Avatar
PRE SCREENING
The first section of this review was written prior to watching the film this afternoon, and deals predominantly with my thoughts on the hype, marketing, interviews and alternate critical reviews that have appeared across the globe from those lucky enough to see the film already. I feel this is the fairest way to judge anticipation, which in my role as reviewer, happens far too rarely for my liking. I don't look forward to many films being released, so to suggest that this has been a very long wait for me personally is something of an understatement. James Cameron wrote the outlines and formula for Avatar prior to filming Titanic, and only a few years afterwards, I got wind of it.
Ever since, I have been waiting for it to arrive. Today is the day it does, and like many people that know me, I am hoping against hope that it is all I wish it to be.
When the first trailer was released to a world that was, by now, practically salivating at the prospect of this new uber-film from James Cameron, I was much like any other movie fan. I was sitting at this PC on Apple's website, waiting for the thing to pop up in front of me. When it did, I was a little surprised.
POST SCREENING
So now we have been back from the Avatar 3D screening on the IMAX for a couple of hours and I have had enough time to digest what I have seen in front of me. When you actually sit down and think about the event as a whole, it is a truly remarkable achievement of detail and scale and in many aspects, not least technologically, revolutionary. Very few reviews have taken a step back from the film, unemotionally, and seen this exactly for what it is however, and there are issues with the film that have largely been overlooked during the heaped praise, which it mostly deserves. Yes, this is indeed a behemoth of a film in visual delights. This is as 'grand cinema' as you are going to see without travelling forward a decade or two in time. Regardless of your opinion of the film, there isn't a soul that can say they have seen all this before.
I was already familiar with the actors, storyline, plot etc, but one of the things that you couldn't even begin to imagine was how the film looked. Cameron had kept his cards very close to his chest and like everyone else, this was truly a mystery unveiled. Like a birthday present when you think you know what you're going to get, but are surprised when you unwrap it and it isn't what you wished for, there were many naysayers throughout most communities I frequent. This is not to say that the present wasn't still welcome.
But there were many raised voices and capital letters about how it looked, simply as it hadn't matched the imagination of the expectant viewer. And to that extent it was certainly true. I didn't expect Pandora to be so Halo-esque (an environment in game form I don't really enjoy). I, unlike the vocal protesters however, remained silent. I knew that little could be gleaned from the short trailer we were treated to and that Cameron had failed in his first attempt to give the people that had been waiting the longest the thing they craved the most. Spectacle, story, emotion and adventure. Some of it was there, but most of it was sadly absent.
By the time the second trailer arrived, Cameron had put that right and like myself, most of those same detractors were left wide-eyed and grinning like a three-year-old the first time they see Tigger. Relief was palpably unabound.
The film has been so long in the creative process that it is easy to forget what your original expectations were. Reading several reviews that have been gushingly glowing but littered with common-sense also, I was reminded of what I had wanted from Avatar all those years ago. I wanted detail and scale. I wanted to help usher in a new era of cinema. I wanted to be able to say I was there when the future of movie-making changed forever. To be there when the bar was raised and everyone sat up in wonder. Initially for me, Avatar had never been about the story. I had sparse details about the point of it all, but what drew me in was the promise of the visual delights that the new technology was going to be able to provide
I expect the story will be familiar to most of you by now. Crippled Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) arrives, wheelchair-ridden on Pandora, a satellite moon light years away, on a golden ticket. His twin brother was supposed to be going but tragically killed, only Jake's DNA will match the Avatar that has been created at vast expense by the corporation that needs him to navigate the vast jungles of Pandora in order to both study the fauna and flora, and more covertly, find a diplomatic solution to the problem of repatriating the local blue-skinned human like population, known as the Na'vi. They are living right on top of the one thing that the humans need, the appropriately named Unobtanium. This is two hundred years from now and there is 'no green left on the planet (earth)' and this natural resource on Pandora is essential to the future of mankind.
Cameron wastes no time in dropping you right into the action and within quarter of an hour, Jake has arrived, acclimatised and mentally inhabited his eight-foot, blue-skinned body and taken it out for a run. For a man that has spent more time in his wheelchair than he cares to remember, the feeling of freedom he is now afforded cannot be contained. And so begins the story of Jake's three month intermittent tenure of his Na'vi host, spending his sleeping time as a human in the human base, and his conscious time as part of the Na'vi. He meets and is often saved by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), the daughter of the local Na'vi clan leader, and it is at this point that Cameron comes into his own. Every Cameron film worth it's salt has a love story attached somewhere and Avatar is no different. The relationship between Jake and Neytiri blossoms as he learns their language, how to become a hunter and how to catch his very own dragon to fly around Pandora on. He both engages and charms the local Na'vi clan and slowly but surely changes his philosophical stance, from alien invader on a mission to save his own planet to angry native at the invasion that is taking place around him, that he initially helped achieve.
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