Na'Vi defeats Marine Corps in titanic struggle.AVATAR
Directed and written by James Cameron
Twentieth Century-Fox, 162 mins.
*
So now we have it—James Cameron’s Avatar. We’re told that that Cameron (Titanic) spent fifteen years developing the story and waiting for technology to evolve before filming his $300 million spectacular. For comparison’s sake, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings trilogy in two years and used a typewriter. Peter Jackson filmed all three Tolkien books for what it cost Cameron to make Avatar. What we learn from this is that James Cameron is no Peter Jackson and he’s sure as hell no J. R. R. Tolkien. This is easily the most-hyped film in recent memory; alas, it’s almost one of the most unoriginal, overrated, and boring.
Ty Burr of The Boston Globe was the first to observe that Cameron’s script is identical to that of Dances With Wolves. Replace the Indians with exceedingly tall blue creatures that are a cross between elves, humans, and bipedal hairless cats, and you have the Na’Vi, our good guys. Take the 19th century U.S. Cavalry and make them into 22nd century U.S. Marines and you’ve got half of your bad guys. Mix in dozens of Earth post-apocalyptic films, transport the Garden of Eden to the moon Pandora, let the human race collectively stand in for the serpent, and you’re most of the way there. Oh yeah, include a pinch from Utopian novels in which a cynical observer—Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) in this case—slowly goes native. Then assemble a pastiche from other sci-fi projects—the man-in-machine suits from RoboCop and Toy Story, the mining equipment from Dune, spaceships from Star Wars, the oversized guns from Escape from New York, the piloted pterodactyls of Dinotopia, and armor-plate the fauna of Jurassic Park—turn the entire thing into a video game and a saccharine romance, call it the “next generation of computer animation,” and wait for the shekels and accolades to accumulate. It must be serious sci-fi, right? After all it has Sigourney-Alien-Weaver in the role of research scientist Dr. Grace Augustine.
The story that took fifteen years to tell? The Earth is a wasteland, but commerce continues. A valuable mineral—that does what, exactly?—is being mined on Pandora, 4.3 light years from Earth. The natives are in the way of progress and the military industrial complex—embodied in cowboy Marine Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and corporate man-on-the-ground Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi)—want the problem resolved. Dr. Augustine has figured out a way for humans to transfer their brainwaves to cloned Na’Vi bodies, the avatars of the title. Jake Sully, a paraplegic ex-Marine, gets the call when his highly trained brother dies because his DNA is compatible with the avatar body. (Apparently Sully also got the assignment because of his ability to parse lines lifted from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness while channeling Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now.) His mission is to convince the arboreal Na’Vi to relocate, but because he’s also supposed to supply complete tactical information on the vulnerabilities of their giant (and we mean giant) tree homeland, what are the chances that gung-ho Colonel Quaritch will wait? Gee, I wonder if Sully’s going to find his sleek, mobile body preferable to his wheelchair? And do you think, just because it’s telegraphed from the start, that he and his female mentor Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) will fall in love? Toss in nature-based spiritualism that’s a horrendous stereotype of Plains Indians religion, give the Na’Vi a chant ritual that’s lifted from the Balinese monkey chant sequence in Baraka, and just for kicks give them the power to transfer the living essence of a dying being into the body of a Na’vi in ways that look suspiciously akin to a Vulcan rite in Star Trek, and all we can conclude is that it took Cameron fifteen years to plagiarize.
So how about the f/x? We suppose there is magic in some of this, though it hardly matches the ballyhoo. After a while, though, even Cameron’s fantasy world wears thin. Garish colors call attention to the fact that this is all CGI. It also signals what this film really is: a giant video game—cool, except that Cameron has his mitts on the joystick and we can do is watch. In the last quarter of the film lots of things go boom in a big way. The forces of Mordor gather—Oh wait, wrong film…. Will the evil Earthlings wipe out the peaceful Na’Vi? Will evil Colonel Quaritch kill Jake in a final mano e mano struggle? You can answer those question without taxing your grey cells. Avatar is nothing more than expensive paint-by-the-numbers filmmaking. From where we sit Avatar is titanic mess that left us feeling as blue as a Na’Vi.
Directed and written by James Cameron
Twentieth Century-Fox, 162 mins.
*
So now we have it—James Cameron’s Avatar. We’re told that that Cameron (Titanic) spent fifteen years developing the story and waiting for technology to evolve before filming his $300 million spectacular. For comparison’s sake, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings trilogy in two years and used a typewriter. Peter Jackson filmed all three Tolkien books for what it cost Cameron to make Avatar. What we learn from this is that James Cameron is no Peter Jackson and he’s sure as hell no J. R. R. Tolkien. This is easily the most-hyped film in recent memory; alas, it’s almost one of the most unoriginal, overrated, and boring.
Ty Burr of The Boston Globe was the first to observe that Cameron’s script is identical to that of Dances With Wolves. Replace the Indians with exceedingly tall blue creatures that are a cross between elves, humans, and bipedal hairless cats, and you have the Na’Vi, our good guys. Take the 19th century U.S. Cavalry and make them into 22nd century U.S. Marines and you’ve got half of your bad guys. Mix in dozens of Earth post-apocalyptic films, transport the Garden of Eden to the moon Pandora, let the human race collectively stand in for the serpent, and you’re most of the way there. Oh yeah, include a pinch from Utopian novels in which a cynical observer—Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) in this case—slowly goes native. Then assemble a pastiche from other sci-fi projects—the man-in-machine suits from RoboCop and Toy Story, the mining equipment from Dune, spaceships from Star Wars, the oversized guns from Escape from New York, the piloted pterodactyls of Dinotopia, and armor-plate the fauna of Jurassic Park—turn the entire thing into a video game and a saccharine romance, call it the “next generation of computer animation,” and wait for the shekels and accolades to accumulate. It must be serious sci-fi, right? After all it has Sigourney-Alien-Weaver in the role of research scientist Dr. Grace Augustine.
The story that took fifteen years to tell? The Earth is a wasteland, but commerce continues. A valuable mineral—that does what, exactly?—is being mined on Pandora, 4.3 light years from Earth. The natives are in the way of progress and the military industrial complex—embodied in cowboy Marine Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and corporate man-on-the-ground Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi)—want the problem resolved. Dr. Augustine has figured out a way for humans to transfer their brainwaves to cloned Na’Vi bodies, the avatars of the title. Jake Sully, a paraplegic ex-Marine, gets the call when his highly trained brother dies because his DNA is compatible with the avatar body. (Apparently Sully also got the assignment because of his ability to parse lines lifted from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness while channeling Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now.) His mission is to convince the arboreal Na’Vi to relocate, but because he’s also supposed to supply complete tactical information on the vulnerabilities of their giant (and we mean giant) tree homeland, what are the chances that gung-ho Colonel Quaritch will wait? Gee, I wonder if Sully’s going to find his sleek, mobile body preferable to his wheelchair? And do you think, just because it’s telegraphed from the start, that he and his female mentor Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) will fall in love? Toss in nature-based spiritualism that’s a horrendous stereotype of Plains Indians religion, give the Na’Vi a chant ritual that’s lifted from the Balinese monkey chant sequence in Baraka, and just for kicks give them the power to transfer the living essence of a dying being into the body of a Na’vi in ways that look suspiciously akin to a Vulcan rite in Star Trek, and all we can conclude is that it took Cameron fifteen years to plagiarize.
So how about the f/x? We suppose there is magic in some of this, though it hardly matches the ballyhoo. After a while, though, even Cameron’s fantasy world wears thin. Garish colors call attention to the fact that this is all CGI. It also signals what this film really is: a giant video game—cool, except that Cameron has his mitts on the joystick and we can do is watch. In the last quarter of the film lots of things go boom in a big way. The forces of Mordor gather—Oh wait, wrong film…. Will the evil Earthlings wipe out the peaceful Na’Vi? Will evil Colonel Quaritch kill Jake in a final mano e mano struggle? You can answer those question without taxing your grey cells. Avatar is nothing more than expensive paint-by-the-numbers filmmaking. From where we sit Avatar is titanic mess that left us feeling as blue as a Na’Vi.
Love, love, love your review. But what caused so many people to lose their good sense about this movie?
ReplyDeleteThanks, E. Why have so many failed to see that this movie is a fraud? Our guess is that it's akin to driving into a setting sun--all that glare can cause blindness!
ReplyDeleteI agree totally. Actually I found the 3D disapointing too, the cutting of the action sequences didn't take into account that if you have things popping at the periphery of vision, then it's incredibly distracting especially in the action sequences. And the speed of cut was nearly as bad as Quantum of Solace - which was awful - when you lose geography of where the good guys are compared to the bad guys - look at Black Hawk Down or others.
ReplyDeleteWhy would anyone be surprised this film is a pile of nonsense? What the hell else could it be? Most of the $$$ involved go towards publicity and flying people round the world to big it up.
ReplyDelete