A decade later, still great

Rating: 8/10 (2 January 2020)

I had a chance to revisit this on New Year's Day. What a decade it's been for the movies. In terms of motion capture and the realism of the artificial faces, it's still up there. Nobody has been able to surpass it yet, not even Josh Brolin's Thanos (his was not that bad, actually) and the Cameron produced Alita Battle Angel. That one gets a little degree of separation because the main character was designed to have those huge eyes on purpose. But other than that, what other movie can you name that blew you away?
Part of the reason is because one man was in charge. One single mind governed the creation and dynamics of this world, and thus, everything is logically related. Usually with any sort of visual effects movie, the effects work gets farmed out and subcontracted further down all over the world so the work can get done faster and the movie released faster. All that means is countless people are fighting over the soul of the movie, and nothing will tie together.
What impresses me here 10 years later?
WETA, WETA, WETA. With this one, they went dimensional. The camera is placed in positions that no physical camera could. The camera moves alien in the alien scenes, especially in the beginning when Jake first gets uploaded, and in the flying and battle sequences. The movements of the aliens and creatures inform the movements of the camera.
Weaver: she openly acknowledged she is playing Cameron. So Cameron put himself in the movie as the person who is directing the events. It's a nice bit of self reference.
The home tree: It's huge and helical and spherical and home to an alien population. When it's brought down, it's downed like the World Trade Centers, right down to the smoke column.
What didn't I like? The machine guns. Apparently we are now a space faring civilization that can splice DNA into human-alien hybrids, but we still use Vietnam war era weaponry? The answer is obvious, because tracer rounds still look cool in action scenes.