Avatar

2009. Dir: James Cameron. Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver and Michelle Rodriguez. ●●●●○



On Tuesday Avatar stormed past $100m in domestic receipts, when you add the estimated overseas groses Avatar is almost certainly in the black. There are a bunch of LA accountants patting themselves on the back and starting to work out how to re-invest the profits. In that respect Avatar is a massive success.

The hoopla about immersive 3D environments and photo-realistic computer generated effects is justified. It's made it's money back, all that expence and time means nothing as it's in profit. The margins will mean that this technology is justified and is the way forward; clearly Cameron has changed cinema forever.

Let's be honest about this - what James Cameron wants to do with his films more than anything else is to prove he has a lasting legacy and get people in the door. Innovative and spectactular are merely byproducts of that desire to live forever in cinema history. (I'm not knocking that, I have the same dream of sorts.)

But is it any good?



Technologically it is incredible, marking a new milestone in the creation of 3D digital effects. It was difficult to judge what was real and what was computer generated which surely must be the aim. However there is still so very far to go. I believe that 3D is as just a fad today as it was in the 1950's. When falling into a cavern or having pointy things thrust upon you it is great and exciting, but I still don't feel part of the action - immersive panoramas are a myth that Hollywood will continue to peddle for many years to come. The effects also don't have the weight of reality, the wild things I raved about earlier in the week were so much more "there" than any of Pandora's natives, even though they were clearly fantastical elements of Max's imagination.

Producton design and the design of the flora and fauna is also a highlight. It's clear that Cameron has used his expertise of the deep sea environments as an influence, the preponderance of ultraviolet light and the concept of bigger predators being better predators (although I'd argue it probably isn't likely biologically for animals to grow to the sizes shown in thick jungle habitats). I also have concerns about the (quasi-sexual) appendage that can be used between different species to create a physcological link - where would this have developed evolutionary in such different species? Perhaps if all the specias with them had 6 limbs it may have been more conceivable.

The Na'vi themselves show where CGI has reached, when Sigourney Weaver's Avatar smiled it was recognisable, yet at the same time the walk and talk of the native Na'viwas different to the Avatars - at least before Sam Worthington had trained himself up. This may also be a compliment to the Na'vi performers who developed a graceful movement technique for the motion capture to pick up on.

Unlike most reviews I haven't talked about th plot structure and what happens. This is partly because, unlike most of the films that interest me, it is not the plot that makes people watch Avatar, it is partly beacause the plot, when analysed is complete drivel.

To summarise: humans are bad, Na'vi are good; War is bad, peaceful co-existence is good; abusing the planet for it's resources is bad, living at one with nature is good. The parallels between Pandora's strife and the world in which we are living today are so plain and in your face that they could have been written by a 10 year old. Released as the occupation in Afganistan comes close to 8 years and during the World's biggest climate change conference it's message couldn't be more timely, and yet the simplicity of the parallels is such that it lessens the impact.

It's not like these issues are new to Cameron, either. From the moment it opens we know that humanity has been dehumanised (a character we never meet is zipped into a body bag then put straight into a furnace - nothing close to a funeral service). Faceless corporations focus on the product and don't care about the consequences (see Skynet). Like Titanic hundreds of digitally produced characters are created in order to be killed off heroically - it's amazingly how little we care about them, though.

All in all these misgivings about the plotting have made me reticent about recommending Avatar. It is certainly a game changer, the future of cinema, but until storywriting and technology work together we will never see a brave new world.