Taking cinema to the next level

Rating: 8/10 (23 December 2009)

I saw Avatar on IMAX last night. It was a packed house and we waited more than an hour to get good seating.
Frankly, I had heard so many drooling reviews of this movie that I went in a little skeptical of the whole thing.
The Good: First thing that jumps out at you is the same feeling of awe and amazement that hit you when you first watched Jurassic Park in 1993. The sheer scale of the movie, the fascinating new world, exciting new creatures, the brilliant colors, the exotic new people and their language - all draw you to the narrative instantly.
It helps that within the first 15 minutes Cameron lays out the basic premise. This ain't no Matrix, and you know who The Guy (Worthington), His Chick (Saldana), The Good People (Na'vi, Weaver et all) and the Bad Money Guy (Ribisi) and the Bad Muscle Guy (Lang) - both of who WILL get their ass kicked ....er....after your 13 bucks worth of juice has run out..
This kind of CGI hasn't been done before and you'll love it for its novelty, and the state of the art CGI more than compensates for the fairly run of the mill story. Especially for the folks who have watched Dances With Wolves, the parallels are eerie - from pantheism to white guilt.
In a large part the audience stays gripped throughout the movie, not so much because of the next turn in the story (there isn't any turn, in fact there isn't any story), but because they WANT Cameron to hand-hold them through his vivid imagination, they WANT to to see his wonderland.
In a nutsheel, Cameron deserves a 10/10 for the breadth of his imagination, the epic scale of production and the next generation CGI.
The Bad: Story is linear and predictable. At times it appears that Avatar was constructed around some key CGI elements - not the other way around as we expect in a great movie. We have actors of great caliber, but there isn't much for them to do - in fact except for Jake's and Grace' character, we do not get an insight into the others. This, despite a running length of 162 mins. So you get the picture? Or shall I say the CGI..
6/10 for the story
And the Things to come: Obviously sequels to such movies are expected. They'll just be to make some more money. The studios have found a new franchise to milk (after Potter, LOTR) and they will do it. Expect Avatar Theme Parks, Rides, Merchandise and what not.
Overall, just as Spielberg created a benchmark for CGI with Jurassic Park, Cameron has taken it to the next level with Avatar. And for that creative effort to visualize and create something new and fresh Cameron deserves an 8/10 for this movie. And a few Oscars for CGI and stuff.
PS: This movie is climbing up the top 250. My take is that, just like other CGI movies, this hype will sunset after a while and it will eventually settle b/w 7.5-8.