Avatar - Through The Magic of Facebook

Rating: 5/10 (20 December 2009)

I believe my review can be summed up with the following Facebook conversation with my dear friend, Hannah.
Me: We saw Avatar 3D this morning. It was... alright. Long. Good special effects but the story was pretty much Pocahontas if John Smith was the main character and it was 150 years in the future.
Hannah: I thought it was long too! And I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought it was only alright. What didn't you like about it? Or what made it not OMG FANTASTIC? :3
Me: It must have been almost 3 hours!! The story was so clichéd, and I didn't like any of the characters. The 3D was really cool, though, and I really want to go and live in that forest.
Hannah: It was, actually. 2hrs, 55mins! Also, we are twins! It was the cliché that got me. Usually, clichés are okay with me, but you could predict things so far ahead. "Dragon thing nobody else can ride? Yeah, he'll do it. Oh look, he's done it." And... now that you mention it, I didn't have any emotional connection to any character. But I admire the complexity of the world... Like, that alone would have taken years to come up with. So many subtleties that nobody would really appreciate, but made it so real... I want a forest like that :D
Me: AHH THAT'S SO LONG for such a story. It was so predictable. As soon as the female Na'vi (can't remember her name) saved him I thought 'They'll end up together'. You see the Colonel guy, you know he's evil. And of course you know Jake's gonna end up picking the natives over the cruel, terrible, heartless humans... Action bores me sometimes - especially that last battle scene, which I thought was so pointless and superfluous - WHY did they fight again? Oh RIGHT, because they HAVE to stand up to the humans SOMEHOW, even if it's suicidal. It was VERY complex. I watched for lots of little details and thought it was really cool. Especially the rendering of the characters and stuff, how they were so detailed.
Hannah: Yes, exactly! Like, you just knew exactly who would be with what, and... I can't of anything that made me go "WOW, TOTALLY DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING :O" Action is usually okay to me, but yeah, I didn't get why they fought and stuff. I mean, they won, but... We didn't see any of the grief of the people, so many things just were left unsaid. Like, did they care about all the deaths? Also, I would have thought the female would be a little more resistant to falling for him, because yanno, she was sworn to someone else... >.< My favourite part was the music... GAH, it was pretty great! *music geek* And the little things about their world...
Me: I don't mind SOME action, but I get bored when action drags out. And drags out. And then just keeps going with nothing progressing... They won - HOW? Somehow! It was so improbable, because if that had *actually* happened they wouldn't have had a hope. Also, the forest probably would have burned down... because there was a hell of a lot of fire around and no one was putting it out... Wait a minute... if there was no oxygen on Pandora, how was fire able to EXIST? PLOT HOLE ALERT! to some degree. Exactly! *nods vigorously* And why did they even let him into their culture? Did they know he was a human? They knew there was something wrong with him yet somehow they were all surprised that he knew they were going to destroy the tree. The music was good, although I don't think I paid too much attention to it unfortunately. Avatar did have a good score.
Hannah: OMG, you are so right about that fire thing!! GAHHHH!! Maybe it was magic fire? But seriously, they couldn't have won... Soldiers aren't THAT dumb, yanno? And then, they all turned on him when they found out he was human, but didn't Eywa love him, so shouldn't they have just trusted them? Their god had given him her blessing, so clearly he wasn't as evil as they made out... I didn't either; the sign of good music is when you don't notice it!
Me: Magic fire in a magic world. Perhaps the atmosphere allowed it to burn somehow. I have no idea. Hell, why did the soldiers wait so long to dump those explosives? They would have won so quickly if they had dropped them instead of waiting til the flying creature people showed up. The whole storyline is just an exercise in convenience. 'Oh, I'll conveniently not question your mysterious past until it's dramatically convenient for plot development'.
How to sum up our feelings? I suppose you could say that we believe that impressive graphics do not justify such a weak, predictable plot and one-dimensional characters. However, go see Avatar to appreciate the imaginative landscape and beautiful cinematography. Especially if you enjoy staring at pretty things for three hours.