Battlemouth

AVATAR takes us to a spectacular world beyond imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on a journey of redemption and discovery as he leads a heroic battle to save a civilization. James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of “Titanic,” first conceived the film years ago, when the means to realize his vision did not yet exist. Now, after four years of actual production work, AVATAR delivers a fully immersive cinematic experience of a new kind, where the revolutionary technology invented to make the film disappears into the emotion of the characters and the sweep of the story.

The story’s hero is Jake Sully, an ex-Marine confined to a wheelchair. Bitter and disillusioned, he’s still a warrior at heart. All Jake ever wanted was something worth fighting for – and he ultimately finds it in the place he least expected: on a distant world. Jake has been recruited to join an expedition to the moon Pandora, which corporate interests are strip-mining for a mineral worth $20 million per kilogram on Earth. To facilitate their work, the humans use a link system that projects a person’s consciousness into a hybrid of humans and Pandora’s indigenous humanoid race, the Na’vi. This human-Na’vi hybrid – a fully living, breathing body that resembles the Na’vi but possesses the individual human’s thoughts, feelings and personality – is known as an “avatar.”

In his new avatar form, Jake can once again walk. His mission is to interact with and infiltrate the Na’vi with the hope of enlisting their help – or at least their acquiescence — in mining the ore. A beautiful Na’vi female, Neytiri, saves Jake’s life – reluctantly – because even in his avatar body, Jake represents to her the human encroachment on the Na’vi’s unspoiled world.
As Jake’s relationship with Neytiri deepens, along with his respect for the Na’vi, he faces the ultimate test as he leads an epic conflict that will decide nothing less than the fate of an entire world.

That was Aaron’s polite and professional synopsis…my review will possibly contain spoilers, though I will try to keep it at a minimum. Let me start off by saying this…I VERY MUCH enjoyed this movie! I did not get to land a showing at an Imax theatre, though I DID get to watch the movie in 3d. I’m not sure how I felt about watching it in 3d versus watching it in a normal format. The film is SO visually stimulating, and parts of it are just breathtaking, I almost felt at times the 3d parts of scenes detracted from the rest of the movie. There is a seen early on in the film where Jake is running through the woods and I almost had to close my eyes because I was getting dizzy and couldn’t even focus on what was happening.

As far as the look and feel of the movie on the whole, I think being over stimulated is a complaint I would prefer to have rather than the opposite. The CG in the movie is some of the most well integrated I have seen in a film to date. It becomes clear very fast why this movie has the budget it had. From the minute Sully rolls into town the movie does nothing but pick up speed. The final 45 minutes of the movie will leave even the most critical (see @Philipalanoneal for more) speechless.

Ok, well speechless is a bit of a strong word…
I am a highly critical person, I have an opinion on almost anything I come in contact with almost immediately after coming in contact with it. Movies, however, I am far more lenient on than most other forms of entertainment. I watch movies for the sole purpose of personal enjoyment, and a movie like this comes down to expectations. I will tell you right now, If you expect great dialogue, incredible actors, or a believable storyline, you are going to be disappointed. The previews of this movie show enough about the movies pro’s, dinosaur looking animals, amazing cg, awesome fight sequences, scantily clad, attractive 10 foot tall smurfettes, you know, the stuff we have all seen a thousand times.Thats not to say that their aren’t surprises that will blow your mind, (there are, I promise) but the con’s do make for a convincing argument that this movie is NOT as epic as some would have you believe.

Here come the spoilers…and the complaints…

Lets start easy, this one could even be picked up from one of the trailers if you listened carefully to what was being said. The humans are, as I said above, strip mining this planet…with all the incredibly talented, creative people working on this project, they could not come up with a better name for the mineral than…”Unobtainuim”? Seriously…that must be on the part of the Periodic Table with “Hardtofindium” and “Smellsprettybadium” and “prettyliquidstuffium”…Come on writers, the strike is long over now, lets get it together.
Sadly the fantastic names did not stop there. The beautiful chunks of mountains that float in the sky, seen in some trailers, are called…..wait for it….The Hallelujah Mountains. Ok they only actually say the name out loud once in the entire movie, could we not have taken the time to come up with a little less silly name? When in doubt, name something after a color, Redridge, Whitevale, Blue Lagoon, Greendale, Greydale, Fusciaton….and you can take that to the bank.
The next two complaints go hand in hand (which they probably wouldn’t mind, if you know what I mean). Firstly: Sigourney Weaver and Second: Michelle Rodriguez. Yes, they are in this movie, and yes, they speak more than once each. Shame shame shame on James Cameron for letting Sigourney Weaver control an avatar in the movie, thus making her confusingly attractive…talk about some mixed emotions there. And Michelle Rodriguez, I thought she died in Hawaii after LOST or something? Her part at the end, while vital, was also absolutely silly. If you already match all the bad guys, why the HELL do you paint your damn ship a different color so you stick out like Peyton Manning (Go Colts) at Friday Night at the Apollo! And if you must continue to put Michelle Rodriguez in movies…please…for all our sake…don’t give her lines! Granted she doesn’t have many,which is good, and she does show up in only a FEW vital scenes, but if she really wasn’t that important of a character, then why didn’t you just cast someone good looking to at least make it fun to LOOK at her! Sigourney Weaver has put in her time in Hollywood. Thanks to the Alien films it is difficult to begrudge Weaver for showing up in any science fiction movie, she kind of has a pass. It might have been more a matter of the poor dialogue she was given than her acting ability (though I doubt it) that made her so hard to tolerate. Even her inability to pretend to be a chain smoker was distracting (of course as a smoker I am probably the only one to notice…). Thankfully, though both these gals did make me cringe when I saw them on screen IN 3D and throw up a little in my mouth when they spoke, I was having so much fun watching everything else going on that my moments of terror were so fleeting they were hardly a distraction from the overall movie.

Lastly…cliche, cliche, cliche, cliche…from the classic food cart prison break out, to the “blah blah blah” just before killing the bad guy line, to the bad guy himself, you name the action movie cliche, and it probably made an appearance in this movie.

Things to watch for: If you are a WoW fan, take note, Jake gets his wings when he becomes a full fledged Hunter…but after turning it up several notches, you can hear the audible “DING” when he gets his epic flying mount towards the end of the movie. Also, be sure to keep your eye out for the one Smurf warrior in the background of “the sad part” that is pooping from beneath his tail like a horse…it’s classy.

Look, I am not trying to discourage you from seeing this movie, as I said before, I really really enjoyed it! I think it was well worth my money and can’t wait to catch it on blu-ray when that time comes. I could probably even be convinced to see it in the theater again! However, all that said, the point of my relaying these rougher patches throughout the movie are to prepare you…going into the movie aware of these things will make you enjoy it much much more. The emotion runs high in the film and I am quite confident that almost anyone will be a fan of this film.

I highly suggest that everyone see it!