Avatar: the experience

Rating: 6/10 (19 December 2009)

In the run up to avatar i was excited, like most i was intrigued at first, slightly let down by the first trailer, excited by the second so by the time the film came out my expectations were high. And having seen it I was left disappointed. I was promised something amazing, something that would change everything and yet avatar is essentially a display of stunning and clever effects contained within a poor story. As soon as it begins we're off, no build up, no character introduction, a character at the beginning says that its convenient that Jake had an identical twin brother, it is mighty convenient as it gets Jake to Pandora witbout a reason greater that "why not?" also, we never even find out how Jake lost his legs, nothing major, but a conversation point surely when he becomes close with his colleagues. This is the same throughout, typical dull characters, the bookworm friend, the aggressive mentor, the tough female pilot ( the character played by Michelle Rodriquez, a character with no meaning in her existence apart from transporting Jake from A to B). The best characters are the guys we're supposed to hate, they get all the best lines, Stephen Lang and Giovanni Ribsi's characters we're wonderfully layered, their true intentions revealed slowly. Then of course there's Sam Worthington, he's not a terrible lead, but he's not spectacular, he's watchable, nothing else. Then there's the film itself, at 2 hours and 40 minutes its too long, but worse than that its too long at not telling us much. We get Jake's journey and the story of the avatar program, and yet its nothing that couldn't be told in a 2 hour movie. Then Cameron's direction, in a world without camera's he can put it anywhere in a scene and yet he almost always chooses to place it in the standard, two shot area, for an apparently "game changing film" its incredibly ordinary in so many aspects. However the visual effects of the film, the 3D and the motion capture are incredible achievements, i was amazed when i first saw the avatar's, they are fantastic at rendering the actor's performance, upon seeing Sigourney Weaver's avatar, i was taken aback by how real it looked, its unfortunate that the motion capture effects don't quite stand up when placed with the live action footage, the effects are incredible, but they're just not real, its not that they're not realistic, but that I know they're not real, and you just know when it's not. A part of me was always thinking "Final Fantasy cutscene" in the cgi sections. Avatar is an interesting cinema experience, with the amount of 3D, motion capture, cgi films already on the cards, its probably safe to say Avatar was a game changer before release, and maybe in a time when the industry congratulated Cameron's technology, his innovation, maybe he payed less attention to the film he was making, to the story he was telling, the film has a clear environmental message, but there's no real conclusion, live as one with nature? Be kind to the earth? Humans are generally horrible creations? It's not that Avatar is a bad film, its just not a good one, excelling in visuals and plummeting in story and characters, you've heard the story a hundred times before, just not with blue aliens. Avatar's OK, it just didn't blow my head off in the way I wanted