Posted 18 January 2010 - 07:54 PM
As a celebration of my Holiday Vacation coming to a close, I finally bit the bullet and went with my Mom to see Avatar. I went in with mixed feelings...and left with equally mixed feelings.
To start with, in terms of film-making technology and effects work (that is to say, pretty much THE reason this Movie's gotten so much attention)? Yeah. This is a game-changer, no two ways about it. I saw this thing in full IMAX 3D, and on those two levels it is indeed staggering. Immersive to a level no other Movie has ever been before, ever. There are absolutely times, particularly whenever we spend an extensive amount of time with Avatar!Jake wandering about the wilds of Pandora, where it all feels like a very pretty Video Game, admittedly, but for the most part, the visuals are every bit as mind blowing as you have heard. Admittedly, I have to wonder how impressive they would be without the IMAX 3D to support it, but seeing as how IMAX 3D is what this was made for, I'm willing to let that question slide for the most part. Design-wise, it's a bit more of a mixed bag. The Na'Vi themselves are certainly well-built(save for a detail with their hair that proves rather...bizarre for me, but I'll say no more of that here for Spoiler reasons), and most of the Wild Life is intriguing. A pack of small, vaguely-hyena like creatures that attack Jake in the thick of the Jungle in particular, with skull-like faces and eerie glowing eyes, caught my eye and impressed me. Some of the other beasties, though, such as the multi-winged, vaguely pterodactly-like fliers the Na'Vi use to take to the skies, left me more underwhelmed than anything. The actual landscape of Pandora, though stunning to look at, also felt either overly gimmicky (such as flowers which cartoonishly plunk into the ground when touched) or else generic and re-used (such as a gigantic tree Neytiri's tribe makes its home around and within). On the whole, though, the film is indeed a feast for the eyes.
The story and characters, however...not so much.
That is not to say it's a complete wash, mind you. Zoe Salldana does fantastic work as Neytiri, who is easily the most interesting, compelling character in the Movie. Sigourney Weaver is likewise pretty solid as Dr. Augustine, who is also a solid if somewhat unremarkable character. I'm even willing to give Stephen Lang credit for his turn as Big Bad Colonel Quaritch; yeah, the character's flat and ultimately uninteresting, but Lang does a good enough job with him that you can at least manage to half-way love to hate the bastard. Likewise, there are some nicely underplayed thematic touches, such as the fact that the Weapon of Choice for the Bad Guy Army dudes are essentially de-personified, non-organic "Avatars", or the way in which the Na'Vi so symbiotically interact with their environment and world.
Everything else, though? Ugh. Big time ugh. The big one to start with here is not the fact that the Plot is fairly threadbare and cliche (though it is), or even that it is overly preachy in its themes(on this, I must confess, I actually found it handled itself well; its metaphors are fairly naked, true, but that ultimately proves not too bothersome to me). No, the critical weakness here is that Jake Sully is a poor lead character, and Sam Worthington an equally poor actor to portray him. There is literally no point in the film where Sully comes across as particularly interesting or compelling, at all. Given that the Movie's story centers on him at just about every level, that's a big problem. Part of the fault lies with the Script, which banks all but exclusively on the visual splendor of the Movie communicating just what drives Sully's character arc and thus leaving nothing but the most didactic bits of said development for him to actually express on his own. The rest of the blame, though, has to go to Sam Worthington, who just completely and utterly fails to bring any sort of genuine life to this character, spending almost the whole film coasting emotively and failing utterly to be convincing whenever he tries to go beyond that. The rest of the cast doesn't fare much better, with Giovanni Ribisi as a transparently uninteresting Evil Corporate guy, Michelle Rodriguez as a rogue Military Pilot whose character has potential but ultimately winds up being kinda superfluous to the Movie as a whole, and an even more superfluous character in the form of Joel David Moore's Norm Spellman, whose character arc is so vaporous it may as well not exist. The story too has some exceptional structural problems. The opening Act is more than just a touch boring, the Second Act only marginally interesting for its exploration of the Na'Vi's culture and customs (which themselves backfire as being some of the worst examples of the condescending "Mystic Natives" angle since Disney's Pocahontas). The Final Act is where all the action ultimately ends up, and even here the film has to resort to a staggering Deus Ex Machina to keep itself going. While there is indeed some visceral fun to be had during the End Battle of the film, it is hampered significantly by some outright idotic tactics choices by the "Good Guys" (you'll know 'em when you see 'em) and some astounding leaps of logic on the film's part in terms of what it chooses to show us of it, as well as a Final Showdown that starts out promising but quickly becomes rather uninteresting.
On the whole, then, I do not believe Avatar to ultimately be a good movie. Indeed, I'm not even sure I can fully say you should see it for the experience, either. Instead, I shall simply sit here and ponder yet again why my taste and that of the rest of the world at large are so at odds, and wait for the Movie which can match Avatar's visual power, but with a Story and overall cast that can equal it as well.
"These hands of ours are BURNING RED! Their loud cry tells us..."
"To grasp happiness!"
"ERUPTING GOD FINGER!!! SEKI..."
"HA!"
"LOVE LOVE TENKYOKEN!!!"
-Domon Kasshu and Rain Mikamura, G-Gundam
