'Avatar' Is Horribly Written, Way Too Long, Totally Worth It
I'm Going to See Avatar. What do I need to know?
#1. The movie is almost three hours, so if 3D makes you want to yack, bring a paper bag. Or go see it in 2D, where you won't have the benefit of the guy next to you going "My god, it's full of stars" to distract you from the basic plot and the really, REALLY shitty dialog (this is the man who wrote all of Edward Furlong's snappy slang in Terminator 2 after all).
#2. Get thee from the theater once the end credits start to roll, because the song that plays over them is dogshit and will damage your ears irreparably.
#3. If Discovery Channel documentaries like Walking With Dinosaurs and Planet Earth don't float your boat, the first 90 minutes of Avatar is going to bore the hell out of you.
Uh... what? Discovery Channel?
Yeah. Even after a decade trapped in a metal bubble filming starfish in IMAX, Cameron hasn't exactly gotten that documentary jones out of his system, and the first half of Avatar is basically a 90 minute travelogue. Granted, he's taking you on a tour of a completely imaginary, mindbendingly beautiful world, but nonetheless, the first hour of the film feels less like a narrative and more like a turbocharged episode of Meerkat Manor.
So, he finally did it. The King of the World finally fell on his face?
Nope! I'm not going to call it a "Game-Changer" like so many critics have, since pop-culture analysis shouldn't include phrases Herm Edwards would use. But there is more than a kernel of truth to the notion that Cameron has once again advanced the art of visual effects way beyond what people previously thought possible. And the episode of Meerkat Manor that he shot with this technology is a damned good one. Dry, but engrossing enough to get you through to the moment where the kitty people have sex--
Oh god...
--and then the film becomes a bugfuck-insane adaptation of Dances With Wolves.
OK, you're fucking with me, right?
Again, no. The plot goes like this: Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a dumb, crippled jarhead. He is unfit for the task he is inheriting from his recently deceased older brother; Working with a team of scientists on the surface of the planet Pandora to harvest a very valuable metal called Unobtanium (Yeah, just wait it gets worse ...). The natives on this planet are the Na'vi, (... not yet ...) affectionately referred to as "Thundersmurfs" by the internet intelligentsia, a 9 foot tall cat people with a deep, spiritual connection to nature. Since James Cameron is writing this, it's a literal connection - there are fiber optic looking threads that stick out of their cat ponytails that can connect with trees, plants, and the six-legged wildlife of Pandora.
Jake is asked to infiltrate the tribe living in a giant tree directly above their Unobtanium haul.
Jake is more than happy to do so, mostly because he's a dumbass, but also because it means he gets to inhabit an Avatar: A cloned body of a Na'vi that he can operate from inside a tanning bed.
While Jake's in the jungles of Pandora, a giant space-panther almost eats him, but he's saved by a Na'vi girl named Ney'tiri ...
Oh Goddamnit, when will somebody stop letting James Cameron make up words?
Not this year, apparently. Anyways, Ney-tiri also happens to be a princess. Jake, now with the use of his legs and literal pussy to chase, goes native, undergoing the trials of Na'vi warriorhood and falling in love.
This is not appreciated by the company's military leader, a man so masculine that just looking at him makes Nick Fury's third eye cry. Commander McBadass is basically itching for an excuse to wipe these cats from the planet with massive gunships and gun-toting, knife wielding mechwarriors. There is tragedy, there is victory, there is aforementioned kitty-sex and noble sacrifice and important lessons learned about protecting the environment and respecting other cultures that won't in any way be used as a brickbat to score political points on some blowhard AM talk-show.
Fuck politics. Does shit get blowed up good or what?
And how, motherfucker. And how.
Unfortunately, before that happens, you're asked to buy into the romancing of Ney'tiri. It's the Titanic plan all over again - the guys will get their action and their spectacle, but they've gotta finish all of the romance on their plate first. Avatar's probably worse than Titanic on this note, and that's saying something considering what a slog the first 90 minutes of Titanic was.
But at least I'm not just staring at girls in corsets crying on a boat right?
Right. You're staring at some the best CGI ever seen on screen, period. I never quite bought the Na'vi, mostly because of their goofy design, but the uncanny valley that plagues Zemeckis' creepy cybercreatures is nowhere to be found here. These are amazingly, realistically expressive 9 foot tall Cat Warriors. The (unearned and forced) emotion Cameron asks the audience to feel for these natives is there on their faces, in their body language, in a way not seen since Gollum had a bitch session on a tree stump in 2002. This is Cameron's head, emptied onto the screen with more love and care than he's shown to any of his previous films.
So I'm watching James Cameron's brain explode for 3 hours?
Exactly. 2009 has been a year of oddly personal directorial statements across the board. Fantastic Mr. Fox nicely summarized everything that makes Wes Anderson what he is as a director, as was the Coen Bros A Serious Man, and for better or worse, Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. For all the faults that Avatar displays, and it displays a lot of them, there's something charming about Cameron excitedly showing off every last personal kink, tweak and obsession that pops his geek boner.
He's like an eager 12 year old genius, gushing about his science project. The storytelling is basically Dune, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars badly glued together, but it almost doesn't matter because he believes so hard in this earnestly silly pastiche, that it's a little adorable. It never means as much as he thinks it does when he starts killing his playthings and setting their world on fire, but it's a marvel nonetheless.
Just tell me if Cameron remembers how to do an action sequence.
Dude.
DUDE.
HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT.
That good?
For all the things Cameron has done onscreen to write and rewrite the modern action sequence time and again in Terminator, and then ALIENS, and then T2, and then True Lies, until the last 40 minutes of Avatar, there's never been a James Cameron aerial battle, all swooping and banking and pew-pew in grand Lucasian style circa 1977. And then he does it, and it is fucking glorious to behold. It's the opening of Revenge of the Sith, and the end of Return of the Jedi, and the powersuit fight from ALIENS and the battle for the bridge in Saving Private Ryan, as seamless as the love story is not, using the best special effects ever.
So it's worth it, then.
Your enjoyment of that last 40 minutes will depend on how much of the preceding 2 hours of shoddy storytelling, dialog, and characterization you want to hold against Cameron. Either you'll be carried away by the man's technical skill and naked enthusiasm to show you probably the most personal thing he's ever created, or you'll fidget uncomfortably and fight down inappropriate snickers. But he will grab you in that last 40, and he will remind you that yeah, he's been away for awhile, and he may not have ever been the King of the World, but when he wants to, he will kick any other director's ass at the art of ass kicking.
Check out Bobby's analysis of another special effects extravaganza, '2012' Sucks Worse Than the Mayans Could Have Predicted, or his look at The 5 Most Unintentionally Racist Movies About Racism.
Avatar was the most predictable movie ever. :(
ReplyCorsets on women, on the Titanic? In 1917, I don't think women wore corsets, or at least, women started to not wear them.
ReplyThe prettiest screen saver ever - that's the best definition of Avatar.
ReplyI think that he stole the name from Avatar, the last airbender, which resulted in a certain dumbass from australian radio calling the show which came out frst a ripoff but other than that, it was good. By the way, they should seriously sue
Reply"Avatar" is actually a word from Hindu mythology vaguely comparable to situations in the cartoon and the movie. Any copyright claims on it make as much sense as trying to copyright "Saint."
Soon enough they'll try to copyright "Saint".
I loved the movie. If I had to sit down and pick apart movies and analyse each facet, I think it would just spoil the thing for me. I bought it and watched it at home so the 3-D question never applied. I sat back and let it carry me away.
ReplyYou can sit back and get carried away with PBR. Doesn't make PBR good.
The main problem with this movie was that the coolest guy was the villain, and the shittiest guy was the hero. Both in terms of writing and performance. Seriously - Jake Sully is a depressed cripple whose twin brother has just died, and from what I've seen, he garners about as much audience sympathy as a rabid squirrel. (That's not just a random comparison, either, they've got the exact same levels of 'gee, I guess I sort of feel bad for it' mixed with 'but we should probably kill it now for the evolutionary good the species'.) He demonstrates a lot of traits which humans generally don't consider admirable - fickle loyalties, a short attention span, an inability to plan ahead, and a willingness to throw everyone under the bus for a chance at weird alien sex. That might be more sympathetic if he was a teenager, but no - he's a grown ass man and a soldier besides.
ReplyI'm not really surprised that a huge percentage of the audience wound up cheering for Quatrich. Years of movie watching and video game playing has conditioned us so that when we see a tiny badass human in a robot suit fighting a gigantic alien, we cheer for the human. Jake Sully is not a compelling enough protagonist to change that for most people.
I saw this movie in 3D around the time it came out, and I gotta say I just don't care for 3D. I'm probably kind of a luddite that way, but I don't like having to put glasses when I watch a movie
ReplyOh, and Avatar is okay, except toward the end when it got kinda silly.
(Also, Unobtanium? Really?)
nothing special about this movie for me
ReplyIf the scenes in the movie didn't trigger empathy, compassion and remorse in you, sounds like more of a personal issue in yourself than a fault in the movie. But I do see how you use coldness and cynicism for humor here, and I do find it funny in many cases, but more when it's obviously exaggerated or sarcastic. No one's asking you to be an emo sap, but having heart is a positive thing. Regardless, I'm a loyal fan (and critic) of the site :)
ReplyI hope all those filthy blue space monkeys die. Bombard the site with tactical nukes from obit. Don't stop until the "tree of souls" is a 10 mile wide glass bowel. Then sift the unobtanium out of the 20 billion metric tons of ash. Put a time dilation field on the whole planet and wait for the dead organic material to turn into oil. Humanity 1. Alien God 0.
you totally ruined my hipstergasm when you ended the tite with "and totally worth it"
ReplyAm I the only one who just doesn't care about this film, at all?
ReplyI'm sure it's pretty but when I see a film, I want character depth and plot. Not pretty effects I don't really care about to begin with.
I think of Avatar this way: it was fun. I had fun watching it. It didn't have great dialog or plot, but I didn't expect either of those. Don't read between the lines, or try and create subtext where there is none, just have fun with it.
ReplyFor me, I hated Avatar before watching it, I loved it while watching it, then I hated myself later for loving it.
ReplyThat's exactly how I felt. I was kind of indifferent when I saw it, and now I regret liking it, because there was nothing to like about it apart from cool special effects.
I didn't think the writing was spectacular. I didn't think it was absolutely the most amazing movie ever, like some seem to believe. But you know what? This is kind of an action movie crossed with a romantic comedy. I knew this going in. With this kind of movie, you really shouldn't EXPECT great writing. So, all in all, I thought it was a decent movie (not great, but decent) with amazing special effects. Maybe this makes me a cynical movie-watcher, or maybe it means I have terrible taste. Either way, it was fun, but not something I'll be telling the grandchildren about.
ReplyIt hurts me so much, as an aspiring new film maker, to read the words: With this kind of movie, you really shouldn't EXPECT great writing.
No. You should. You should expect good writing, in every movie. Stop expecting mediocracy, for Chthulu's sake.
I didn't want to see this movie, for the longest time I didn't see this movie. I was told it was preachy in a "we're ruining the world" sort of way. Then I caught part of it at my parents house, and what I saw was...well beautiful. So I rented it. And it's long, yes, but god damn it's a beautiful movie. I didn't find it poorly written, but I find things like The Hangover poorly written. It had a plot more reminiscent of "Pocahontas" rather than Dances with Wolves, but yes, sure, it borrows a bit, but a lot of movies borrow from things these days. Needless to say, I went from avoiding the movie to owning it on Blueray and not regretting it. Want a preachy movie: see Happy Feet. That damn movie pissed me off.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesThank you! Finally, someone else who didn't like Happy Feet.
people LIKE happy feet?
I disagree. The Hangover is a good movie, it was funny, and I liked it. Avatar was just trying to 'preach' a message via sparkling fairy special effects. You can't 'preach' without character depth and plot. This is exactly what they did with Titanic. In order to make everyone cry, and feel sorry for the main characters, they took the actual disaster and 'added' layers of special effects on to it. Kind of a predictable movie.
Although I do agree that Happy Feet doesn't look like a very good movie.
This movie is one of the most over rated shams ever perpetrated in the history of cinema, and that includes the " revolutionary" use of effects. WETA supplied much of the CGI, but did it with greater skill and expressiveness in King Kong and LOTR. Kong and Gollum both had a depth of humanity in their expressions that the cardboard cut out character in Avatar never reach. This movies really nothing but an amusement ride, and it sucks that it's given credit for being something it's not, ie deep, meaningful,filled with meaningful statements on environmetalism and racism. Cameron's a huckster who exploited those themes. District 9 was everything this movie wasn't.
Reply Hide All See All 7 Repliesim not sure u saw district nine. I watched it at miday after a great sleep and i was struggling to stay awake. Avatar i saw at 11pm after a bad sleep, during the tiring after effects of coffee. By the end i was fully awake and loved the movie. the 90minutes at start i even enjoyed more then any other movie. CANT WAIT FOR AVATAR 2 AND 3 WHICH ARE GOING TO BE MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
I absolutely agree with every single word. Also, Yoda in the prequel trilogy, the CGI Transformers, hell sometimes even Draco in Dragonheart looked way better than the creatures in Avatar. The machinery looked cool, sure, but then again, Star Wars prequel trilogy nailed that years before. There's nothing groundbreaking here.
Oh and 2009 also had Dr Manhattan in Watchmen, and the CGI Arnold in Terminator: Salvation. Sure, those are emotionless characters, easier to animate their facial expressions etc, but those were FAR better than the na'vi.
pffft. District 9 is where the true talent is. Making a total CGI environment is easier then compositing each and every frame by hand like what other movies do.
Hey Trolls, get the heck off this site.
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As an animation student, I have to say it's amazing how many people who don't know jack about animating talk about it. Par for the course on everything really.
The cat creatures' movement itself shows a hell of a lot of attention to detail. The facial movements need some tweaks but so far they are the BEST at capturing actual emotional facial expressions. The reason they don't work as well as they could is because the writing and dialogue distract from it.
If you think technical skill is the same as expressiveness then that's a damned shame.
That's exactly what he did with Titanic. He just exploited the actual disaster, and turned it into a predictable movie, which then won 11 Academy Awards. Making a 3 hour movie about a ship sinking intertwined with a love story isn't ground breaking, isn't magnificent, it's ridiculous, and directors should be banned from taking from huge disasters that have happened. It'll be like turning 9/11 or the Chernobyl nuclear disaster into a movie. I wish James Cameron either wasn't so stupid, or didn't make movies at all. I've seen much better movies that have done worse.
Yes, it was a rip-off of Dances with Wolves, Ferngully, etc. I still liked it, though.
ReplyI didn't think the Na'vi fell into the uncanny valley personally. Several reviewers have siad they did but I never agreed with that assessment.
ReplyYou got the first two right: Horribly written and way too long. It's a beautiful movie visually, but they should have stopped there. If I wanted to get preached to for 3 hours about how evil humanity is, I'd go to church and get some actual points for it. I won't say it's the worst movie I've ever seen (a title reserved for either Scary Movie or Watchmen - two movies that shoved guys' penises in your face without any naked women to make it worth it), but it is a close second, on par with Phantom Menace as epically disappointing based on all the hype.
Replydid you just argue that the only reason those movies sucked was because you're nervous around nude human males?
My eyes exploded out of my head within the first fifteen minutes of the film and then just stayed there, slowly drying out. I didn't care about the godawful writing or the godawful storyline or trying to compare it to dancing with wolves or fern gully (even though, come on, mash those two together and add super combat choppers and there ya go), because good god, the visuals. I wanted nothing more while I watched that show than to jump through the screen and go live somewhere ten times more 'real' than our world.
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