massive battle being well-choreographed and easy to follow, unlike some recent CGI extravaganzas which were way too over-the-top and chaotic (such as Revenge of the Sith and Transformers II).
On the downside, the movie's premise - white guy investigates foreign culture and ends up leading them into battle against oppression - is a little bit tedious. It would have been nice to perhaps see an inversion of the cliche (a native Na'vi who meets the humans, bonds with them but discovers they are a threat and has to fight against them?) rather than it being tiresomely trotted out once again. Also, whilst the film has some finality there are perhaps a few too many plot threads left unresolved for the inevitable sequels.
Overall, Avatar (***½) is an entertaining, impressive spectacle which is definitely worth seeing in the cinema. There are some great performances, some central SF ideas nicely explored (the organic USB leads are an intriguing idea and Pandora's ecosystem is vividly depicted) and no-one does big-budget conflict as well as Cameron. After twelve years, he's still got the touch to deliver something rousingly enjoyable. The movie is a little bit too familiar in places and it would have been nice if the script and dialogue had had half as much attention paid on them as the CGI, but the movie still has far more genuine heart than some other recent big blockbusters. It even has a romance more convincing than the one in Titanic.
The movie is on general release worldwide right now, and will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray in 2010. The film is planned as the first in a trilogy, so expect more to follow.
5 comments:
whilst Stephen Lang redefines 'badass' as the chief villain, Colonel Quaritch, a character so ludicrously hardcore it goes way beyond parody and almost becomes Art.
I loved this character. He was so over-the-top, Obviously Evil, and chewing up the scenery that I had a big grin on my face whenever he opened his mouth.
I think the other acting jobs were pretty solid, particularly Sigourney Weaver. Worthington's a little flat, but it actually didn't bother me that much; he had chemistry with Neytiri, and since he was supposed to be a fish-out-of-water his stiffness actually helped.
On the downside, the movie's premise - white guy investigates foreign culture and ends up leading them into battle against oppression - is a little bit tedious.
It's repetitive, but I actually think it worked well with this movie. I mean, let's face it, the scenery and the shift in Sully's character are basically the heart of this movie, so an overly complex plot might have detracted from it rather than added to it(although I think District 9 did the whole "clash of cultures with aliens" better).
That said, it bugged me how the Na'vi were such a thinly transparent symbol for the stereotypical native Americans. I mean, seriously, alien horses?
It should be interesting to see where he takes it in the sequel. Historically, native Americans could and did win some major battles, while still losing the war. The Na'vi seem somewhat more fortunate in that the humans who threaten them are at the other end of an extremely-expensive and time-consuming supply line, but we'll have to see how valuable Unobtainium really is to the humans.
Did you see it in 3D Adam?
Just saw this in 3D... perhaps it's partly because I'm a skydiver and adrenaline junkie, but it was the most amazing movie experience I've had.
I could overlook the non-revolutionary story in favor of everything else revolutionary about this movie. The 3D... the completely real world which was almost entirely CGI... the animated Na'vi mixed with top-notch actor/actress performances... the interesting political message(s)...
Once they create home-3D units and (eventually) live-action video games of this quality, I'll spend hours flying on dragons in my living room!
Haha, you could have been in my car on the way home from the cinema last night with the way some of your comments echoed mine about the movie - particularly the reference to unobtanium being a placeholder name. I enjoyed the visuals but felt the script-writing was just so much cliched dross. Shame. If it had been half as good as the film-making, Avatar would have been the most special film of the decade - and maybe ever. Since they didn't lavish so much love on it, I concur with your rating and won't be making a return visit to the cinema.
I loved this and agree with others that the best way to have the total experience is to see it in 3D.
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