Avatar

Avatar.  Easily the most talked about movie of the year.  At this time it's past 1.4 billion dollars worldwide.  James Cameron is poised to overtake both the domestic and worldwide records that his Titanic has held for so long.  At this point, if you don't know what Avatar is you obviously live under a rock and don't know how to use the internet - which is obviously not the case.

Because how you see this film is a big part of what people think about it I will say that I had the privilege of seeing it in glorious Imax 3D.  I had to preorder week four tickets and stand in line for over an hour to get good seats to do so. I know some people have complained about headaches from the 3D and have been told to focus on what was in focus and not look around too much.  I ignored that advice since there was just too much I wanted to look at in the movie.  I think it cost me a slight headache later, but that was it.  I did also noticed that, at least for Imax, if you tilt and move your vision to much the picture does get distorted.  It only happened when I did it intentionally, however, and wasn't a problem at all.


This was easily, visually, the most beautiful movie I have ever seen.  The CG was as near perfection as you can imagine CG being at this point in time, which is good since 90%* of the film is pure CG.  *Not the actual percentage.  I'm a writing hamster, not a mathematician.  Thanks to some sort of motion capture that includes the actors' eyes, the uncanny valley was nearly completely avoided.  The only times there was some discongruence was when the CG Na'vi where right next to a live actor.  Cameron never did seem to decide just how big the Na'vi are.  The 3D was also excellent, creating a world more real than perhaps the real one.  During a scene where ash is falling through the air I could have sworn some fell on my nose.  And the depth of the world beyond the screen is immense.

The plot to this film is rather simple and really not all that original. It's probably the weakest link here. Some have made the comparison to the story of Pocahontas.  Basic premise:  Evil humans, led by Stephen Lang as the psycho Colonel Miles Quaritch, and Giovanni Ribisi (Phoebe's brother on Friends) as greedy corporate head Parker Selfridge, come to beautiful planet in search of something they want - Unobtanium - but the locals don't like it.  Too bad.

Oh wait, one of the humans (Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington) learns the ways of the locals, falls in love with the chief's daugther (Neytiri, played by Star Trek's Zoe Saldana) and changes sides.  That is Avatar in a nutshell.

The movie also stars Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine, Michelle Rodriguez as the marine pilot (in a role much more likable than Ana Lucia of Lost infamy) along with a host of lesser known names.

The simple plot, though, allows you to easily follow it and let yourself get completely sucked into the stunning world of Pandora.  I've read some reviews that claim the characters are never fleshed out enough for you to care about what happens to them.  There may be some truth to that, but they're forgetting the most important character - the planet.  Pandora is presented in such detail, such beauty, that you cannot help but care what happens to it.  That brings us to the next important subject to touch upon.  The subtext.

Yes this movie is an obvious allegory for the times when Westerners have let greed lead their decisions to ignore another people and take what they want, whether it be North America or oil.  Yes it has an obvious Leftist, environmentalist agenda telling you that you should take care of the planet and respect other cultures.  If you don't, you're evil.  Supposedly it has also been condemned as encouraging nature worship through the Mother Earth figure of Eywa (by the way, am I the only one to notice a connection of this name with the Hebrew name for God, Yahweh?)This is a PG-13 movie.  If you're seeing it you should either be old enough to have already made up your mind about where you stand on such things or at least not allow yourself to be completely influenced by a work of fiction.  It's a movie, and a good one at that, and take or leave the message as you see fit.

For a massive blockbuster, on the surface this movie seems to have a lot of cons to the list:  The writing isn't spectacular, the plot is mostly unoriginal, the message may be offensive or controversial, and some may find almost three hours too long for a movie.  All of that and more are completely made up for, however, by how gorgeous this film is, how massively epic the world becomes, and how much fun it is to watch.  Avatar accomplishes what Transformers 2 failed so completely miserably at doing.  No amount of pretty pictures could make up for that excuse for a movie, even if ticket sales said otherwise.



Consensus:  Awesome.  See it on a big screen before it's too late.
***** (5/5 stars)