A feast for the eyes.

Rating: 7/10 (8 January 2010)

Avatar is quite a visual masterpiece, and a real credit to just how far we've come in modern film. There's been too much abuse of CGI (Michael Bay, and your buddy Roland Emmerich) in too many modern blockbusters that the term "special effects" seems to go hand in hand with movies that are hastily written, badly directed, and more carnage than actual plot. "Avatar" sets a new standard for CGI, using effects for their original intended purpose, that is to accentuate the film itself, rather than as a mere decorative distraction.
So much of this film screamed "Star Wars" and "Jurassic Park" to me. As a film student I often am at odds with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, as they are the fathers of modern cinema, but have also bastardized their own legacies in horrible ways. Its difficult to see Lucas as the man behind ILM, THX, Pixar, and the original "Star Wars" film, and also the travesty that became the "Star Wars" prequels. Its even harder to reconcile Spielberg's definitive masterpieces, "Schindler's List", "E.T.", and remember that he was the mogul who greenlit Transformers and defaced Indiana Jones' legacy with that completely unnecessary and irreverent fourth film.
But one has to remember what "Star Wars" meant to the world, how Lucas defined a new standard in sound (Dolby Digital) and special effects from a ragtag group of geeks who tinkered in a garage. Most of all, Lucas was the first to openly defy the studio system, going with the story that seemed an improbably success, securing his own rights to everything that he had created. "Star Wars" rejuvenated cinema because it was a movie that you had to see in theaters to get the full experience of his wild space saga. Jurassic Park was more of the same. When Dr. Grant sees the dinosaurs for the first time, there is just a feeling of complete awe that is so rare in movies nowadays.
Seeing "Avatar" was like that. It was such an experience, especially in 3D, that you couldn't look away, couldn't even think about anything but the lush imagery of the film itself. Watching "Avatar" made me feel pure thrill at seeing scenery unfold, and although it is much to early to much such declarations, it may be a defining moment in cinema for my generation.
That's not to say that this is the perfect movie, or the most amazing thing that I've ever seen. The plot is heavily clichéd, since "Avatar" really is a mix of the "Matrix", "Pocahontas", and the two aforementioned movies. As a culture, after dealing with the likes of M. Night Shyamalan and five seasons of "Lost", the plot for "Avatar" was pretty standard and easy to predict. There is an epic battle scene, which trickles down to basically hand to hand combat (or as close as it gets) between the hero and the baddie. Character-wise there is Jake Sully, the average-Joe of a protagonist, a wounded and world-weary ex-Marine to boot. There's Neytiri, the native Princess who teaches Sully the ways of the forest, and Stephen Lang plays the psychotic army Colonel who is hell-bent on being destructive and generally a pain in the ass. (A good year for Lang, after his wacky turn as a peace & love army guy in "The Men Who Stare At Goats").
However, this characterization can be once again be viewed as using archetypes from mythology as discussed in Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". I'd put money on the fact that James Cameron knows and has read Campbell's stuff, which identifies the underlying patterns in myths and legends, as well as spiritual traditions.
In Christopher Volger's "The Writer's Journey", Volger expands Campbell's work from the 1940s into a framework for plot and character development in fiction, i.e. the formula for success. And it fits almost perfectly. When compared to "Star Wars", which was a huge influence on Cameron (it being the film that caused Cameron to quit his job as a truck driver and enter the film industry). the hero, mentor, villain, roles are pretty clear-cut and similar. For example, both mentor characters (Dr. Grace Augustine/Obi-Wan Kenobi) are killed by the villains, and end up guiding from the netherworld, as part of the spirit of the forest/the Force, which I think are the same thing. We even have a snarky, bad-ass pilot with both a Millennium Falcon and a last-minute change of heart of her own, echoing in the tradition of Han Solo. Well if it works, it works.
What has endeared "Avatar" to me most of all is the technological breakthrough. For too long we've been trying to explain and confront the demise of cinema, because people simply haven't been going to see movies. Unfortunately, this takes away from our generation the experience of movie-going, of being in a crowded theater with other people and sharing a story with them. James Cameron has taken a huge step in bringing the cinema back, with 3-D and IMAX cameras that offer an experience that one can't replicate at home. The 3-D shows were sold out at the first theater that I tried to get tickets at, while the 2-D ones were mostly empty, even though you have to cough up an extra 3 or 4 dollars for the special glasses. Certainly an indicator of 3-Ds appeal.
Will this last? I've been so sick of watching 3-D movies that do things for the sake of being 3-D, such as "Journey to the Center of the Earth" last summer, when things were constantly being flung at your face, from rocks to dinosaur saliva, to Brendan Fraser's ass. Like special effects, 3-D will have to be used carefully and wisely to avoid becoming a euphemism for "shitty". But we'll cross that road when we come to it, I suppose.