2009/PG-13/Drama
Avatar is the latest release from the Oscar winning director of Titanic James Cameron. This movie is nothing short of spectacular. Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I typed that wrong. This movie is nothing more than mediocre. There we go.
Avatar is the age-old (read: "tired") story of evil soul-less capitalists exploiting nature-loving spiritual natives for their ubervaluable natural resource. As usual, the vile villainous humans enlist the assistance of the armed-to-the-teeth-and-out-for-blood mercenaries to subdue the uncooperative underdeveloped aboriginals. Who are the heroes that will lift the helpless victims against this seemingly insurmountable foe? Why it's the scientists, of course! Can the resourceful scientists organize the disadvantaged natives? Will they successfully defend their homeland against the powerful greedy humans preventing them from acquiring that which they are after? Did this movie come out of Hollywood?
Honestly, I have no idea what all of the hype was about with this movie. The special effects look cartoonish, the acting is barely adequate, and, perhaps worst of all, the story is stereotypically average! Seriously, here is a brief list of movies with the exact same plot line just off the top of my head: Jurassic Park, Fern Gully: The Last Rain Forest, Fern Gully 2: The Magic Rose, Ernest Goes to Camp, WALL-E, Atantis: The Lost Empire, and Goonies to name a few! A ragtag band of underdogs usually lead by some awkward scientist trying to protect their environmentally friendly home from certain destruction because of some great money-rich scheme dreamed up by an evil corporation. I mean, come on! Avatar is simply a retelling of this boring, over-used, trendy plot line.
There was one aspect of this movie that was both surprising and yet not all at the same time. Most Hollywood movies treat religion as though it were the opiate for the masses. Surprisingly, Avatar did not. In face, it was the religion of the Na'vi that allowed Jake to be one of them forever. Not only that, but their deity's name was "Eywa," (pronounced Ay-Wah) an interesting jumble of the Hebrew God Yaweh (pronounced Yah-Way). The not surprising aspect of this is that Eywa is the interconnectedness of all nature on their planet. On the one hand: their faith is real, on the other: nature is their god.
My final complaint about this picture is that, despite James Cameron's decades in Hollywood, this film still reeked of it's "written and directed by" status. One key thing that a director who did not write a movie can do is leave some scenes on the cutting room floor. If you direct what you wrote, cutting a scene or a subplot is like lopping off the limb of one of your children. It's very painful and incredibly difficult to do. However, if the limb is diseased with gangrene it's something that must be done! Mr. Cameron was unable to chop off even the little finger of his baby forcing us to endure a movie that was unnecessarily long. The DVD I watched was from my local library. I wasn't too surprised to see that of all of the special features, "deleted scenes" wasn't among them.
When I first saw the preview for this movie, I went so far as to purchase two boxes of a specially marked cereal so that I could get a free movie ticket. I was going to use this ticket to see this movie. I lost the necessary portions of the cereal box and did not get my free movie. Having seen Avatar on DVD, I didn't miss anything.
There isn't much to praise about this movie. I will say that I was surprised at the death and destruction that Mr. Cameron allowed before executing his predictably contrived ending. And for that, I'll allow him
0.5 out of 5 stars.
4 comments:
I wont tell you what I thought about Avatar because we watch movies for very different reasons, but I would like to say that you forgot Dances with Wolves in your movie list. The plot was exactly the same just on a different planet.
and Disney's Pocahontas... right down to Jake Sully (J.S. aka John Smith) and the funky tree of live bit. In your review you left out the word predictable. I felt it the minute the two main characters were approached by men on horseback, I thought ... hmm, betcha the leader of those guys is supposed to be with the female lead. Yep! --- predictable.
The one thing I did get out of it was a surprising sense of sympathy for the American Indians/Native Americans. Whenever that done-to-death plot has been used in the past I never felt the connection to American history, but for some reason it worked for me in this story, perhaps because it was on a planet far, far away I could somehow see it more for what it was.
Otherwise, it was unfortunately forgettable.
miss talking with you and V. more, seems like forever since we've really caught up...
I haven't seen it, nor do I have much interest in seeing it. I figure if I do it will be at a time when I'm overruled in the video of the evening :) nice to see you posting again - it has been too long. I'm surprised you've had nothing to say on the oil spill, the red sox, or life in general. I miss those posts! Bring them back!!! :)
We talked a bit about this movie in Sunday School. Well, we were actually talking about hinduism, "avatar" is a deity that comes from heaven to earth. Anyway, that movie came up and we also learned that James Cameron is sympathetic to hinduism. If I knew more about that religion, I'd watch the movie to see if I could find any messages.
I'm glad to see you're posting again too!
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