Movie Review: Avatar December 31, 2009
Link to rottentomatoes reviews
So Kyle and I went out on a date, which happens once in a blue moon. There was just not much else to do besides watch a movie. And the only one that sounded remotely interesting besides Avatar was Blind Side. However, neither Kyle or I have the remotest interest in football. It sounded a lot like Remember the Titans, which was about football, love and acceptance. I would never go to any effort to watch Remember the Titans again and wouldn’t really have missed anything in my life if I never watched it, so I figured the Blind Side would have the same effect on me. Same with Kyle. So Avatar it was. Blind Side probably had more depth to it, but Avatar was fun, and not a single football in the entire movie. Just lots of nearly-naked aliens and explosions! Lots of spoilers ahead, so if you don’t want the movie spoiled, go see it then come back and read it.
Basic Plotline: Jake Sully is a guy who was a Marine, now paralyzed from the waist down, going on a mission to a planet named Pandora. The human forces who are on Pandora want to mine the planet for a valuable mineral called Unobtainium (yes, seriously!). However, they are having trouble convincing the native humanoid species, the Na’vi, to move off the mineral rich land so they can blow it to bits and mine it. So Jake goes into a Na’vi body engineered by the humans to learn the culture, be accepted by them, and negotiate so the humans can have their Unobtainium. The Na’vi turn out to be just like Native Americans but about 12 feet tall, blue, with tails, superhuman strength and abilities, and ways of connecting with the animals and trees. Jake is accepted but falls in love the woman instructed to teach him the ways of the Na’vi, and he decides that he wants to side with the Na’vi. The humans decide to blow up the land anyway. Jake calls the Na’vi from all over the planet, there is a gigantic war with explosions and death, etc, somehow the Na’vi win with Jake as their leader, and the humans are kicked off the planet. Jake becomes a Na’vi permanently and they all lived happily ever after.
The movie’s strongest point is that it is visually stunning. CGI just keeps getting more impressive. The world of Pandora is breathtakingly beautiful, vibrant rainforests and floating mountains, and the creatures in the movie are creative and fun. There are dragon-like creatures, hammer-headed rhinoceros, and panthers on steroids! If I had never seen any other movies and didn’t know that this plot was rather cliche and reminiscent of several other plots, it is a fun plot that entertains and moves things along. Although the movie does go on for 2.5 hours, which Kyle found rather slow. It didn’t really bug me, but it might the second time through.
Overall, you will probably really enjoy this movie. Like I said, it’s creatively amazing, and the emotional aspects of it are spot on, some fun elements like the loser becoming the hero that saves the planet, romantic elements, and so forth. However, I am pretty picky when it comes to movies, I like them to have more ‘meat’ if I’m going to pay the moolah to see them in theaters, and there was a few things about it that bothered me. So I don’t think you’ll regret watching it, but it’s far from perfect. Overall I’d give it a 6.5 out of 10. Worth paying the money, but I don’t think I’d ever want to buy it.
The acting was good enough for the flick. I was most impressed by Sigourny Weaver, who plays another human who has a Na’vi avatar, who joins Jake’s fight to save the Na’vi. The main character, Jake, and his female lead, Neytiri, have so-so acting, enough to carry it, nothing bad enough to make me cringe, but nothing that really shone.
The characters as they were written were really nothing spectacular, so really, they probably did fine with what they were given. Most of the characters were pretty flat. The bad guys, the Unobtainium-hungry humans, were depressingly reminiscent of Disney cartoon movie bad guys, not much depth, overpowerful, and too bent on destroying everything in their path to be believable. I’m almost surprised we didn’t have any wicked monologues or evil cackling in the end. In the end of the movie, you are wholeheartedly rooting that all the humans be blown to bits. While that is unusual, it’s not very realistic. The dialogue in the movie was nothing awful, but nothing really notable. Most minor characters that you like wind up dead.
Some things that bugged me about the plot: it begins to really feel like Pocahontas after awhile. Some others have described it as, “Dances with Wolves in Space” but as I haven’t seen Dances with Wolves, I can’t attest to the verity of that statement. The similarities between the Na’vi and the Native Americans are so apparent it makes the movie look rather foolish not to bring that up in the movie somewhere.
There was several things that could have made this so much more an interesting movie and less cliche. There was great potential for the Na’vi to be a remarkable race on a remarkable planet and tap into some serious science fiction goodies. Unobtainium, the mineral in question, is in great amounts under the gigantic tree where the local tribe of Na’vi live. However, it is never explained why Unobtainium is so valuable, or why it’s all under the big special tree! It could have gone so many interesting places with that. It’s even hinted at in the movie, that all the trees on the planet have an electrical connection together and the Na’vi can tap into that, the same way they can connect with certain animals on the planet. It could be, but doesn’t say for sure, that all creatures on the planet have a way of connecting. Instead it just sounds like a bunch of New Earth/Earth is our mother/tree hugging mumbo jumbo, complete with all the Na’vi holding hands and singing to a giant special tree (Pocahontas again!) and the spirits of their ancestors.
Like I mentioned earlier, the humans (save for five pro-Na’vi people) are just bent on getting their Unobtainium. They really don’t care that they have to blow people to bits. I almost could hear the song “Savages!” from Pocahontus in my head. It would have given better depth and believability to the humans if the hundreds of forces on Pandora didn’t wholeheartedly embrace the fact they were going to blow the natives to bits, the uppity tree huggers being so dang whiny about having their homes blown up! There should have been at least some who argued, “Um, hey, haven’t we learned anything as humans from those history classes about Native Americans, Jews, African-Americans, etc, that it’s probably wiser to be nice and understanding to people who are different than you rather than shooting their heads off with no hesitation?”
If you have read Orson Scott Card Ender’s Game series (not just the first book, but the four after that) Card goes into great detail concerning the way the animals and tree interact in a completely alien biological relationship. It’s very interesting and becomes a major plot element in at least one of the books, and has interesting magnifications in several of them. Seeing as Avatar just didn’t have the plot creativity, the acting, or anything else, going a little deeper into this fascinating planet (which I can’t get over is named Pandora! foreshadowing overkill, anyone!) could have made this movie more than just a pretty action flick.
The end was also rather unbelievable. While fun to watch, it basically consisted of the Na’vi being slaughtered, then a few animals fighting back and gaining some ground for Pandora, then Jake throws a couple big grenades at the big warship packed with bombs and it blows up and crashes. A few scenes earlier Jake had made his connection with a big important tree, and asked for help. Again, something more spectacular should have happened here, that interesting biological connection could have been explored, maybe some volcanoes or gigantic violent creatures or the floating mountains could have fought back or something! Instead, it’s just a big slaughter by the big helicopters, guns, and missiles of the Na’vi with bows and arrows. And Jake winds up stopping the humans with their own technology.Where is the fun in that?
James Cameron (remember Titanic?) was the director of this movie. Now we see why it is so incredibly long. However, while Titanic appealed more directly to the romantic females, Avatar is more aiming for the male 14-24 crowd. Not many females will be swooning over Jake Sully’s elongated powder blue tailed self. Like Titanic, this movie will probably do superbly in the box office, but retire to shelves to gather dust and never gain any longevity in movie history, just another major accomplishment for CGI creators.
Kid friendliness: incredibly not kid-friendly. Lots of violence, cussing throughout. The aliens are mostly naked in a native African type apparel, important parts are mostly covered, but the fact that they are very alien and not so human looking makes it more video-game-esce. Look it up on kidsinmind.com for more detailed analysis of kid-friendliness.
So, don’t go incredibly out of your way to see this movie. If you really wanna pay the bucks to see a movie in theatres and nothing else looks good, this one will do. But it could easily wait for a rental.
