Avatar (2009), by James Cameron
Avatar was okay. Good, not great, and definitely a film that deserved to be seen on the format for which it was designed (3D-IMAX). Director James Cameron's first film since 1997's Titanic was released and eventually became the highest-grossing film (until his subsequent film, this one, which doubled Titanic's $1.4 billion gross. DOUBLED IT. THAT'S NEARLY $3 BILLION FOR ONE MOVIE.) The film is set in the year 2154, when Earth's resources have been depleted and the resources of the lush moon Pandora (home to the indigenous, blue-skinned Na'vi) are being mined and shipped back to Earth. Space marine and newly paraplegic Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is shipped to Pandora to replace his brother, Tommy, who died and was previously part of the Avatar program, in which specially-designed human/Na'vi hybrids are mentally controlled through the aid of MRI-like machines. Jake is sent to accompany the Avatar program leader, Grace (Sigourney Weaver), in studying and trying to gain the trust of the Na'vi, as well as secretly gather intel for Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who is in the employ of corporate leader Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) to help gather the valuable resource unobtainium. Jake then gets lost and it is only with the aid of Na'vi princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) that he is able to survive the harsh jungle environment of Pandora. Eventually, Jake is forced to prove his worth as one of the Na'vi, and must choose between helping Quaritch, or helping the Na'vi.
That is the entire plot. There was very little to surprise me the first time I saw the film. Technically, the film is absolutely perfect: the CGI and motion capture are extremely well done (although not as ground-breaking as either Jar Jar Binks was back in 1999, or the quantum leap that was Gollum in 2002), and the utilization of the 3D effects was used less as a gimmick and more as a natural extension of the cinematic world that was created. The effect actually added to the depth-of-field of the screen (the first shot of Jake Sully ---bathed in blue light and floating in zero-gravity and pointing towards the screen, where a single drop of water floats--- immediately impressed me), and provided a sense of interaction with the screen that became more and more natural as the film progressed. Weta Workshop's engineers (they're the same team that pioneered Gollum eight years ago) have finally managed to perfect computer-generated fire, smoke and (perhaps the most difficult) water (there is a scene where Jake's avatar climbs out of a river after being chased by some panther-like alien, and the effect of his CGI clothing sticking to him and appearing wet actually impressed me more than anything else in the movie...I'm not kidding. Rendering realistic water effects is fucking hard). The effects work and cinematographer Mauro Fiore's lush photography were impeccable, technically perfect, and absolutely beautiful. If every 3D movie were shot with this amount of care and attention paid to the effects work, and if every science fiction film were this beautiful, going to the cinema would return to being an Event. However technically beautiful and perfect the film looks, nearly everything other than the effects work suffers from almost fundamental flaws that ultimately hampered my enjoying the film.
First off, the characters are entirely one-dimensional. Entirely. Quaritch's personality trait is Evil-Army-Colonel. Selfridge's personality trait is Selfish-Corporate-Yuppie. Grace is Jaded-Open-Minded-Scientist. Jake is Gone-Native-Man. At the end of the film, they are exactly the same. The simplicity of each character undermined the overall richness of the visuals and of the social strata developed for the Na'vi. Neytiri and the other Na'vi (Mo'at, Tsu'tey, and Eytukan) have a rich and fully developed cultural history that is hinted at, but those dynamics sadly never add up to, once again, character tropes: the Na'vi are too perfect and so pefectly balanced with their environment to ever really become too interesting; half the time it seemed as if we were observing a diorama of what a civilization such as the Na'vi would have appeared as to our untrained and ignorant eyes, than as if we were truly observing the continued existence of a race that has existed for hundreds if not thousands of years. The film was plagued horrendously with the “white guilt”, and as a result everything about it seemed trite and heavy-handed.
Having said all that, I still admire and respect the film, but merely on a technical level. The script was horrible, with one dimensional characters, predictable plotting, some slight pacing problems, and (despite all the technical innovations that would make the rendering of any thing ever IMAGINABLE possible) rather limited character design. While the overall message of the film was commendable, it still suffered from being entirely pedestrian in its telling, without any real level of suspense or surprise, and the death of one of the major characters added nothing to the story, except to incite Jake into finally acting out against the military (which I guess qualifies as his character arc). The culture of the Na'vi, while rich and dense, seemed too much a metaphor for Native Americans for me to identify with the Na'vi on their own terms; it seemed as if this film were James Cameron trying to present a message with the subtlety of a wrecking ball, where a scalpel would have been the only tool needed to get the job done; had he given the Na'vi a culture that identified them as something unique rather than merely being a tool for pedestrian messaging, I would have found them to be more appealing. However, since he didn't, I was able to make my own guess as to where the story would go...and failed to be surprised when it progressed exactly as I'd predicted.
Science fiction has often been used as a means of expressing or redirecting the concerns or fears of modern culture: Star Trek used aliens to shine a light on race relations, and the Cold War; Star Wars (the first one) seemingly reinvented the mythic hero style of storytelling, while conforming entirely to that paradigm; and so forth. Name a science fiction television show or movie made since The Forbidden Planet (and you can include Metropolis in there too), and chances are there is a plethora of subtext to be examined (hell, even B-movies like Starship Troopers could be examined in like). Even Cameron's own Terminator 2 and The Abyss (still my favorite film by him) could be be examined under several pretenses (which I might elaborate on in future articles. But with most of these films, the metaphor is subtle and told in a precise way, and it feels organic to the story and to the characters. With Avatar, the message seems so sloppily presented that it came across as feeling a bit weird (the scene where Grace is presented to the Tree of Souls, to become one with Ey'wa, always, always, makes me feel uncomfortable, and I'm not entirely sure why), and, at worst, perverts the characters (who become mechanisms in service of the plot). I feel as if there was a point during the making of the film where Cameron forgot how to write the way he used to, or to direct action scenes in a way that raises the stakes considerably.
Comparing the finished film to the original treatment, Project 880, which was considerably more dense and detailed, makes me think that I would have preferred to watch the original vision for this film than what ultimately feels like a CliffNotes version of it. Despite its runtime, Avatar still feels rushed and cramped, with none of the characters taking any time to develop emotionally, or with any sort of real connection to the audience. The audience feels for Jake Sully because he is the one who has the most screen time, not necessarily because he is interesting, or likeable, or played by an actor who has any chemistry (sorry, Worthington...you've still not grown on me as an actor). For a movie that promised (and delivered) so much in terms of special effects and the movie-going experience, it is such a shame that Cameron chose to display all this prowess on such an empty film.
The epic score by James Horner coupled perfectly with the visuals to create an epic, heroic swell to the film, and may have actually been the second-most-enjoyable aspect of the film (number one being, of course, the visuals). Mauro Fiore's lush cinematography (despite most of the visuals being computer-generated) still added a lovely feel of the exotic to the proceedings. The fact that motion-capture has progressed as far as it has since 2002's The Two Towers (or even The Phantom Menace back in 1999, when it really hit the public consciousness) is impressive, and what Cameron managed to do with the technology is worthy of praise. But, again, it boils down to one simple thing that made this film work as a story....
...the plot just sucked. It was awful. None of the character beats were surprising, and the fact that it was so predictable and rote made the characters that much less interesting; half the time I was waiting for the inevitable plot twist which would cause the character to change. The characters' decisions failed to feel real, as if service was being paid to the characters as people, and not as plot mechanisms, and for that reason I just couldn't give a rat's ass about anyone. And when you think about the ending of the film, it narrows down to a human coming to an alien world and showing the aliens how to navigate their own culture, tame their own world, and become better warriors than they ever could aspire to be (only after he'd learned everything there was to learn about them), and be the only hope to band them all together in order to rid their world of other humans (whose victory at the Hometree was guaranteed by....the same human outdoing them at everything). Also, once the technologically-superior humans are beaten and sent off Pandora, what's to stop them from just sending more ships, more men, and larger weapons? It seems a rather hollow victory in the long-run.
Avatar is a visually beautiful, lush film that fully utilizes the technical potential of 3D, motion-capture, and computer-generated imagery. As a story and a film, it falls apart, and in a few years, when this very pioneering filmmaking technique is used in every blockbuster film, it'll be sidled alongside films like The Jazz Singer or The Birth Of A Nation: very finely-crafted films that are important on a historical sense, but don't really add up to all that much when you finally get around to seeing them (I've gotta say, for a talkie, The Jazz Singer has an awful lot of inter-title sequences). It's the technical achievement and talent brought aboard that matters, but it's merely to inspire the newer generation of filmmakers to take those tools and use them in more interesting ways. How Avatar, a film that was expressly designed for 3D IMAX viewing, will play on a 2D home-theater system is another question entirely: does it live up to repeat home viewings?
Avatar, for the time being, is a beautiful time and a fun ride, like a roller coaster: exciting, fun, and a true experience, but you can see all the twists and turns a mile away, and you're stuck in a chair full of people you'll never think about again in your life.
