29 Dec 2009, Posted by Alex Shofner in Articles,Film Reviews,Reviews, 0 Comments

Avatar Review

James Cameron’s newest project, in the works for a decade, has finally come to the screen. Most of the reason for this incredibly long process is the fact that, to fully realize his goal, technology had to be implemented that hadn’t even been invented at the time. Estimates put the budget of the flick at three hundred million dollars, the most expensive movie ever made. Even crazier, it’s on track to make it’s money back and then some. It’s already had the biggest December opening of any movie ever, and didn’t fall much in its second week.

As far as the film itself goes, it was pretty much exactly what we all expected: incredible visuals but not much else. I walked into the theater, my second 3D experience after UP. Once again, the trailers made me feel mildly ill and I was worried the movie might do the same, but it didn’t. Cameron used the technology for subtlety rather than shock, and for long segments of the film I completely forgot about the glasses and got engrossed in the flick.

The basic story outline is something akin to Dances with Smurfs. In the future, humans have completely ravaged Earth for all her resources and have turned to other planets to find much needed materials. Enter Pandora, the lush and beautiful jungle planet, basically Endor 2.0, and the Ewoks are giant blue people. The film drips with allegories for the extermination of the American Indians as well as the more recent Iraq War.

We follow disabled Marine grunt Jake Shelly (Sam Worthington, whose obvious Australian accent annoyingly fades in and out throughout) who is tasked with controlling an avatar, which is a body of one of the giant blue aliens (the Nav’i) grown by humans. Their purpose is to diplomatically convince the race to move so the humans can mine the valuable Unobtanium (the first mention of that element I’ve seen since The Core). If they can’t convince them to leave, a hired force of mercenaries will move them by violence and bloodshed.

Predictably, he meets the beautiful Nav’i Neytiri (Zoe Saldana, Uhuru of the recent Star Trek) who also happens to be the daughter of the chief and shows him the way of her people, changing him (over the course of 160 minutes, but it really didn’t feel that long) from an imperialist warmonger to a tree hugger.

Sigourney Weaver played the head scientist and looked absolutely ridiculous in her avatar body. Giovanni Ribisi was the stereotypical capitalist the audience loves to hate, and he played it as well as his stilted lines allowed him. The best role in the film went to the antagonist, the leader of the mercenaries played by Steven Lang. He looked exactly like the evil soldier toy in Small Soldiers, but I loved every second he was on screen.

The dialogue was insufferable and expository. A full ten minutes of terrible lines could have been cut to the extreme benefit of the movie. It has a tendency to be heavy handed and take itself too seriously. Somewhere along the way, all the modern Sci Fi directors except for J.J. Abrams have forgotten that space movies shine when they max out their campiness. Most of them just don’t have enough fun in their world.

But none of those complaints mattered the first few moments when Jake gets lost on Pandora in his avatar body and we explore the beautiful world with him. Or when he first captures a Banshee, a sort of pterodactyl-like creature, and flies around a mountain range filled with giant floating boulders. What I wouldn’t give to go on such a ride, and with the incredible colors and pinpoint accurate 3D, Cameron took us as close to a real ride as possible in the theater.

The motion capture technology was able to create a stunning range of facial expression on the faces of the Nav’i, and helped blend the worlds of the real and the motion capture into one. Amazing visuals accompanied every turn and the fully imagined world made me very much want to travel to Pandora.

Is this our generation’s Star Wars? No. But that may not so much be Cameron’s fault as the fault of the constantly increasing speed of technology in our society. Just as the Lumiere brothers showed what could be done with film, Cameron has shown what can be done with 3D. But the next technologically amazing film will doubtless outshine this one within the coming years.

Despite the hackneyed plot and dialogue, I found myself sitting back and loving the ride much as one does a roller coaster. Go see Avatar, see it in 3D, ignore its foibles, and you will love it too.

ShofScore: 7/10

– Alex Shofner