Avatar (or, who's that snoring?)

We finally broke down and went to see Avatar directed by James Cameron and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, and 4000 HP servers.

The Good:

The best part of this movie is the visuality. It is truly a feast for the eyes. Vibrant colours and incredible texture give the world of Pandora an exceptional realness and alien-ness while avoiding the artificial feeling that many animated films cultivate. (Here I'm thinking of the cartoonish quality of the Disney/Pixar films.) The animated characters have an incredibly natural feel to their motion and facial expressions. Kudos to the motion-capture team because they truly have raised the bar for further development in the field. The depth-of-field 3D is also very well done and tastefully applied. There are no gratuitous 'things-flying-at-your-face' scenes that so many 3D films include simply because they can. Those sorts of visual gags have their place in action/adventure films but in a "drama" such as Avatar it would be cheesy. Rather, Avatar uses the beautiful jungle of Pandora to create the 3D environment for the viewer. Trees pass on either side and the long branches float over your head. In fact, the 3D is so well done you can almost forget that you're watching a 3D film, if it weren't for those glasses that keep slipping down your nose. So in that respect, Avatar (3D) is a success.

The Bad:

Where to start? I know that sounds harsh but honestly, did anyone find this story compelling? We've all heard the jokes. Fern Gully in space, Pocahontas in space, three hour technical demonstration pretending to be a movie...

First: Jake Sully, the main character and our narrator, has zero back-story. He's in a wheelchair, he says within the first 20 minutes that he's an "ex-marine" and neither of these things are explained in any way. Being in a wheelchair in itself does not require exposition but when it appears to be the reason for the character being an ex-marine, coupled with the fact that he loves using an avatar because he gets the use of "his" legs back, the audience needs to know why it's so important to Jake to use the avatar designed for his twin brother. As long as we're talking about the brother, what was Jake's relationship with him? The audience again has no idea how the brothers felt about each other, it's simply assumed that we'll think "oh they are twins so they must be close"; yet Jake doesn't appear upset as his brother is being cremated. Granted, this could be how a marine, who has presumably seen death before, would react in any situation but without this explanation the whole twin-brother shtick becomes a plot device to get us to the spacey parts as quickly as possible.

Second: There were so many times during this film that I found myself asking "why am I supposed care?" The mineral that humans are mining on Pandora is called Unobtanium, which is a stupid name designed to tell the audience that it's hard to find, but no one tells us why humanity so desperately needs this mineral. It's incredibly valuable, which is probably due to the fact that it's so scarce, but scarcity does not always translate into monetary value. So we, the audience, know that it's rare and it'll cost you a fortune but we don't know what it's used for: that's it. My guess is Unobtanium is used in making metals for military purposes. After all, why would the military be so invested in a private company's mining operation without some sort of tangible return.

Third: Why, oh why did it need to be three hours long? How many times can we be impressed with running through the forest, flying over the forest, climbing through the forest before it gets old? A film that long needs to have a story to back it up, or else it's just a bunch of pretty pictures for hours and hours.

Overall this movie did not impress me. As a demonstration of technical ability it obviously surpasses anything that we've seen to date. But is it worth three hours at $12 to see it? I didn't think so, but I wasn't looking forward to this one in the first place. The thin plot and simplistic political and environmental messages offer nothing to keep the mind entertained as the eyes are dazzled with yet another pretty jungle scene.

Oh, and as for the alternate title for this post, it's because the other person who was with Arlaine and I fell asleep during the movie. No, he didn't snore, but it would have been awesome if he did.

Verdict: Skip it.

Avatar Official Site here

IMDB here

Rotten Tomatoes here