Avatar

Avatar (2009) – at Cineleisure Orchard yesterday. James Cameron is one of those movie directors whom Hollywood seems happy to sign off huge budgets to produce pet projects of his… and with good reason why. He makes films only once in a while, but every one of them turns out to be financial winners for the studios. His last three films were: Titanic (1997), True Lies (1994 – will there ever be a sequel…?!), and Terminator 2 (1991) – all huge successes at the box office.

To be honest, I’ve also been influenced by the hype concerning Cameron’s most recent production, Avatar. Heck, even broadcast television in Kumamoto was saturated every night with news and theatrical trailers of Avatar. The film had been in production for the last 15 years now, and cost USD237 million to make – possibly the most expensive film ever – in part due to the new 3D video recording technology that Cameron created specifically for this film.

The story’s set about 150 years into the future where humans have found a lush moon called Pandora, and are intent on mining it for a precious mineral called Unobtainium – no kidding. Unfortunately, Pandora despite its beauty is also hostile on account of its unbreathable atmosphere for humans, flora and fauna, and its blue-skinned humanoid but giant natives, the Na’vi. Unpersuaded to move and relocate off a rich Unobtainium deposit, the humans resort to force, but not before employing their genetically grown Na’vi controlled mentally by human operators in a scientific program called Avatar to infiltrate and gather intelligence about the Na’vi for the upcoming battle. The story takes a turn when their own human operator, Jake Sully, falls in love with Neytiri, a princess of the Na’vi tribe.

Just to get it right out of the way: the visuals in Avatar are splendid. Not just in terms of its texturing, modeling, animation, character and world design. It includes even cinematography. Ling was surprised when I told her that just about everything that constituted outdoor scenery – and a good portion of the interior scenes – were computer generated.

Unlike the other CG-fests like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the (virtual) cameras employed in Avatar aren’t operated by steroid-injected monkeys. It’s actually possible to follow the action and many thrilling set pieces when Sully leans about and explores the almost fantastic world of Pandora.

As for the cast and characters, there’s a couple of familiar faces: especially Sigourney Weaver, who plays the lead scientist sympathetic to the Na’vi tribe. There’s also Sam Worthington who most recently starred opposite the surprisingly wooden Christian Bale in Terminator: Salvation, and also Michelle Rodriguez who’s always fun to watch, and no surprises here again when she plays the Latino military chick.

Of the lot though, it’s Stephen Lang who plays Colonel Miles Quaritch and whom audiences are going to enjoy watching immensely. I remember Lang only from two films: Gettysburg and the prequel Gods and Generals, but he looks completely different here: all buffed up with a fierce scar, playing a hard-as-nails military soldier who is itching for the military solution to the predicament. Funnily, while he’s clearly one of the two ‘evil’ antagonists (the other is Giovanni Ribisi from the Saving Private Ryan alumni and who plays the corporate shrill), his motivations aren’t entirely unsympathetic. Whether you agree with the guy and his methods or not, at least you can see where he’s coming from.

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Minor spoilers ahead

Unfortunately, I also found Avatar disappointing in a number of regards. Firstly, the characters aren’t all completely fleshed out, and most seriously with the two leads Sully and Neytiri. Sully starts off with good potential: he’s in the Avatar program because he’s the genetic twin of the last deceased operator, but his background and training are entirely different. The film makes a big deal of this in the first 5 minutes, but is forgotten for the rest of the film. Opportunity lost there to have added a few more subtexts to his character disposition. Neytiri fares little better: aside from being Scully’s mentor and later love-interest, she has little else to do by way of significant story outcomes.

The most serious defect however was that Avatar plagiarizes from other well-known films, the most obvious ones being Dances with Wolves, and to a lesser degree The Last Samurai. There were no surprises in this film for me: the themes and story are the same as the earlier two films. You get human aliens barging in on natives who’re learned to live in harmony with nature and their surroundings and who sing kumbaya all day long.

There’ll also be one human being who’s the maverick and who joins in the natives to learn about them, and by film’s end will turncoat against his own race. Big battle ensues which can go either way: either the natives lose (as in Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai), or they win – the one and only story surprise in Avatar for me. I’d expected them to get wiped, though they nearly do. Beyond that, Avatar is essentially about John Dunbar’s American Indians in space.

On the last, I guess it’s James Cameron’s little way of saying that humans must stop as they ravage green Earth as this time, they can’t win against the forces of nature.

On the overall, Avatar’s still a must watch especially if you’re not allergic to 3D glasses. If nothing else, it’s a visual spectacle and is already touted to sweep the Oscars next year. I just didn’t find the story terrifically original or refreshing, which was a huge downer as you know pretty much how the story is going to turn out.  Between this and the other overtly alien sci-fi film this year District 9, I found the latter a far more intelligent film (though let down in other areas).