Avatar
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Synopsis
A paraplegic marine dispatched to the planet Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.
Review
Decades in the development, and hyped beyond all belief over the past year, Avatar seems to have been destined to either be something truely remarkable, or a terrible disappointment. Cameron has been going on about how he is using the new 3D technology in ways you have never seen beofre, and how the film will be unlike anything that has come before. The way he's been going on about it Avatar looked set to do for cinema what The Matrix did when it showed us bullet-time.
In reality, Avatar is a good film, but nothing more! There are some people exclaiming how it is the best film ever made. Maybe they should wait a few weeks then comment again, as it is far from the best film ever. It isn't even the best James Cameron film, and the best Cameron film is not a patch on the best of Spielberg, who is not a patch on the best of Hitchcock, who... well, you get the picture.
Avatar basically takes elements of films such as Dance With Wolves (soldier goes native and defends those he was initally sent to guard/fight against), amongst other films (Ferngully and Pocahontas for example) and spins a familiar, and all-too-predictable tale of love and war on an intergalactic scale. What makes Avatar stand out is the visuals. The alien-world of Pandora, where a mining operation is extracting Unobtanium, is well thought out. The variety of plant-life and species are richly detailed, and totally believable as part of the same eco-system. Animals and creatures all seem to have evolved along similar paths, all having a bio-connection which enables them to interact. The plant life all seems to have adopted a night-time glow, amongst a rooted connection. The creatures and wildlife of Pandora are truely linked one and all, and this forms the basis of their religious belief system.
Entering this world is Jake Sully, a marine who is incapacitated from the waist down. He has been selected to take the place of his brother in the Avatar program. This program will allow him to remote control a genetic hybrid of human and Na'vi (the primary, tribe like race of Pandora) as part of a team who intend to learn the Na-vi way and communicate with them. However as he interacts with the tribe, he begins to appreciate more what they worship and believe in, and turns against the military and company who have sent him there. As the tensions mount he must choose sides in the upcoming war.
Visually the film is a treat, although still suffers the flaws that all motion-capture CGI films suffer - some scenes simply look too much like a cartoon, and some of the real-life/CGI interaction is off. Nontheless, the spectacle of the battles, the beauty of the forest at night, and the detail on the Na'vi themselves are all remarkable. When viewed in 3D, the inital impact of the extra dimension is staggering, but over the course of the film you begin to not notice it, and by the end have to wonder whether the film really needed it, or if it was just another gimmick to sell the film on.
The film does nothing new, but it does do it all well. Is it done well enough to justify the hype and excitement around it? Not really, and although it does keep you interested throughout, it doesn't have that re-watch factor that other Cameron films such as Terminator or Aliens do. When you look around 1 day after the film's release, and see that it has already been given a 'best film' award by some critics, you have to question whether those critics are on Pandora themselves, for they sure seem to be on another planet! There have been far better films this year. Avatar is nought but a well-made CGI blockbuster. It will not change the face of cinema, nor will it be as widely appreciated in 10 years time as the aforementioned Matrix.
Trivia
- A casting call was posted on the website of Mali Finn Casting in early December 2005 for the female lead. The casting call was erroneously reported to be for James Cameron's Battle Angel (2011). However, Battle Angel will be the second of the back-to-back Cameron projects with a likely 2013 release.
- Michael Biehn was considered for the role of Col. Quaritch. He met with James Cameron three times and saw some of the 3D footage, but in the end it simply came down to the fact that Cameron didn't want people thinking it was Aliens (1986) all over again, as Sigourney Weaver had already been cast.
- The movie is 40% live action and 60% photo-realistic CGI. A lot of motion capture technology was used for the CGI scenes.
- Seeing the character of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) convinced James Cameron that CGI effects had progressed enough to make this film.
- To help the actors prepare for their roles, director James Cameron took the cast and crew to Hawaii, where they spent their days trekking through the forests and jungles and living like tribes (building campfires, eating fish, etc), in order to get a better sense of what it would be like to live and move around in the jungle on Pandora, since there would not be any actual jungle sets to aid and guide the actors and crew. Zoe Saldana even dressed up as a warrior during these journeys, complete with an alien tail symbolic of the one her character has in the movie. These hikes were only done during the daytime, though; The cast and crew spent their nights at a Four Seasons hotel.
- As of December 2009, with an alleged budget of US $230,000,000 (estimated), this is the most expensive movie ever made.
- Sam Worthington appeared in Terminator Salvation (2009), the fourth Terminator movie. His appearance in this non-Terminator movie is notable as James Cameron directed The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), T2 3-D: Battle Across Time (1996) as well has having being a writer (creator of characters) on other Terminator franchise video-games and TV episodes.
- First James Cameron feature film (i.e. not a documentary nor TV movie nor TV episode) since Titanic (1997), a gap of twelve years.
- First time that Sigourney Weaver has appeared in James Cameron film since Aliens (1986), a gap of twenty-three years.
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