So it's been awhile since I've done a movie review, but with the new year fast approaching (happy soon-to-be 2010 by the way) I thought that I should return to form and start spending my time in a dark, crowded movie theater sitting behind some crying kid, and wedged between two popcorn loving families that apparently have no sense of the word 'personal space' (or 'personal hygiene', if you want to get right down to it). Thus it is that I usher in the first of many movie reviews to come, in preparation to what I like to call the most wonderful time of the year: Awards Season! But enough of that, on with the review!
If you've seen a movie lately (lately meaning sometime within the last 20 year
s) then you've inevitably heard of James Cameron, director extroidinare with a career that shows for it: Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and most notably, Titanic are some of the many films that Cameron has made over the years, and has made them great, and when I say great I mean highest grossing film ever made great, 11 Oscar wins great. You know, that kind of great.
But in order to understand his latest success, Avatar, you have to go back a few years Cameron's Titanic days, when he announced in 1996, a year before Titanic hit theaters (see what I did there?) that he would begin working on a film tentatively titled Project 880 as soon as this whole Titanic business was over and done with. Hot on the heels of Titanic's splash with the movie-going world (the puns are too easy) , everyone was waiting in anticipation to see what else Cameron has up his multi- million dollar movie making sleeve. In 2006 though, he had to explain the delay of 880 was due to the fact that he was waiting for technology to catch up with his vision. Pretty ostentatious, but considering that this is the same man that built a camera specifically to be used in filming 3D and CGI movies, this only made
audiences more excited and interested in what was sure to be another ground breaking film that would provide an impressive notch in an otherwise amazingly well-notched belt.
And then the first trailer came out for Avatar (the name now changed from 880). Audiences were suddenly split in to two camps, those that thought the movie looked terrible, and those that were still excited to go and see it despite many of the complaints being toted by nay-sayers: the plot is basic and cliche! That CGI doesn't look all that impressive! Where's my groundbreaking CGI battle scenes between aliens and humans?! The Na'vi aliens don't look real at all! This looks like Dances with Wolves mixed with Smurfs! This is Dances with Smurfs! I want building excitement over the past 12 years back!
The list went on and on until it was time for Avatar to be unveiled to audiences
(after yet another delay, the movie was only just released in December as opposed to May to allow for more post-production editing, complex CGI work, and to allow more theaters to install 3D projectors to further give audiences the wow factor). And were they wowed! With an opening day total of 27 million, and a total of $642,993,860 wide so far, its well on its way to being just as successful as Titanic. But now for the actual critique:
When I went to go see Avatar, it was at Gallery Cinemas in Woodstock, which is not equipt with a 3D projector, so I saw Avatar in plain old 2D, and I can still say that it was mind blowing. I was one of those people who was skeptical after the first trailer, taking the story at face value and considering it un-original and done before, but trust me, you haven't seen it done like this before, you haven't seen anything done like this before.
Yes, the whole 'military and government are here to destroy some planet and its
people just for some rocks beneath the surface but oh yay, the bad guys turn around and become good guys to save the day' thing has been filmed before, but it hasn't been filmed by James Cameron, and that is what sets this movie apart from every other. Well that, and the ground breaking CGI work.
In the middle of the movie I had to stop and remember 'This is an entire world that was made from nothing Someone in a tiny studio spent weeks making that rock: giving it form, texture, making it interact with every other rock, plant, animal and being in this world in a realistic way' and the fact that there are millions of rocks, leaves, plants, animals, vines, etc in this film that look, act, and move realistically to the point that you thought they were real, is damn impressive to say the least.
And not only did you believe they were real, you felt for them. You were concerned for the Na'vi people, you felt their pain every time something horrible happened to the planet that they loved so much, every time a tree was crushed, a leaf burned, an animal killed, you wanted to cry along with them. This is the kind of emotional connection that some directors can't get audiences to feel with live action movies, sets and characters, let alone for an entire world built from a computer, and that in itself shows how amazing James Cameron is at doing what he does: he made audiences feel sorry for a bunch of computer generated aliens made from nothing but pixels and color, and feel a sense of unadulterated hatred for the bad guys, aka the real live actors portraying humans. That by itself deserves an award.
As for the rest of the movie, it was pretty good. The Na'vi people look realistic and their language, culture and world is unique and something that audiences enjoyed finding more about during the duration of the film. The main character, Jake Sulley, is likable, relatable, and everything else you want your main protagonist to be, while the bad guy general is every bit as rotten to the core as he needs to be: by the end of the movie, you hate him more than you've hated anything else that came from a movie, and when the moment finally comes for him to be overthrown, you'll want to cheer in your seat (and forget all about the cheesy dialouge this guy spouted throughout the whole film). The final battle is in a word, epic, and in 3D would look amazing between the explosions, aerial dog fights with machines and birds, and the heated struggle on ground level.
And while the story is a bit, well, cliche, you're not going into this thing for the story: you're going in to it wanting to be amazed, to see something that you've never seen before, to experience what James Cameron has been wanting you to experience since the 90's when he first envisioned a world that would capture your heart and imagination. And if you go into the film with these goals in mind, you will not be disappointed.
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