‘Avatar’ is Miraculous
-----James Cameron, the legendary Director behind ‘Terminator,’ ‘T2: Judgment Day,’ ‘Aliens,’ ‘Titanic,’ and my favorite of the aforementioned lot, ‘True Lies,’ has returned after a twelve year hiatus from narrative filmmaking. So what was he doing for all those years? He was biding his time for the technology to catch up to his imagination, and the visual result cannot be captured in words. But I’ll try.
-----‘Avatar’ takes place in 2154, with humans exploring a distant planet known as Pandora. Jake Sully, a paraplegic ex-Marine, is headed out to the planet to control his late brother’s Avatar; an alien body that Sully has his conscious transferred to in order to better communicate with Pandora’s natives, a species called the Na’vi. His mission is to get friendly with the species, and diplomatically relocate them so that humans can harvest a mineral underground where the Na’vi live.
-----Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully. Worthington dumps all of the generic aspects of his mediocre work in the second-rate ‘Terminator Salvation’ (ironically a franchise built by James Cameron) for a gritty and endearing take on a fearless Jarhead. He wins over the audience quickly, and best of all, he perfectly portrays a blend of action hero and human being; proving to be an actor worthy of the franchise that will surely come of ‘Avatar.’ He’s just plain damn cool; and his blue motion-capture Avatar counterpart is equally stunning, perfectly reminiscent of Worthington’s human appearance. Zoe Saldana plays Neytiri, an actual member of the Na’vi tasked with teaching Sully their ways in a last-ditch effort to educate the humans. Saldana, who was also in this year’s fantastic ‘Star Trek’ reboot, is at her very best here. She brings a very genuine and subtly alien state of mind to the role, acting as the face of the Na’vi for the audience. Her performance harkens back to the culture shocks of meeting someone from a tremendously different background, magnified by the fact that the two leads are from different planets.
-----In an excellent supporting role, Sigourney Weaver plays Dr. Grace Augustine, a human expert on the Na’vi race and the premiere mind behind the Avatar program. Weaver gives her best and certainly most potent performance in years, providing an essential veteran presence to the young cast. Stephen Lang plays Colonel Miles Quaritch in another great performance that supplements the film. An old school shoot-first mentality motivates his determined screen presence throughout many of the film’s pivotal plot points. Giovanni Ribisi continues the run of well cast characters, as a corporate entrepreneur looking to take advantage of Pandora’s resources. Rounding out the superb ensemble are a few more familiar faces in Hollywood. Michelle Rodriguez (of this year’s disappointing ‘Fast & Furious’) gives the best performance I’ve seen from her as Trudy Chacon, a pilot on Pandora. Joel Moore (of ‘Dodgeball’ fame) plays a nerdy scientist also in the Avatar program, and Dileep Rao (of this year’s above average horror flick ‘Drag Me to Hell’) has a bit part as a scientist, though his role suggests a larger one in possible sequels. It’s one of the year’s strongest casts, composed largely of relatively unknown yet familiar faces, all of them sharing the screen exceptionally.
-----Yes, it is your classic Cowboys and Indians tale. There isn’t really too much originality in the plot; save that it’s on a different planet, but nevertheless the story perfectly suits the film’s epic scope. And after all, life is often cliché, and the unfortunate truth is that ‘Avatar’ is a realistic prediction of what could happen should we discover a planet unwilling to share its resources. There is the occasional moment of apparent explanation to the audience in the dialogue, though even these scenes carry a certain energy with them. That being said, the bulk of the script is inspiring and fun, perfectly pulling the audience into the struggle of the protagonists in a way reminiscent of ‘Star Wars.’ And subsequently, with an epic scope as large as they come, the film draws many similarities to my first time watching ‘The Phantom Menace’ in theaters, and being utterly blown away by it. While that film will always be the source of mixed opinions, ‘Avatar’ will likely be universally loved for its cinematic grandeur. Its moral foundations also extend beyond the petty politics that some will accuse it of. There is an environmentalist theme in ‘Avatar’ to make PETA proud, but it’s on a grand basis rather than a particular agenda. Most people will agree it’s a sound ethical underpinning to set the film on, especially considering the superior intellect of the plants and landscapes on Pandora, many of which have more inner activity than the human brain. Ultimately, you have to see the film to understand what this means, but the bottom line is that there is a firm, if familiar story to set the backbone of ‘Avatar.’
-----Now to talk special effects…. Maybe the only way to effectively sum ‘Avatar’s visual prowess up is to take every word synonym for grandeur and escapism and visual spectacle found in the English language, combine them, and then realize you’ve still fallen short of describing the vivid mass creation that is ‘Avatar.’ If Cameron had chosen to merely have a camera gliding across his planet-a surreal, unreal, yet completely realized work of art-for three hours that would have been enough to make a great film. So to add the classic story with great characters and epic battles is to basically send all of ‘Avatar’s viewers into a collective mass orgasm of visual pleasure. Pause the film at anytime and you’ve got a supreme work of art, all as real to the eye as the rims of your 3-D glasses. Cameron has managed to take the freedom and interactivity of the extraordinary, immersive environments and atmospheres that come with today’s greatest video games, make them look real and put them on film; resulting in an absolutely jaw-dropping theater experience.
-----The musical score is triumphant, playing off the epic battle sequences with an ease and control. The cinematography puts you on Pandora with the leads, and the overall Art Direction is the perfect gateway into Cameron’s grand design. Makeup, motion-capture effects; everything is done so beautifully that you’ll take them for granted almost instantly, accepting them to be real. After forgetting that you’re watching a film or sitting in a theater, you’ll also forget the film is in 3-D, completely gimmick-free and executed to an uncanny degree of consistency. All you’ll know is what the leads know, and all you’ll feel are their emotions and struggles and aspirations. It is an experience unlike any that has ever emblazoned the silver screen, and it is an insult to the film’s magnificence not to see it in its intended format, the 3-D big screen. I made my way out to an IMAX after waiting a gut wrenching 20 hours from when I could have seen the film on a smaller screen, so as to save my first viewing for the ultimate theater experience. Wow…completely worth it.
-----‘Avatar’ is certainly worth its hype, and likewise fully lives up to it. That being said, it’s been a great year for movies, and while it will definitely compete, it’s not decisively the year’s best film. It has garnered some comparison to 1999’s ‘The Matrix’ due to its groundbreaking visuals in the Science Fiction arena, and the narrative similarities between partaking in the Avatar program and entering the Matrix; with both films questioning the prevalence of dreams and the confusion their respective protagonists experience by way of interactions through their alternative conscious’s seeming more authentic than reality itself. This also relates to the viewer’s experience, as we must go back to the comparatively mundane day-to-day proceedings of our lives after living the epic that is ‘Avatar’; but don’t worry, you’ll get over this letdown in about 20 minutes. While ‘Avatar’ isn’t quite as good as ‘The Matrix,’ its best attribute is no doubt its undeniably epic scope, and the fact that its innovative technology will be marveled at even 20 years from now as the first film of its kind, much like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ is admired for its brilliant special effects work back in the 60’s. Its impact may very well also compare to '1995’s ‘Toy Story,’ forever altering live action special effects work much like ‘Toy Story’ revolutionized animation in filmmaking. It unanimously takes the crown for the year’s most essential film to see on the big screen, and I stress that everyone see it in its superb 3-D format.
-----Ultimately, I have to think that this is why movies were put in theaters in the first place. ‘Avatar’ takes you to a new world as real as our own, deceiving your mind for a beautiful three hours, making you think Pandora’s a real place that you can actually visit, when in reality, you already have. It’s a gorgeous piece of art, reaffirming my answer to abstract art skeptics who think practical art is lost; I simply tell them they must go to the movies, and more specifically, go see ‘Avatar.’ Acting as one of the few films guaranteed to be admired forever after only a single viewing; ‘Avatar’ is a miracle of cinematic escapism.
-----Oscar Watch: Ten Best Picture slots guarantee a home for ‘Avatar,’ a film that can’t be denied, given the majesty of its wonderful visuals alone. It will also get a ton of well deserved technical nods, and others like Art Direction and Makeup. I was worried when the film was left out of early Awards shows, but they hadn’t seen it yet, and the Golden Globes nods bode well for the ‘Avatar’s Oscar hopes. It just robbed ‘District 9’ of the Special Effects Oscar, and on that note, 2009 alone featured the release of ‘District 9,’ ‘Watchmen,’ ‘Star Trek,’ and of course, ‘Avatar.’ The four have a combined Green Hat Rating of 20 Stars.... I’m starting to think that Sc-Fi fans maybe had a good year?
-----Tidbit: Next Summer’s unrelated ‘Avatar: The last Airbender’ (based on the excellent Nickelodeon animated series) could take a special effects hint from Cameron’s ‘Avatar,’ especially given some of the similar themes and visuals; I’m thinking particularly of the episode ‘The Swamp.’
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