Tuesday 12 January 2010

Avatar

I heard it said shortly after the world premier that the critics were calling this James Cameron's STAR WARS, and by fuck they were right. They've merchandised the shit out of this movie before the first reels even cooled.

"Get yourself a Casio Watch because the guy in Avatar doesn't wear one because it's all holograms and shit in the future but you can bet your ass if he wore a watch it would be this one."

Then there's the toys, comics, clothing, badges, posters, toilet roll, kitchen sink, vibrator, Na'vi blow-up doll and CD soundtrack. Not to mention a game that sounded so generic that I actually yawned reading the back of the box before setting it down and biding my time for the glorified text adventure that is Mass Effect 2.

The forums and blogs are alive with the mediocrity that is fanfiction, and Avatar has not been spared this blight.

Yep, just like Star Wars.

That being said the movie is actually good.

The world of Pandora is absolutely beautiful, even the things that want to kill and maim the hero have a bizarre beauty to them. It's not so beautiful that I want to kill myself because I can't go there unlike some net-nerds to have professed this (I wish I was fucking kidding).

It's your typical story of an advanced race walking in and stomping all over the tree-hugging locals and stealing their resources. If you are having trouble getting to grips with the story try swapping out the name "human" with "America" and "Na'vi" with "oil rich nation". Or "human" with "Western Europe" and "Na'vi" with "Africa circa 1800". You get the idea.

Humans are portrayed as the bad guys of the story, which is an easy sell because there is no one human beings hate more than other humans. Of course not all are bad and this gets us our main protagonists otherwise we'd lose interest 10 minutes in because no one could empathize with a big, blue, naked, CGI guy.

The opening scenes with the humans and the arrival on Pandora made me happy because it was very beautifully realized and I thought 'this is just how a Planetside movie would have looked'... which is slightly sad on my part.

James Cameron's style is very evident in the design of the craft and technologies and I had a chuckle to myself when I realized how close the design of the big green flying death platform resembled a UD-4L dropship (that's from his other Star Wars, Aliens). And I liked it.

I'm glad that after getting Sigourney Weaver for the movie James Cameron chose not to reuse any of his usual stalwarts for the cast for fear that people would think it was another Aliens. As much as I like Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton I do feel the essence of familiarity would have harmed Avatar somewhat, and Sam Worthington did pretty good in the end.

The score is beautiful and deep, and when the action happens the whole thing meshes together wonderfully. There are certain scenes that will really move the emotions, from one of 'wow, that is awesome', to another of 'oh wow, I hate my species right now'.

You get slapped in the face with how the movie is going to end about maybe 30 minutes before it does and I did not appreciate that because it really took the edge off some of the action.

Overall though I'm going to be very favorable to Avatar because 1) it is a good movie; and 2) I want James Cameron to direct a script I'm writing (it could happen). Mostly it's option 1 though.

It's easy to see how Avatar not only grossed over $1 Billion at the Box Office but did so in a world record of 17 days.

Rating: A

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