Dances With Wolves in Space...

Rating: 5/10 (31 January 2012)

I really don't understand what people mean when they say this film is "James Cameron's Masterpiece". This film is the same old cliché recycled story that we as movie goers have seen a hundred times over.I can literally think of three other films with this exact same story arc and plot line as I type this review. One, you have Lawrence of Arabia, Academy Award Winning film including Best Pictue. It's based on the true story of T.E. Lawrence, a British officer in World War I, and it's a great movie. Two, you have Dances With Wolves, yet another film that won Best Picture in 1990 and was based in the American West. Three, you have, of all things, Pocahontas. It deals (as all of these movies do), with a man finding his true nature and coming to the aide of an indigenous people in the face of oppression. So let me ask; Why, if there are numerous other films that have the same premise, then why does everybody fixate on Avatar? I don't understand. The thing that makes or breaks a movie in most cases is the film's ability to be relateable and it's ability to connect with the audience, and the relevance of the movie in the real world. While Avatar is visually stunning, I'll completely agree with that, it's not relevant at all. The movie was 99% rendered in a computer, (granted it was based on live performances), but if that's your movie's hook "Look at what I can do with my Camera!!!", then that's not too good, especially when you KNOW that going into the movie. When you watch Dances With Wolves, you're aware that it's taking place in the real world and it's a potentially true story.
Aside from the overall plot and execution of Avatar, the casting really bothered me. Lets look at this: Sam Worthington was hollow as hell and anybody could have played him. And at this point in the game, he's just been forced down our throats to the point where the studios are just saying, "Here's your next big star!". Zoe Saldana didn't really bother me too much except she was a little over the top in places, such as when she first meets Sam Worthington's character. Sigourney Weaver was actually really good in this movie. I had no issue with her what so ever, and she's a Cameron favorite. How could I resist that? Lastly, and this ties in with what I said before about the computer generated aspect of the film; the overall character design was too "perfect" for a primitive alien culture. Picture this: Instead of the Na'Vi being this perfect fantasy creature, they looked like an "alien of the week" from Star Trek: The Original Series? I'm just saying that if the Na'Vi looked less perfect then would Jake Sully have really found himself? Umm...yeah, probably not. All the movie really accomplished was creating a perfect sci-fi creature for Nerds.
Overall, I don't hate Avatar. I actually can see that there are some good elements to it and it was done pretty well. That's something that will always be true of Jim Cameron movies is the quality of them. They'll always be really high quality. That being said, I just have too many other problems with it and I just can't get past them because there are other movies out there that are just executed a lot better and are so much more relevant than Avatar.
5/10 not stupendous.