Avatar

As I write this review for the latest product of James Cameron’s imagination, Avatar is about to overtake Cameron’s own previous effort, Titanic, at the top of the all time worldwide box office (barely $6 million separate the two, so Avatar will be #1 by dawn).

Domestically, the feat of passing the most famous ocean liner will be achieved by next week, a virtual guarantee since Avatar is now less than $48 million behind.  Titanic’s standing had been in the crosshairs of many blockbusters before, but none had been able to get close enough to threaten its standing, -- except maybe The Dark Knight domestically.

Avatar, however, was unstoppable from the get go, just like Titanic before it, and trounced virtually every record set before by summer tent-pole movies that battled it out against each other for what now looks like breadcrumbs.  In the process, it set the bar so high that it is guaranteed to stay at the top for a long, long time.  At this point, it’s not outlandish to think that Avatar could pass the $700 million mark for the first time in history.  Worldwide, there’s even talk that it could top $2.5 billion dollars, a previously unthinkable result.

It seems ironic that the movie every director in Hollywood dreamed of beating at the box office was finally beaten by the same guy that directed it, although it also makes sense that the same director who created such a standard bearer as Titanic simply made a new one for the next decade.  Or two.

Avatar is the story of a marine who is sent to the distant moon-world of Pandora to help resolve a diplomatic impasse between the humans and the local population, called Na’vi.  The Na’vi are a race of very tall, strong, blue individuals that live their lives in complete harmony with the nature around them.  They are one with the plants, the animals, the whole planet.

The humans are after a mineral that is abundant on Pandora but not on Earth and that is very valuable.  The Na’vi’s own home is built on one of the biggest deposits of this mineral, and the humans need them to relocate in order to mine it.  Naturally, things don’t go as the humans expect them to, and a lot of fighting ensues.

One of the ways the humans have devised to better deal directly with the Na’vi is to create a hybrid human-Na’vi creature, an avatar, that can be remotely controlled by a human who makes a synaptic connection to it with the help of a lot of high tech gadgets.

Our hero, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is paired with one of these avatars in order for him to get closer to the Na’vi, but then something happens.  Something is different about him and Pandora seems to have a connection with him that it doesn’t have with any other human.  This connection allows Sully to get close to the Na’vi.  So close that he even falls  for one of them.

I won’t say more to avoid spoiling the vision, but that last point, is very important.  Yes, because even with all its action and adventure, 3D spectacle and visual effects, Avatar, at its core, is a love story, just like Titanic was more than simply a lot of visual effects to sink a big boat at the bottom of the ocean.  Love between Sully and his Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and love between the Na’vi and their world.

Naturally, what really captures the spectator is the visual wonder that the director and his collaborators have been able to create.  They invented a whole world, its fauna and flora, and their imagination had no limits (and neither their budget apparently).  Furthermore, the most amazing thing about Pandora aren’t even the wonders Cameron created, but the fact that they look undeniably real.  So real and alluring in fact, that no one can easily escape the desire to go there themselves.

Cameron is clearly a cinematic genius, one of those directors that can’t be matched and shouldn’t be restrained by budgetary concerns.  They have a vision and will do anything to make it come to life.  For Avatar, he had to improve the existing 3D and performance capture technologies in order to make the mix of live action and eye popping CG look seamless.  And he reached his goal.  Nothing we see on Pandora looks fake, imagined, or even far fetched, unlike, for instance, what George Lucas served us with the last three Star Wars movies.  Those worlds looked so fake, you never thought of them as real, not for one second.

Avatar is, bottom line, a cinematic experience, an experience so realistic, thanks to the RealD technology perfected by Cameron, that it’s like being there.  To watch Sully walk around Pandora, touching plants and fighting animals that look and feel as exotic as what one could find in a primeval forest here on Earth, ought to have the same wondrous awe audiences must have felt when sound was added to motion pictures, or when CinemaScope and Panavision were first introduced, blowing the silver screen to gargantuan proportions.

Having said that, I do think that Avatar is somewhat lacking in the screenplay department, which I consider fundamental to the full success of a movie.  Let’s not focus on the complaint made by some that Cameron’s movie is simply an updated version of Disney’s Pocahontas, which is pretty much true but doesn’t detract from the quality of the story or its implementation.  Forget also about the fact that the subject isn’t that original (love and respect Mother Nature; Nature vs. Technology, … ).

What really bothered me was that while Cameron might have perfected a way to display characters in three dimensions, as if they and us were in the same room, he still hasn’t mastered the creation of characters that are multi dimensional in their personality and actions.  Too many things happen inorganically, maybe because it’s required for an upcoming scene, or simply happen, very conveniently, too damn fast.

Take for instance the rapidity with which a man who has been relegated to a wheelchair for a long time is able to take charge of an external body he never even saw before and use it as if it were his own while his healthy colleague underwent 500 hours of training and still feels a little off, as one should.  Or take the love-struck look Sully gives Neytiri within seconds of making her acquaintance, and this in spite of her being an alien creature who looks nothing like the women he has been attracted to his whole life.  Or again, take the choice of picking Neytiri to train and teach Sully into the Na’vi’s ways.  Isn’t that a little too … convenient?

Apart from that, the cast does a good job or filling both the shoes of their characters and the bodies of their avatars, although no one particular actor or actress could be pointed at for a standout performance.

In conclusion, Avatar is the once-in-a-generation game changer that must be seen to be believed.  It simply cannot be explained with words what it feels like to experience its world.  Don’t miss it.

Grade: 9