such a disappointment

Rating: 3/10 (19 February 2010)

I was excited about seeing Avatar but sad to say it didn't do it for me. I so much wanted to love this movie and be lost in it but no, I'm afraid I found the whole thing completely underwhelming. First the 3D - this was good (well, it would have to be good after all the money that was thrown at it) but did I find myself transported into another world? No I didn't. Yes the flying sequences were exhilarating but not astonishing and they were way too long. The whole 3D thing is still a gimmick, sometimes I found myself wishing that all the little motes and flies and various things weren't buzzing around in the foreground. But the story and the script, oh dear god could they have made it any more predictable? It was turgid, it was ridiculous, the story made no sense at all - what exactly was the point of Dr Augustine's scientific mission? Given that the human invaders didn't care a hoot about the Na'vi and were solely interested in ripping out the mineral wealth of the planet, it had no point. Is it really meant to be an epic metaphor for environmentalists against materialists, treehuggers vs capitalism, good vs evil - I'm sorry but it was lame. And as for Jake Sully's role, he infiltrated the Na'vi so he could do what exactly? Because he never did anything much except play at being one of them. He absorbed their customs and culture, fell in love with the Princess but carried on betraying them? He didn't even tell them to move when Hometree was about to be attacked, well not until the entire might of the military was upon them - and I think they already knew by then! His behaviour was crass, contradictory and stupid but then so was the whole movie. I found myself continually waiting for the inevitable next predictable, laborious step of the story, however, it moved so slowly that at times I was mentally screaming at the screen for them to get on with it. It's 45mins too long, no, I'm wrong, it's at least an hour too long, it has the pace of punctured bicycle.
The character development was non-existent, I didn't care about any of them, as for our "hero", Jake, he was just an annoying, frustrating and useless man-child, Russell crowe lite. The love story was boring, just another Pocahontas cliché, why would she fall in love with that doofus especially as for 8-10 hours a day he's not even in his body. The characters were all facsimiles, we've met them all before in much better movies. The script must have been generated by a computer, it was cliché ridden drivel. Surely they could have made it a touch more sophisticated, engaging, believable, dramatic, exciting. I don't care if two billion people go to see it and it makes a billion dollars, it's still a poor movie, it has none of the epic drama of lord of the rings, none of the humanity of dances with wolves, none of the excitement of terminator - and yet it has ripped off all these movies to lesser or greater extent. I felt cheated on the way out of the cinema, truth be told, I expected so much more...