Weighing in at a staggering cost of $400 million after merchandising, games and marketing, $250 mil of which was for the film alone. James Cameron's Avatar, the most expensive cinematic undertaking in human history, begs the question was it all worth it?
Written and directed by Mr. Cameron, starring Sam Worthington as crippled Marine Jake Scully , Zoe Saldana as a sexy alien, Stephen Lang as tough-guy Marine Colonel Quaritch and Sigourney Weaver as the chain-smoking Dr. Grace Augustine, Avatar's plot is a pretty straight forward big bad corporation vs noble indigenous people thing.
In 2154, Earth remains desperately dependent on rare natural resources. Some silver mineral named "unobtainium" is discovered on the far-flung moon Pandora and can cure many of Earth's ills. It sells for a million dollars a pound, so, no surprise, a industrial-military complex has set up shop to mine it. Unfortunately a ten foot tall blue-colored humanoid race, the Na'vi, live on top of the biggest deposit.
Here comes the ludicrous part, so pay attention. Dr. Grace's team has pioneered a way to mix the Na'vi and human genes to make an Avatar. Now supposedly, only the human whose DNA was used in the creation of this Avatar can use said Avatar. What's an avatar? Well, through a pod an avatar can be controlled, as if it's a character in a video game.
So, apparently, in order to gain the trust of the Na'vi, Dr. Grace's team has been out in the woods running around in their avatar bodies, trying to gain the trust of the Na'vi. Why they would go to all this trouble when the industrial complex paying for all of this could give a shit if the Na'vi live or die is a glaring weakness in the plot.
Enter Jake Scully, a paraplegic Marine who can use an avatar because his brother, a member of Dr. Grace's team had an avatar.
The Na'vi are cut from the same nature-communing forest people cloth as elves in Lord of the Rings. They fly on dragon creatures and ride around on six legged horses.
The film's protagonist, Jake Scully, starts as a kind of double agent, gather intel about Na'vi for the Colonel so he'll know exactly where to hit them when he attacks. But as Jake spends more time with the Na'vi, he falls in love with the female alien that trains him in the ways of the Na'vi, he falls in love with the forest, the people.
From here, the film chugs along to the inevitable final battle.
The plot, despite logic holes here and there, isn't bad, but not great either. While Cameron was psychotically detailed in the film's visuals, he should have spent more time in his screenplay.
But, to be fair, Avatar is all about the visuals. That's because there has never been any CGI in any film that remotely approaches what's on display in Avatar. The enter Pandorian planet and forest is CGI: the trees, the grass, the jungle creatures, the Na'vi themselves. Cameron took years working this and it shows. Of special note is the forest at night, a quasi-deep se environment, bubbling with self-luminesing creatures. Clearly, Cameron, an avid deep sea explorer, brought all of his experience to bear here.
I saw it in 3-d and the 3d is bright and clear and I had no motion sickness. It's amazing how fast the "wow" factor fades however. That said, it's hard to not be thrilled when you're taken along for the ride of dropping down a thousand foot cliff on the back of a winged peradactlyian lizard thing.
Aside from it's plot lacks, which aren't that big of a deal if you can buy the whole "Avatar" idea, where the film falls most obviously short is in it's characterization and acting. The real actors aren't great, mainly Sam Worthington, who is competent, but that's it. He was in Terminator Salvation, where he was better, and now this. How does he get these huge roles? Stephen Lang's Marine Colonel is a butt-kicking delight early on, but his character's one-dimesionality wears thin as the film goes along. No one else is worthy of much note, they are all just okay.
Then there's the CGI Na'vi faces. They are the best faces every done in CGI. But they are miles away from a human actor's face. They just don't emote enough. A few sensors on a human face mapped to CGI do not a human face make. This causes the film viewer to not hook in enough with the Na'vi characters and, therefore, not be emotionally carried away. Couldn't Cameron have used makeup and CGI bodies with real human actor's faces?
Avatar is spectacular, in its colors, in the world's detail, in the glorious forest, in the 3-d. But it lacks emotional punch because the characters and actors,both CGI and rea,l aren't very good.
Avatar will make a huge splash. But, in a few years it will just be a footnote, not a classic.
Rating:
Presentation: 33 1/3 How could I not give a full score?
Plot: 26 Not that bad.
Character: 24 Biggest weakness.
Total : 83 1/3
