*************This review will contain spoilers*************
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I'm sure this is the umphteenth Avatar review on this site, but this is a pretty big movie and I do feel I have some things to say about it that haven't been said yet. If I am mistaken, please feel free to subjugate me to whatever slander you see fit.
This will also be a very different review for me since I will not only be using the "I", "me" and "you" words, wich I always try to keep out of a review, but I'll also try to discribe my first experience with 3D in general.
I went to the IMAX 3D version of Avatar with my sister (she was buying) and my first fear was that the stereo optical glasses wouldn't mingle very well with my own prescription. Luckily, they got along together swimmingly and the only bother was the greasy stains on the lenses presumably caused by the many popcorn grubbing fingers that came before mine.
I was also afraid that the whole 3D would be nothing more than flat screen upon flat screen shifting about in order to create a cheap effect, wich was most cetainly the case with the Alice In Wonderland trailer that preceded the movie. But this fear was also laid to rest as soon as the movie began.
I was pleasantly surprised by how well some - not all - of the 3D worked. There was real 3 dimensional shape and everything felt extremely tangible. I was no longer looking at a screen, I was looking at an actual event.
"Just feel it. Oh yeah, we're gonna celebrate."
I was very sceptical about this movie and I already had my knives out, ready to pounce. But then a voice in me said - well actually it was my sister - but she said, "This is James Cameron, he knows what he's doing. Even if the story is gonna suck you'll still be presented with some very nice scenes." And I guess she was right, because one of the first shots was one of a spaceship passing by and seeing the planet Pandora reflected in the ship's solar panels.
We're given a brief prologue about Jake Sully and his reason for traveling to "the most harzardous environment known to man". Wich sounded a little presumptuous to me, I mean, isn't the sun the most hazardous environment? Or better yet, a black hole? But my sister could already hear my eyes rolling all the way to the back of the movie theater, so I tried to be more subtle and remember who it was that paid for this little shindig.
Jake's twin brother died and a couple of suits would like him to take his place as an avatar pilot. Jake's got nothing better to do since he's paralyzed from the waist down wich makes his occupation as a soldier a bit redundant. This is one of the moments were the movie could've given us an idea of what Jake's relationship was with his brother: Were they close? Was there a sibling rivalry? Had they not spoken in a long time and did his death suddenly make him realize how much he actually missed him? Unfortunately, that isn't explored and the dead brother is only used as a vehicle to kick off the movie.
The moment Jake sets his wheels on Pandora we're introduced to the big baddy of this movie, Colonel Big Scarred Badass, or Quaritch as he's called around the dinner table. He's giving the new grunts a nice uplifting speech about how the indigenous creepy crawlers want to eat out their eye sockets, and that when it happens, he'll just watch and laugh.
Having Colonel Quaritch on MTV's Scarred would make for an awesome show.
We also see Sigourney Weaver return to Cameron's dictorial bosum as Grace, the brainiac that spearheads the avatar project. It's clear that Quaritch and Grace are tent poles of their respected field. Quaritch is so close minded that his brain has turned into a fleshy diamond and Grace is allergic to anything with a trigger, even deodorant.
Avatars are bio-engineerd puppets constructed of Human DNA and of the DNA of the native population, the Na'vi. The Na'vi are the jolly blue giants who are causing the corporate bigwigs some trouble by living on top of a high value mineral called, unobtanium. This is another moment were the movie could've explained why unobtanium is so valuable and why we so desperately need it. Maybe it cures a meriad of deseases caused by space radiation. Maybe the Earth's magnetic field is gone and we need it to power our super shields. But no, the unobtanium is just a symbolic root of all evil for the corperate military to act on.
Since the avatars are custom build around the pilot's DNA Jake, being the original pilot's twin, is the perfect substitute. Honestly, I don't think Jake needed anymore incentive other than, "being a big blue dude hoping around an alien jungle-planet". But he also gets the insurance from Quaritch that if he's a good boy and gets the "savages" off of their back, he'll get him his legs back.
Blue Jake goes out into the wild a gets separated from his team. He is quietly observed by a Na'vi tribes girl called Neytiry, who is seriously considering smoking his tail. She ends up saving him, however, from a pack of alien hyenas. She takes him to her tribe where he's introduced to the wrinkle faced father figure, the benevolent mother nature and the jealous warrior boyfriend. They decide rather quickly not to kill this traitorous puppet of the sky people, but to aducate him in their ways.
Netiry has taught you well!
But enough about the story, let's talk about what really matters: What this sucker looks like. And I have to say that it looks good. It looks really, really good........on a technical level. Avatar trully is a revolution in special effects and Weta Digital should be proud of their achievement. Before I knew it the CGI became unnoticeable and I was just looking at the characters and not the methods by wich they were created.
But therein lies the rub. This movie uses all it's graphical strength to pull me into it's world, but that world itself is as shallow and uneventfull as my grandma's birthday. You see the same old people, a little less interesting than last time you saw them. You hear the same old stories and ignorant racial slurs. There's nothing good to eat and the time crawls.
Nothing happens in this movie that hasn't already happend somewhere else. And while the CGI looked unimaginably good, the visual design was incredibly bland. Almost all the six legged animals look alike. You might argue that the wildlife on Earth looks alike to, but I was under the assumption that Pandora's fauna was suppose to wow me. And it just didn't. The flora on the other hand was very beautifull.
The other problem I had with the CGI was my lack of wonderment. I never really found myself wondering "how they did it", except for the few times where you see a Na'vi and a human interact. There's a scene at the end where Netiry is holding the human Jake in her arms and he caresses her cheek. It wasn't only nice to see the CGI Netiry play off a live-action human, but also to see Jake's hand follow the shape of her face exactly. I found that moment more amazing than any of the battle scenes or pteradactyl flying scenes combined.
I was glad that I watched Avatar in 3D, because without it I might have fallen asleep. But the optical effect forces you to focus on one part of the screen instead of taking it all in like a normal 2D movie. This creates odd moments where, for example, the foreground is out of focus, but it's right in your face because of the 3D. The battle scenes also appeared somewhat twitchy. When there's explosions and pieces of metal and wood flying across the screen at high speed in 3D, it's hard to make any sense of what's going on.
In the end the 3D was very distracting because I couldn't really focus on the totality of a scene. There'd by an action scene with Jake vs. an alien panther and all I could think was,"oh look, that gun is pointing staight through the screen". Or another scene where Netiry's father is dying in front of her and all I could think was," oh look, those burning ashes are falling right in front of me".
My sister didn't really have this problem, because there were a few moments where I caught her lifting up her goggles to wipe away a tear or two. So, if this movie makes my sister cry, I'm sure it can't be that bad.
I'll surely watch this movie again when it's released on DVD. Maybe I'll be able to enjoy it better in good old fashioned 2D.
