Avatar film review: blockbustepic
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After ripping the film industry a new one with Titanic in 1997 and thus snaring a modest accolade commonly known as the most successful movie of all time mega-minded director James Cameron retreated to the cavernous lairs of computer labs and editing suites where legend has it – his films are so big, you see, they inspire legends – he spent the next handful of years developing technology capable of bringing his new uber blockbuster to the silver CGI-sheathed screen.
In a rare display of restraint, Cameron decided to scrap his original plan of upgrading every cinema in the world to auditoriums the size of stadiums with screens as wide as skylines and made do with what he could filch from a $300 million budget and the result is Avatar, a cyclopean sized futuristic SCI-FI about a militarised mining corporation who fight an indigenous alien race of giant skinny Smurfs (known as the Na’vi) on a distant moon called Pandora.
Jake Sully (Aussie Sam Worthington) is a paralysed former Marine sent deep into the extraterrestrial jungles to infiltrate the Na’vi community and attempt to negotiate a re-settlement away from their resources rich home. Humans can’t breathe on Pandora so Jake must transform into an Avatar – a living alien body controlled mentally from military HQ. He meets a sleek young Na’vi lady, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), integrates himself into her apprehensive tribe and slowly falls in love with the new culture and people. But the officious hard-nosed people from the mining corporation are intent on acquiring a precious mineral protected by the Na’vi people. They could have paid more attention to its name – “unobtainium ” – which contains a cryptic message about the mineral’s obtainability. Can you guess what?
There is nothing exciting or innovative about Cameron’s uncomplicated screenplay, which is unashamedly used as a map to connect his extravagant set pieces. But the wow mumma! visual makeup of Avatar is fantastically far-out, designed to have critics choking themselves on superlatives and audiences returning for a second and third helping. This movie goes beyond eye candy. It’s eye cocaine. And James Cameron only sells the good stuff.
Mauro Fiore and Vince Pace’s cinematography emerges from the cinema-as-spectacle school of thought and the movie’s monolithic final act contains the loudest and most sensational action finale since The Return of the King (2003), replete with outrageous stunts, screen buckling angles and moments of fist in the air battle-spectacular.
Pandora’s lush, intricately detailed jungle terrain proves the right setting for Cameron to up the ante for 3D effects and Avatar clearly sets a new benchmark in blockbuster cosmetics, in a similar way to how Jurassic Park wowed us with breathtakingly rendered dinosaurs in 1993. But – sorry to disrupt the choir of appreciators singing about Avatar’s visual flawlessness – the big disappointment in the way the film looks is a consequence of its 3D properties: it has an irritating tendency to cut straight from handsomely layered 3D pictures to flat-as-a-pancake 2D shots, which creates an oddly jarring effect. Other than that this movie is everything it’s cracked up to be: gorgeously atmospheric and orgies-for-eyeballs good looking. In line with one wag’s early commentary, it looks like an ultra contemporary refashioning of FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992) and the story bears more than passing similarity – it is in fact rudimentarily the same.
As expected the actors take a back seat to the technological hoo-ha unfolding around them. Working with a limited range of emotions, Worthington provides a steady human anchor but the non-CGI star of the show is Stephan Lang as the remorselessly inhumane Colonel Miles Quaritch, the quintessential love-to-hate military baddie with a comically weather-beaten, scar-streaked appearance and the kind of haircut you could set your watch to. The buff square-faced Lang, in full-blown caricature mode, inhabits the role with insatiable aplomb; it’s a devilishly cartoony performance. I kept waiting for Quaritch to light a cigar by swiping it across his cheek – sadly, that moment never came.
Behind its showy veneer and otherwordly surfaces Avatar conceals a left/liberal commentary on eco-sustainability and indigenous land rights. Just as it’s impossible to ignore the racial allegories underlining Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, it’s impossible not to link Avatar’s story with the plight of American Indians, or Australian Aborigines, or any race of technologically primitive people with deep spiritual connections to their land. Cameron constructs the picturesque Pandora settings with glorious attention to detail, so when this magical, beautiful place is threatened by the more familiar items of war and machinery the audience react in the ways he prescribed: we hate the human invaders; we cheer in defence of Mother Nature’s extraterrestrial majesty. In District 9 humans were also heartless self-serving swine, save a few dissenters. 2009 is the year in which we rooted for the aliens.
Words like “big,” “grand” and “spectacle” seem virtually blasé in the context of blockbuster filmmaking, an art form driven by audacious people bent on outdoing each other in sheer excessiveness. Since James Cameron invented cameras capable of making this movie, it seems appropriate to invent a word capable of reviewing it, so here we go: you might say that Avatar, which feels so grand it almost goes beyond blockbuster and beyond epic, is a blockbustepic. All its milestones may be temporary technological achievements, and as an experience it may infantilise the audience, reducing us to wide-eyed children rubbernecking at strange new sights, like the stunned apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey dancing madly about the monolith. But being there at ground level, ogling at the marvellous weirdness of it all, is an undeniably exhilarating experience.
Avatar’s Australian theatrical release date: December 17, 2009.
see it
skip it
don't rush
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cool reveiw, especially the last paragraph:)
Great review! I now look forward to ‘dancing madly about the monolith’ (good simile!) when I see this.
Great review Luke. I can’t believe the mineral is called “unobtainium.” I mean, WTF? James Cameron has never been one for subtlety but thats kind a new breed of obviousness. I look forward to marvelling, 2001 ape style.
Unobtainium – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium
Really people. Cameron’s no dummy.
designed to have critics choking themselves on superlatives
Haha, I had to laugh on this one, Luke, when in the next sentence you write:
This movie goes beyond eye candy. It’s eye cocaine.
Cameron was never one for subtlety, you say? Nor you, it seems.
Let’s get a grip here. The film looks fantastic, and really needs to be seen because Cameron has pushed the technology to a new level. It’s not the level that the hype proclaims, but a step in that direction. I’ve always found 3D more of a distraction and the same with Avatar, though it’s the best 3D effects I’ve seen by a long shot. I found myself often trying not to focus on the 3D and just absorb myself in the film. It would have been easier had it been written with a bit more finesse. I might try to catch it in 2D and see how it measures up in that format.
FWIW, I don’t think there’s any doubt that this film will do very well indeed at the box office. It’s got the wide appeal it needs.
Saw it yesterday at 5pm – IMAX in 3D. Simply the best movie I have EVER seen. The new Benchmark from the people (Weta) that brought you the last benchmark (LOTR)
Just saw it. Awesome! Weak script in parts but for sheer escapism, adrenaline and gorgeous imagery – essentials for a great film IMO – it gets full marks!!
Cameron’s imagination of future technology always delivers; from the armageddon war-scenes in Terminator, to the drop-ship and cryo-stasis scenes in Aliens. Avatar is no different – good fun is had with the Humans’ villainous war machines (putting aside the whole ‘destruction of peaceful aliens’).
CGI is so boring. This is almost 100% CGI making it perhaps the most boring film ever made. Yawn, wake me when Hollywood movies focus on interesting plots and acting ability again.
Saw it last night. 3D movie, 1D script. Visually brilliant but would it have been so hard to introduce even a passing nod to characterisation? I mean, you had 3 hours.
Cameron’s treachery holds no bounds, once upon a time we used to cheer for the humans versus the Aliens? The absurdity of the last 30 mins was staggering even for Cameron’s standards, what Pandora needs is a visit from a nice friendly Predator space craft chock full of nasties who will know exactly what to do with their green world. At least in Titanic i knew the ship was going to sink in the end, with this drivel it took about 20 mins and i knew i was in trouble here. You would also think it might not have been a bad idea to hire a dialogue coach for Worthington as his Aussie accent shone through brighter than anything that tree could muster.
Hmm more like Johnfromplanetmiserable…
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