Posted on 12/13/2009 6:52:26 AM PST by Borges
Watching "Avatar," I felt sort of the same as when I saw "Star Wars" in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron's film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his "Titanic" was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely.
"Avatar" is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It's a technical breakthrough. It has a flat-out Green and anti-war message. It is predestined to launch a cult. It contains such visual detailing that it would reward repeating viewings. It invents a new language, Na'vi, as "Lord of the Rings" did, although mercifully I doubt this one can be spoken by humans, even teenage humans. It creates new movie stars. It is an Event, one of those films you feel you must see to keep up with the conversation.
The story, set in the year 2154, involves a mission by U. S. Armed Forces to an earth-sized moon in orbit around a massive star. This new world, Pandora, is a rich source of a mineral Earth desperately needs. Pandora represents not even a remote threat to Earth, but we nevertheless send in the military to attack and conquer them. Gung-ho Marines employ machine guns and pilot armored hover ships on bombing runs. You are free to find this an allegory about contemporary politics. Cameron obviously does.
Pandora harbors a planetary forest inhabited peacefully by the Na'vi, a blue-skinned, golden-eyed race of slender giants, each one perhaps 12 feet tall. The atmosphere is not breathable by humans, and the landscape makes us pygmies. To venture out of our landing craft, we use avatars--Na'vi lookalikes grown organically and mind-controlled by humans who remain wired up in a trance-like state on the ship. While acting as avatars, they see, fear, taste and feel like Na'vi, and have all the same physical adeptness.
This last quality is liberating for the hero, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who is a paraplegic. He's been recruited because he's a genetic match for a dead identical twin, who an expensive avatar was created for. In avatar state he can walk again, and as his payment for this duty he will be given a very expensive operation to restore movement to his legs. In theory he's in no danger, because if his avatar in destroyed, his human form remains untouched. In theory.
On Pandora, Jake begins as a good soldier and then goes native after his life is saved by the lithe and brave Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). He finds it is indeed true, as the aggressive Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) briefed them, that nearly every species of life here wants him for lunch. (Avatars are not be made of Na'vi flesh, but try explaining that to charging 30-ton rhino with a snout like a bullet head shark).
The Na'vi survive on this planet by knowing it well, living in harmony with nature, and being wise about the creatures they share with. In this and countless other ways they resemble Native Americans. Like them, they tame another species to carry them around--not horses, but graceful flying dragon-like creatures. The scene involving Jake capturing and taming one of these great beasts is one of the film's greats sequences.
Like "Star Wars" and "LOTR," "Avatar" employs a new generation of special effects. Cameron said it would, and many doubted him. It does. Pandora is bevy largely CGI. The Na'vi are embodied through motion capture techniques, convincingly. They look like specific, persuasive individuals, yet sidestep the eerie Uncanny Valley effect. And Cameron and his artists succeed at the difficult challenge of making Neytiri a blue-skinned giantess with golden eyes and a long, supple tail, and yet--I'll be damned. Sexy.
At 163 minutes, the film doesn't feel too long. It contains so much. The human stories. The Na'vi stories, for the Na'vi are also developed as individuals. The complexity of the planet, which harbors a global secret. The ultimate warfare, with Jake joining the resistance against his former comrades. Small graceful details like a floating creature that looks like a cross between a blowing dandelion seed and a drifting jellyfish, and embodies goodness. Or astonishing floating cloud-islands.
I've complained that many recent films abandon story telling in their third acts and go for wall-to-wall action. Cameron essentially does that here, but has invested well in establishing his characters so that it matters what they do in battle and how they do it. There are issues at stake greater than simply which side wins.
Cameron promised he'd unveil the next generation of 3-D in "Avatar." I'm a notorious skeptic about this process, a needless distraction from the perfect realism of movies in 2-D. Cameron's iteration is the best I've seen -- and more importantly, one of the most carefully-employed. The film never uses 3-D simply because it has it, and doesn't promiscuously violate the fourth wall. He also seems quite aware of 3-D's weakness for dimming the picture, and even with a film set largely in interiors and a rain forest, there's sufficient light. I saw the film in 3-D on a good screen at the AMC River East and was impressed. I might be awesome in True IMAX. Good luck in getting a ticket before February.
It takes a hell of a lot of nerve for a man to stand up at the Oscarcast and proclaim himself King of the World. James Cameron just got re-elected.
Man what a waste. This thing does look gorgeous, it’s a shame that it’s going to be slanted and slanted in a boring way that has been done over and over. It’s too bad that something that has so much potential visually can’t be given an interesting and fresh story.
Freegards
I remember GREEN as in “Soilent Green” with Charelton Heston... Green’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Even the “anti-war fanatics” are willing to punch people in the mouth... say that won’t start a war. I’d like to see the personal life of some of these anti-wariers up on screen... heck, I’ll bet some of them are wife beaters and cheaters... like they’re the saints of mankind.
Sort of like the current POTUS. :o
I am going to see the Blind Side this evening. I am looking forward to the movie. I heard it is phenominal. Plus I love Sandra Bullock.
I’m actually looking forward to this. Save ‘The Spawning’ which he had no control over, Cameron has never made a poor film
I learned over a decade ago that the more Roger Ebert liked the story line of a movie, the less likely I was to like it. It got to the point where his “thumb up” on a movie at the rental store was a good indicator we would not like a movie.
That’s strange because he started declining as a critic about 10 years ago. Before that he was an excellent film critic.
>>The Na’vi survive on this planet by knowing it well, living in harmony with nature, and being wise about the creatures they share with. In this and countless other ways they resemble Native Americans.<<
I wonder if he knows how savage the life of most American indians was. And as swell as that first line sounds, he needs to remember that this movie is a work of FICTION.
He reminds me of the vegan chick who turned her cat into a vegetarian, causing the cat to go blind.
yeah, me too. I can save my cash. I need it for more important things than lefty drivel.
When I saw Star Wars in 1977 I thought it was stupid and boring. I still do.
Idiot. The Spanish re-introduced the horse to the North American continent. Before the Spanish arrived the "natives" walked everywhere.
They had ‘runners’ didn’t they?
Do they also resemble the Native Americans that attacked and enslaved other tribes of Native Americans?
Showing a situation where most of the species want to eat you doesn't do a lot to indoctrinate anthropogenic bambiism in the young generation.
It may occur to many of the audience, why don't the people from earth just pay the natives for the mineral they want, if it is so valuable to travel across interstellar distances for?
I suspect young people will want all the high tech as well as the adventure, and much of the intended indoctrination will just end up being shed as so much water off a gortex lined boot.
Now that I am more sophisticated, I can look at the Heinlein novels that I loved so much as a youngster, and recognize the overt “progressive” message in them. But, I cued in on the honor, courage, and adventure, and ended up shedding the “progressive” messages.
I could handle WallE because that message was actually fairly subtle, at least relative to this movie. And yet WallE’s was also so patently absurd that the comedy of it was not lost on me.
It would be impossible to build up .001% of the trash they depict in the cities in that movie. IOW, the absurdity of it made it funny.
This movie takes itself too seriously. That’s the problem. One example: it talks of the native creatures, instead of using technology, taming indigenous creatures to carry them around. Well, gee, isn’t that what ALL known cultures do until they develop the technology to create more effective and efficient means of transport?
It does not show them as “superior”. Rather, it shows them as technologically backwards. And it is also a bit of the Pocahontas “feel the tree’s pain” nonsense. Plays well to kids though.
I think hell is where Hollywood resides....
Cameron’s films always have a self serious air about them. And the two Terminator films he did and Aliens also had an anti-corporate subtext.
Soon as you said he lost a lot of weight the first thing I asked myself was, “What, did he have cancer?” At his age, that would be the most likely reason for sudden weight loss.
arghhh...
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