Film Review: 'Avatar' pushes visual effects into new realm of wonder
Blue is the new green, if the billion-or-more box-office predictions come true for James Cameron’s first feature since “Titanic” 12 years ago. So. How is it? Does it look like a billion?
It does, yes. But folks, I haven’t experienced such a clear dividing line within a blockbuster in years.
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Neytiri, voiced by Zoe Saldana (right) and Jake, voiced by Sam Worthington, are shown in a scene from "Avatar."
Rated PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking
Length: 160 minutes
Released: December 18, 2009 NationwideScore: 3.5
Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Sigourney Weaver
Director: James CameronProducer: James Cameron, Jon Landau
Writer: James Cameron
Genre: Action/Adventure, Suspense/Thriller, SciFi/Fantasy
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
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Last week the reviews started trickling, then gushing, over the dam of the embargo set up by 20th Century Fox. They knew it wouldn’t hold. The Dec. 10 London premiere went well, the tweets flew like the wind and the Hollywood Reporter, first among the high-end raves, declared it revolutionary and brilliant.
The first 90 minutes of “Avatar” are pretty terrific — a full-immersion technological wonder with wonders to spare. The other 72 minutes, less and less terrific. Cameron’s story, which has been kicking around in his head for decades, becomes intentionally grueling in its heavily telegraphed narrative turn toward genocidal anguish, grim echoes of Vietnam-style firefights and the inevitable payback time and sequel setup.
If your exhilaration with the first half is undercut by an increasingly deflating pffffftttt sound, Cameron nonetheless has delivered the screen’s most anticipated and persuasive blend of live-action and motion-capture animation to date. The movie really does look fantastic, whether it’s dealing with flying prehistoric-yet-futuristic birds or fluorescent mushrooms or imagery perilously close to what Cameron himself refers to in the Cameron biography “The Futurist” as “fantasy van art.” Compare the 10-foot-tall alien race in “Avatar” with Robert Zemeckis’ motion-captured (more like emotion-erased) humans in “A Christmas Carol.” You tell me who looks alien.
“Avatar” takes place in 2154 on the planet Pandora, in “a time of great sorrow.” Earth, ecologically, is kaput. A mineral known as “unobtainium” lies beneath the sacred lands of the planet’s native people, the highly developed Na’vi, who have a very uneasy relationship with the occupying forces. American corporate interests are intent on relocating the thin blue “savages” one way or another.
Though the Na’vi adversaries aren’t meant to be U.S. military personnel (they’re grunts in the employ of the mining operation), “Avatar” unmistakably pits the peace-loving blue-thins, who are fleet of foot and deft with bow and arrow, against Americans in uniform. Much of the battlefield imagery recalls the firefights and wrenching civilian casualties of Vietnam; the hero’s trajectory, meanwhile, hews closely to Western revisionism, both solid (“A Man Called Horse”) and squishy (“Dances With Wolves”).
Our hero is paraplegic ex-Marine Jake Sully (Australian actor Sam Worthington), who takes over his late brother’s job as part of the Avatar Program on Pandora. This means he psychically controls the movements of his Na’vi-like avatar while confined to a coffin-like container. The program, originally designed for botany research, is overseen by the tough-as-Ripley-in-“Aliens”-boss played by Sigourney Weaver. By “Matrix”ing his way into an alter ego, Jake regains metaphoric control of his legs and his life. He is a changed man once he tastes Na’vi life and love with the lissome cobalt warrior ingenue Neytiri (Zoe Saldana).
Too late, Jake realizes the weaselly corporate drone played by Giovanni Ribisi and mean ol’ Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang), leader of the mercenaries, have no interest in anything but carnage and profits. How big a force in Hollywood is Cameron? Big enough so that if anyone did try to talk him out of laying on the Iraq war parallels (references to “shock and awe,” and fighting “terror with terror”), he didn’t listen. The slaughter of the Na’vi and the subsequent rabble-rousing pushback dominates the second, ham-fisted half of “Avatar,” making this one of the most violent peacenik fables since “The Trial of Billy Jack.”
It does go on. At one point, Lang’s bullet-spitting antagonist says, “I want this mission high and tight. I wanted to be home for dinner.” And you think, well, maybe a late dinner.
So it’s simplistic. So was Cameron’s “The Abyss,” which tried to push visual effects to a new realm and didn’t quite succeed. This one does. (By all means, see it in 3-D.) Cameron’s a filmmaker to drive you nuts: “Titanic” may have been the worst-written film I ever willingly paid to see twice. But he has cinema and a persuasive brand of myth-making in his blood.
Comments » 2
oraroch writes:
Avatar is indeed an amazing piece of technological art. But, the philosophy and ideology of the movie is so tiresome. Yes, I cried at the climactic moment when love triumphs.
But, doesn't anyone notice the irony is using technology to attack technology. How is it a preeminent user of technology and the capitalism can apparently feel redeemed by creating art that delegitimzes everything he is. Is biology and life as a hunter gatherer completely constrained by an ecology always better? Does anyone think transformation to a higher form by communing with nature is a type of anti-human cry for a type of new age religious redemption or just me? The attack on George Bush and the idea of freedom and fighting for freedom is so tiresome too. The majority of the people of Iraq according to any reputable pole don't see it that way. Enough.
Sid6point7 writes:
James Cameron envisioned this movie over 15 years ago, long before George W. Bush, 9/11, Iraq, et all. You can apply the basic moral lesson to almost any period of conquest in the past 4,000 years. So, I would refrain from applying this to any one single person/campaign.
On to my review:
I am fresh back from the 7:30 showing of Avatar in 3D on screen #1 at Paradiso.
I am going to refrain from spoilers in this short review.
Let me say this first: This is the movie of the century. Period.
It is hard to fathom that 98% of this movie is CGI because it is REAL. Real, living, breathing, sweating, growling, LIVING. The 3D is less about the schlock in your face value and more about incredible depth of field. It seriously, believably looks like you are looking through a window out into the horizon.
This is the first 3D movie I have ever seen in the theater. I was pretty skeptical going in. But I am a believer now, let me tell you.
The Na'vi are incredibly beautiful. Such grace, cat-like reflexes, and when needed, unbridled viciousness.
The moon-planet of Pandora is a character unto itself, literally. And the landscapes are gorgeous and beyond words. The amazing "Floating Mountains of Pandora" are certainly the sight of a lifetime.
The varied flora and fauna are most realistic. No matter how fantastic they may come off initially, they still have a presence on screen.
If you don't see another movie for the next decade, make sure you see this.
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