Avatar (2009)

Directed by: James Cameron

Starring: Sam Worthington

****

Avatar has been hyped as the next generation of filmmaking. In a way, Avatar is progressive, new and groundbreaking but not in the sense that everyone suspected and James Cameron suggested. What should be the forefront of conversations regarding this film is the fact that is actually a very good movie. Not since Lord of the Rings have we had an epic of such scale and calliber as Avatar. Rings was three movies of special effects surrounding a complete, in dept and enteraining story. Avatar was only three hours but it too, had special effects galore surrouning a a complete, in depth and entertaining story.

We begin with Jake Sully's (Sam Worthington) narration or voice over. His hair is long, not the usualy military style cut we'd expect from an enlisted marine, and he rolls around in his wheelchair. He's a parapeligic, an underappreciated element of this story until about the midway point when we realize the problems it creates. We're then introduced to Pandora, the beautiful world inhabited by the Na'vi people, by the gunghoe saftety commander Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). He understands the dangers of this world perhaps better than anyone else as he's experienced them first hand. He also understands that with all he has at his expense, he is capable of destroying the Na'vi people if he so chooses. But its not his call. Running the show, is Parker Selfridge (Giovani Ribisi), a money hungry business man intent on obtaining a profitable rock from beneath the Pandora surface. In his way, is the science division, led by Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver). Her purpose is to study the world and its people by use of Avatars, human beings in the body of a Na'vi. While proving unsuccessful, things change when Jake's twin brother dies, thus leaving Jake as the only one able to live in his brother's very expensive Avatar body. Very, very long story short, Jake is brought to the Na'vi people and taught their ways and he, in turn, reports back to Grace, Colonel Quarditch and by extension Selfridge.

Despite the details of the story, Avatar is actually a very common, almost to the point of cliched tale. Man inhabits a new world, is accepted by the natives contrary to all logic, falls in love with the high ranking officials daughter, who by the way is supposed to marry someone else, so that guy is angry, but things go arry when the natives discover the man's alterior motive. Man doesn't care about that anymore though. He has a new home and a new family and he'll fight for them. We've all seen it before, Pocohontas and Dances with Wolves. It appears that Cameron's intention was to take what is a simple story and surround it with such new and astonishing elements. He succeeded in creating a simple story and surrounding it... but not necessarily with anything new and astonishing.

To begin, I saw Avatar in 3D. This was my first such venture into the gimic (and that's all it is) that seems to be so highly regarded. Not since seeing The Happening, have I seen something so pointless. 3D doesn't enhance my experience, it didn't compliment the story or the special effects, it didn't really hurt anything but I know from experience that its possible to make a movie good enough to involve an audience without using gimics. Avatar is good enough. I was invested in the story and involved with the characters and I'm certain I would have appreciated the visuals more in 2D. A multidimensional story is essential, multidimensional visuals are somewhat astonishingly unneccessary. Not once did I reach towards the screening saying ooo, aahh. And I never ducked out of the way of bullets. In short, don't see this movie in 3D. Go see it like a real movie and you will be impressed by the world Cameron created.

The Na'vi people and the Avatars are special in their effects. They are detailed and fluid and more human like than the trailers for this film suggest but they are not much more than what we've seen before with Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. The truest of spectacles is in the world of Pandora. The amount of the film that we know is entirely CGI is really the amazing aspect of the visuals. If you didn't know that entire scenes were computer generated, you wouldn't be able to tell. Its the idea that so much of this movie was made with no actors, no setting, nothing except for a room full of computers and a bunch of nerds, that is the closest claim this film has to the next generation of filmmaking and the irony is that there's not even a camera present.

I've often been critical of Cameron in that while he's a master story teller and very clearly a technical guru, he's not much of an actor's director. The Terminator films and Aliens can't stake claim on great performances. Leonardo DiCaprio is a great actor, but no one thought much of him in Titanic (Winslet's too good for a director to screw up). Avatar didn't call for stellar performances. The only people who were really required to show any acting abilities were Worthington, Weaver and Lang. Weaver was fine. Nothing about her performance stood out but nothing about her character called for that. Lang was just a bad guy who is hard to kill because he's such a seasoned soldier so he kind of just let the story carry him. Worthington was good as well. He too had no need to extend himself too much but I will say that he has incredible screen presense. There are a handful of actors/actresses (George Clooney is always one I point out) who's screen presence is perhaps more influential than the performances they give. Worthington commands the screen, particularly when he's a human being. As an Avatar, you can't even tell if its acting. Its kind of like when an actor gains weight and becomes so immersed in a role that you don't know who it is but its all done with computers.

See Avatar. Don't see it in 3D because there's no reason for it. Technically minded people in Hollywood see 3D as a new challenge. They want to move forward int he world of filmmaking and continuously find something new and exciting. Cameron falls into this crowd of people who I don't think give audiences enough credit. Avatar may have been a different movie ten, twenty years ago but we've seen the story work before. To spend 300 million dollars on something because you believe that audiences are bored with a flat image on screen and our own blue sky seems unnecessary. This is not to suggest that Avatar was a waste of 300 million dollars, it wasn't. Its not, however, the next generation. Its not groundbreaking in its visuals. Its a movie with a very entertaining and nearly perfectly structured story with visuals that are beyond imaginative.