Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Movie review - Avatar (3D)

A band of imperialist foreigners land on a location populated by lush forests, rich in natural resources. These newcomers want these resources because it will make them rich in their homeland. But the land is inhabited by some natives who don't want to give up their land. One man, a member of the foreigners, gets separated from his brethren but the princess of the natives takes a shining to him. He lives with these natives, learns their ways, and comes to identify with their civilisation. Oh, he and the princess also fall in love. But the time comes when he has to choose between his new friends and his culture.

This is actually the plot of the 1995 Disney cartoon Pocahontas, based on the real-life story, but also of Avatar.

Avatar is an interesting movie. Set on Pandora (one of Jupiter's moons, based on the visuals), there's Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) as the John Smith character, a former marine who after being separated from his research team, is rescued from some Pandoran wildlife by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), the Na'vi princess. Then insert the plot summary from above to figure out what's going on. As you can tell, it's a fairly commonplace story. It's also been described to me as a metaphor for what's going on in the Middle East, although it could also be about Asian, African, North, and South American colonialism. So yes, story is not particularly original but it has mass appeal. I'm not going to bother picking holes in the logic of various motivations of characters but they are there.

Having said that, the characters are one-dimensional, which is usually not a problem for me, (hey, I did enjoy the Transformers movies!) but in this instance when people are good or bad, the lack of grey was led to aspects that struck me as being somewhat ridiculous. The main case in point was during the [Spoiler] final fight between Jake in Avatar mode in his fight versus the Colonel Quarich (Stephen Lang). The final attack on the Na'vi has failed, a normal military commander would go back to base and regroup - but Quaritch instead jumps into his mecha suit to duke it out to the death. The motivation seems...misplaced. Because it totally helps the cause, you know [End Spoiler].

As an aside, I would like to make a comment about Sigourney Weaver being the WORST RESEARCH SCIENTIST EVER!!! There's a short sequence when Jake is talking to the camera and Sigourney in the background is looking a plate that's on a phase microscope. She picks up a pipette, picks up a fluid sample of some sort, upends the pipette, and then goes to eject onto the plate! Upending a pipette when you've got a sample in there means all the fluid goes into the plunger!!! And oh yeah - product placement for EPPENDORF PIPETTES!!! W00T!

Back to the review. For all the weak story and lack of educating someone how to use a pipette, it's clear that the money was invested in the visuals and invested well. Whoever the production designer on this must have had a field day with the planning of how Pandora was going to look and what each of the strange and wonderful plants and animals were going to do in their brightly coloured way. In fact, the contrast between the bright and pretty colours of Pandora vs. the human base was quite stark - I'm certain there was meant to be a message in there. There are some sequences that are really gorgeous and when you add in the 3Dness of things and it really is quite a wonder to look at.

That brings me to my next issue. I didn't get nausea but headaches did plague me throughout the movie. Part of the way 3D visuals works is the reliance on having what we're meant to concentrate on being in focus and indicating something being close or in the distance
through blurring. It probably says something about my personality, but I didn't want to just focus on the action - I wanted to look at the things that were closer or further away! But that meant I was pretty much fighting to try and see in focus things that are meant to be blurry. My poor eyes and brain struggled.

With the beauty of Pandora, I know Cameron wanted to linger over the creations so that everyone can marvel at it, but there were points when I though *okay, I've had enough of doing x, it's time to further the story*, and this happened at a number of places during the movie. At 162 minutes long, well, its not compact. That's why I can't help wishing there was more of a story to distract myself from how long it was.

I know this review sounds incredibly negative. It's not to say that I didn't enjoy the film - I didn't sit there wishing everyone would die like I have in other movies, but it is definitely overrated and too long. It's not the masterpiece of story telling everyone seems to tell me - it's a very long promotion for the CGI technology that James Cameron has been working on for the last decade. I very highly doubt my opinion will change with repeated viewings which means I can only give it a score in the lower, but passable, range.
6/10

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pretty harsh! Seen it twice and enjoyed both occasion.

Aside from the less than complex plot, I thougt the movie was executed quite well. Mind you I went to watch the movie with the predisposed opinion that I wasn't going to experience a life changing storyline. For entertainment value, it was worth the 320 or so minutes (seen it twice). Final note, the song over the closing credits was errily familiar to 'Colour of the Wind'.

Unkie Roi

mallymoodle said...

The primary focus are the visuals, which are undoubtedly excellent and beautiful to watch, and the sole reason why I gave it a passing mark (or 3 out of 5 stars.

I usually have no issue with big dumb stories, but I think the reason why I didn't enjoy it in Avatar is because it takes itself too seriously.

It's essentially a 3 hour promo for advances in CGI and 3D technology, but has pretensions to being a political and environmental epic. If you want to do that, you're going to have to invest more in the story/script, which they clearly didn't.