EDIT: Damn, had this one marked as 1/8/09 at first. That 10 does take some getting used to.
How does one begin to address a movie as immense and encompassing as Avatar? I’ll start by putting Roger Ebert and the New York Times’ reviewer forward as pinch hitters, both far better writers than I, and with that warm up I’ll proceed to my own thoughts.
I’ll start with visual effects so as to avoid spoiler warnings until later.
For me, the most important question concerning computer generated imagery (CGI) in an otherwise live action movie is whether I can tell which bits are CGI and which bits are real. Perhaps it’s due to technological limitations, or perhaps the director doesn’t really care, but whatever the reason, in nearly every movie I’ve seen that uses CGI, it's been painfully easy for me to sort out which of the visuals are physically real and which have been painted on by a computer. The Star Wars prequels and the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie (specifically, the storm/whirlpool at the end) contain some of the most glaring examples of this, though if I were to put my mind to it I could come up with multi-page list. The Lord of the Rings series did a surprisingly good job, considering the subject matter, of appearing realistic, most notably in the subtle CGI crowd simulations used for the Battles of Helm's Deep and Gondor in the second and third movies, respectively. Still, there were some glaring missteps, particularly the cave troll in the first one and the oliphants in the third.
Coincidentally enough (or not), the one movie I’ve watched that manages to pull this off really well is Terminator 2. While fantastical and unnaturally liquid and shining in appearance, the T-1000 was specifically intended to appear this way. With the help of the occasional old-fashioned prop/prosthetic, Robert Patrick's metal side appeared to truly exist in the real world. The digital effects served to bring the fantastic to life, as opposed to simply showing off just how powerful ILM's computers were.
Well, I can't truthfully say that James Cameron's latest opus completely satisfies the CGI question, as there are definitely areas where I could tell the difference. But I can say that Avatar comes far, far closer to nailing this category than any other movie out there. Avatar's Wikipedia article describes Cameron's fascination with the Lord of the Rings' hybrid CGI Gollum, and it really shows here. The blue-skinned alien Na'vi, brought to life with what I can only imagine to be a massively complicated combination of heavy makeup, prostheses, and judicious use of CGI (apparently the actors actually had miniature cameras attached to their heads and suspended in front of their faces in order to perfectly (95%, say the filmmakers) capture their expressions), really do appear to exist. Keep in mind that each one of these creatures is a 10-12 foot tall two-legged humanoid possessing "supermodel dimensions (slender hips, a miniature-apple rear); long articulated digits, the better to grip with; and the slanted eyes and twitchy ears of a cat," to quote the NYT review. And they move gracefully, yet naturally--realistic stumbling is probably harder for the effects people to well than preternaturally graceful walking, yet they do it here very, very well--so rest assured that this would have been literally impossible to do justice to without CGI. And back to my main point, you don't notice that it's CGI, you just see an alien being as if it had strode out of James Cameron's overactive imagination directly onto the screen.
Especially the faces (very minor plot spoiler, skip the brackets if you'd prefer not to see it).
SPOILER [[scientists in this movie actually link with and pilot/become Na'vi bodies grown specially for themselves in order to study the planet and interact with the natives, and seeing the resemblance between the human faces and corresponding Na'vi faces is really...I hate to use a cliche, but just mind-blowing.]] END SPOILER
I can't overemphasize just how incredible this looks.
And it's in 3D. That's right, 3D glasses-type 3D. Cameron apparently went all in for 3D in Avatar, far beyond the sort of novelty niche that 3D glasses movies generally occupy. I haven't seen any verbatim quotes from him to this effect, but based on other things he's said, the fact that he went to some lengths to get theaters on board, and the fact that even the video game based on the movie is intended to be viewed in 3D lead me to believe that he considers 3D the definitive way to see Avatar. Ebert probably sums it up best:
Cameron promised he'd unveil the next generation of 3-D in "Avatar." I'm a notorious skeptic about this process, a needless distraction from the perfect realism of movies in 2-D. Cameron's iteration is the best I've seen -- and more importantly, one of the most carefully-employed. The film never uses 3-D simply because it has it, and doesn't promiscuously violate the fourth wall.
Don't be put off by visions of horrid
red-green 3D glasses
, though. 3D viewing technology has come a long way since the 50s, and the colors and brightness appear as real and true as they would in a 2D movie.
And now to the story and characters. I'll have to put up general spoilers for this section, just so I don't have to constantly micromanage my writing to avoid giving anything away.
MEGA SPOILERS
I've heard the plot of this movie compared to Dances With Wolves, which I haven't seen, but after hearing a bit about that movie, it sounds more or less correct, with the major differences besides the general sci-fi setting and other obvious areas being the Na'vis' and the biosphere's actual neural connections with each other.
I hadn't seen Dances With Wolves, which probably enhanced my Avatar experience. I found Avatar particularly wrenching. It's hard to articulate exactly why it evoked such intense emotions in me; the closest I can come to even describing them is a vague hybrid of joy and sadness, as well as a strong sense of finality in many areas, like that of an old life left behind and a new one wholly embraced (not surprising considering the ending) but also an acknowledgment of eternity and one's own mortality, perhaps thrown into sharper relief by the adoption of the new life.
Spotty recollections of FernGully (the book most especially, though Wikipedia appears not to have a page for it) come to mind, and I can remember a somewhat similar emotional reaction to that book, which I read well before I was 10. There are definite parallels, mainly the environmental aware plus immersion in a wholly alien culture. I was quite the little dreamer in those days--I both felt for the natural world and conjured up my own fantastic ones with the sort of all-consuming ardor and passion that only a child has the time and undivided attention for. Deeply, deeply emotional--I had few if any friends in those days, which let me push even further into such feelings.
The only other creative work that also evoked the sort of emotion in me tapped by this movie was E.B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan, about a friendship between a boy and a swan who cannot sing but can communicate with humans via chalk on a slate and with fellow swans by using a trumpet. Beautiful book, and with the same sort of serene happiness at the end that seemed so perfect that I actually cried after finishing it. I was probably 11 or 12.
But back to Avatar. Again, I can't put my finger on any single thing or things that truly moved me in this film. There were many touching moments, many of them sad, but none of them really shook me emotionally—I felt no deep sense of loss when the Na'vi chief was killed during the felling of the Hometree, nor when Grace (Sigourney Weaver) died/melded with Eywa. In fact, at several points I found myself silently tsk-tsking Cameron for making the Na'vi a perfect amalgam of the Native American and African stereotypes of the Noble Savage, and gently ridiculing him for glorifying primitivism. There are other flaws I noticed that I point out at the end of the post.
Yet despite all of this, as the movie ended I felt the most bittersweet sort of feeling overtake me: joy at the new, more personally fulfilling and meaningful way of life Jake and the others would now lead, combined with the most exquisite, aching sort of longing, perhaps at the unblinking knowledge that this was all a dream, a spectacular parade of images of a world that will never exist in my lifetime or probably at all within our universe. But the sadness wasn't just a desire to escape to a fantastic dreamland full of lush forests, pure emotion, and noble savage aliens (a double whammy for the sci-fi environmentalist hybrid that I am). It was far more diffuse than that, I think. By the time the credits rolled, Cameron had done such a wonderful job of slipping it all past me--the fictional future, Pandora, the Na'vi, the whole story--that I found I had unwittingly immersed myself far more in the movie and its world than I allow myself to do with most things these days.
Immersive, yes, that's the best word for Avatar. And that's probably why the first things that came to mind afterward were two books. Movies may excite with sound and motion, but go pick up your favorite novel and tell me you don't feel more mentally and emotionally there than if you were to watch it on a screen. Avatar is almost like that. I just wish I could go back.
Flaws/loose ends:
*"fight terror with terror"--this line made no sense and sounded suspiciously like it had been inserted to push a contemporary comparison; the Corporation had just won a smashing victory against the Na’vi by destroying Hometree, and while the Na’vi had certainly been hostile to the humans before this, they could hardly have been said to have waged any sort of terrorist campaign against them. More like Vietnam--even in Iraq today we generally call the enemy 'insurgents,' switching to 'terrorists' only for propaganda purposes or if they strike at us outside of the combat zone. In Avatar, the entire planet is a combat zone.
*the ‘boss battle’ with the Colonel dragged on a bit, felt like Cameron was trying to milk as much hate from the audience as he could.
*related to the above, I felt slightly uncomfortable about the Colonel at times--just a bit too easily villainous, though Cameron could have done much, much worse.
*The film does get a bit indirectly preachy at points; I already mentioned the Colonel as a representation of Bush Administration arrogance, and there's also the primitivist and environmentalist stuff I discussed in the body of the text. It can get tiring, though perhaps a bit less so for me as I agree with most of the environmental stuff. Certainly Cameron could have really twisted the knife by adding that 'unobtanium', the mineral that the Corporation is mining on the planet and that goes for "$20 million a kilo" back on Earth, is, say, crucial to the manufacture of medical products that save thousands or millions of human lives. Far too ambitious in scope for a movie, though; try a book or perhaps a TV show.
NOTE: Cameron did acknowledge the primitivist angle and described his use of it thusly: "'the Na'vi represent something that is our higher selves, or our aspirational selves, what we would like to think we are' and that even though there are good humans within the film, the humans 'represent what we know to be the parts of ourselves that are trashing our world and maybe condemning ourselves to a grim future.'" Well and good, but it still felt a bit too black-and-white.
*I understand how well the final transference of Jake’s soul to his Avatar served as the ultimate coda, but it did seem a bit odd that he wouldn’t have done so earlier, most notably after mating with Neytiri. Spiritually and emotionally, that was the point of no return for him, though he did seem a bit slow to catch on to the full social consequences of the act. Granted, the circumstances immediately following his awakening (Battle of Hometree, being perceived as a heartless spy by the Na’vi) would have made it impossible for him to conduct the transference until after he tamed the Toruk, at which point the attempt is made to transfer Grace. But why didn’t he make the transfer then, though? It seems odd that he would enter into the final battle against the Corporation as a full Na’vi warlord without addressing the glaring chink in his armor of remaining tied to his crippled human self, unconscious in an undefended trailer in the forest. [note: the more effects-oriented moviegoer in me was very disappointed that Grace's body transfer failed; perhaps it’s because she’s the only Avatar actor whose face I knew long before this movie, but again, I found Sigourney Weaver’s avatar particularly fascinating to watch.]
*probably minor: at the end, Jake narrates the departure of the Corporation with words like "back to their own dead planet, which they had killed long ago". I couldn't help but think that there are probably not a few people back on Earth who didn't make the trip to initially hellish Pandora but who would fit right in with the remaining scientists and their appreciation of nature. Still, what can you do? It also drove home the point that Jake's adventure and the overall story required an immense amount of technology, funding, and general overhead, what with the specially grown Na'vi bodies and interface system which must have cost ungodly amounts of money, plus the extreme bad/good luck of joining the mission at the last minute because your twin brother died. In this incarnation, at least, this is not at all a universal story or an adventure accessible to all, which detracts from it slightly.
*minor: the Na’vi’s Light Brigade-style charge into the fully automatic, high powered rifles of the ex-Marine mercs. Even if one concedes that Jake, himself a former Marine with full knowledge of the tactics and weapons of his old Jarhead Clan, was too busy with strategy and inter-clan diplomacy to drop a quick line to the Na’vi ground forces about basic tactics, it seems odd that the Na’vi themselves, after years of skirmishing with Corporation forces, did not realize the futility of a Pickett’s Charge and adjust their tactics accordingly. Simply attacking one or both flanks from the sides would have made a world of difference, though perhaps a chivalric emphasis on the ‘honorable’ frontal attack is part and parcel of the more angelic Na’vi psyche. Alternatively, one could argue that until now the Na’vi had only fought the mercs at the squad (10-20) or platoon (50-60) level, whereas engaging a full battle line of several companies (~100 each) requires altogether different tactics and an entirely new level of command and control.
*very minor, but the plot was a bit too predictable overall, especially after Jake entered Hometree for the first time. Given the already massive length of the movie, though, I suspect that it would not have been feasible to add more to make it less predictable.
*****
LAST NOTE: I added 'Margaret Atwood' in the tags for this post because both she and Cameron are Canadian by birth and both write about/film pessimistic futures with a similar general tone.
