Avatar (2009)

Country:

USA

Recognizable Faces:

Sam Worthington
Zoe Saldana
Sigourney Weaver
Michelle Rodriguez

Directed by:

James Cameron

I've seen this movie back in January, but I've been itching to talk about it on Dead End Follies since then. Now that I have an official format of reviews, I can give this frickin' movie the beating it deserves. In a perfect world I wouldn't have bothered with Avatar, but due to the fact that we live in a pressuring Occidental society, I had to go out and check that GROUNDBREAKING 3D MOVIE!

STORYTELLING

Let's play a game that's called "Ring my bell". I'll tell you a plot and you tell me if it rings a bell for you or not. Foreigner arrives to unscathed land with "progress" on his side. Foreigner falls in love with native woman, but has for duty to take over her land. Foreigner feels double crossed and decided to double cross his own people in order to keep the chick on his side. He ends up with her, in the ravaged, but safe land with the love of his life and the foreigners going back where they come from.

Did I just told you the plot of Pocahontas? YES! Did I just told you also the plot of Avatar? ALSO! See, I had the displeasure of having been locked in a classroom at 14 years old with a video tape of the Disney movie and a class full of girls so I know the damn pattern OK? What's bugging me here is that James Cameron is vaunting this story as being "fifteen years in the making". What's so hard about plagiarizing?

Let's be fair for a second. Avatar is about crippled soldier Jake Sully, who comes on planet Pandora with human race in order to scavenge their natural ressources. He is mandated by the corporation he works for to step in an "avatar body" of a Na'vi(Pandora's native race) and get information about their ways of living. Sully falls in love with a native and with her culture in general...and hell...you know the rest.

DIRECTING

There are some redeeming factors to this three hour long monstrosity. James Cameron crafted an eco-system and a culture that is unique to planet Pandora and quite a delight for the eyes. The movie is full of breathtaking landscapes and has a scope of epic proportions. It's an eye candy that in many ways will remind the gamers of their medium. A few scenes of Avatar seemed to have been taken from adventure games like God Of War.

The main fuss about this movie has been around its GROUNDBREAKING USE OF 3D. Personally, I'm not a fan of this gadget. I know it's coming along to be the next best thing in entertainment, but the medium is thick. You have to wear glasses and most of the time, the 3D effects feel plastered more than alive. Avatar uses a lot of 3D but still feels like a lifeless carnival attraction.

ACTING

This is wear Avatar loses its feathers. There is one convincing performance throughout the whole movie. Zoe Saldana crafted a unique character that has this spark of wilderness inside of her. You can understand why Sam Worthington's character falls in love with her, despite the fact that she's a blue giant apelike alien.

Saldana aside, the acting is terrible to the point of breaking the suspension of disbelief. Worthington is FLAT and could've been played by any random Hollywood kid, Michelle Rodriguez's role is useless and Sigourney Weaver gives an average performance at best.

The lemon price goes to Stephen Lang though. He didn't have the greatest character to start with. Colonel Miles Quartich is the retarded little brother of Lieutenant Kilgore from Apocalypse Now, who can't seem to be able to move without his cup of coffee. Lang doesn't make the most of it though. He constantly tries to outdo Robert Duvall in Kilgorish behavior and ends up looking like a bad reject from a slapstick comedy.

INTEREST

None. Avatar is a pretentious superproduction with little to no substance to it. This is the kind of product you get when you make a movie with the idea in mind that it will be the greatest movie ever. The sad part in this story is that Avatar became the greatest movie ever on box office...

NOTE:D