Pocahontas with Blue People (aka Avatar): Good, but waaaaaaaaay overrated

Rating: 5/10 (7 May 2012)

Avatar is the story of Jake Sully, a paraplegic ex-Marine who travels to the distant realm of Pandora on a quest to find unobtainium, a valuable new mineral, and study the life forms on this moon. In order to do so, he enters the genetically modified body of the dominant species of Pandora, some really tall, blue thing, in order to investigate more thoroughly. HOwever, when he becomes absorbed into one of the local tribes, he finds himself craving this new life more and more and he discovers that he wants to save these endangered people from his own species. I will not deny that this movie has its high points. The effects were beautiful and the new world was fully engrossing. The new creatures were perfectly designed and their movement was very fluid. The action sequences were very well done, especially the final battle over the Tree of Lost Souls (if that's what its called, I forget). The image of the home tree collapsing was brutal and mortifying. That's it. Everything else, on a scale of awesome to awful, was between okay and bad. The acting was meh. Sam Worthington was alright when he was shouting dramatically, but he wasn't as good at the intimate scenes as he should have been. Zoe Saldana was okay, but nothing special. Her performance was enough to get by, but not enough to push it over the edge. However, I fully acknowledge the difficulty of acting in a full body motion sensor suit, so I give them props for doing as well as they did. Sigourney Weaver was great, but she had such a small role that it diminishes to meh. Everyone else was just support. Acting=meh. The story wasn't necessarily bad in and of itself. t don't really care about the futuristic nature of the story. that's what makes it interesting. What I do care about is that the same exact story has been told about 20 different times in movies. A running joke among my friends and I is that Avatar is essentially Pocahontas with blue people. There is not one single structural difference between the two. Story=bad. The script was not that good. It was really cheesy. You must look in your heart, Jake Sully. Oh, its not like I haven't heard that 3 billion times before. Script=not good Finally, the themes are soooooooooooooooo overused. We must protect nature, save the environment. Its not like I'm against the green movement or anything, its just that those kinds of themes should be saved for movies that aren't serious Oscar contenders (which this shouldn't have been). What I think is that James Cameron is just a publicity genius. He full absorbs people into this new and beautifully designed world with a very elongated, overused story. That way, the first time people see it, they only see the visuals. When they go back the second looking for story, there is nothing there. However, people rarely go back a second time because the movie itself is sooooooooooo long. Overall, this movie is as good as everyone says the first time. You go in, you enjoy the spectacle, and you leave content. And then you watch it a second time. This time, you realize that all of this money was spent on a story that has already been told 20 times over. Seriously, people? We need some originality. Look to Chris Nolan, Steven Spielberg, and Stanley Kubrick. Now those guys are original. Maybe we can shoot for something a little less formulaic. Good, but not as good as everyone says. I give this a 6/10, just because the effects were absolutely unbelievable.