Avatar

Director: James Cameron
Year: 2009
Genre: Action/Adventure (in a Sci-Fi setting)
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/

Overview

Mankind has found another world hosting life – Pandora. Pandora is

  1. poisonous to Humans,
  2. filled with alien life – one race of which is sentient, the Na’vi and
  3. has some mineral man wants.

Enter the Avatars; synthesised Na’vi bodies controlled by humans in pods. They can breath in, and interact with, this world. Our hero, Jake Sully is an ex-military cripple, given the chance to walk again in one of these Avatars. He enters their world and learns about it for scientific and military purposes…

Substance

The story is nothing new. In fact it’s FernGully or The Last of the Mohicans in space. But the performances are solid.
There are a few clangers, such as the name of the hard to get substance, ‘Unobtainium’, or the heavy handed foreshadowing, for example:

warning: spoiler
The painfully obvious bit at the chief’s chair with the Turok’s skull. Whoever rides one of these beasts will be a leader. Wink, wink.

Also, the plot, the main character and his actions are quite predictable, which isn’t great.
But it’s got no plot holes (as far as I saw), so I can let alot of that slide.
Rating: ★★★☆☆

Style

It’s well lovely, it is. The world looks great and interesting. The alien race is cool. I love how it all ties in together and feels real.
The bio-luminescence night world stuff looks great too.
The helicopter-salamanders seem like an odd, vomit-inducing, evolution, but I’m no Darwin, so maybe it’s possible….
I saw it in 3D. Don’t know if it matters if you don’t.
My only real criticism was:

warning: spoiler
When he rounds up the various tribes at the end, I was disappointed that there was no variety in them. Essentially wherever the tribes lived they were only slight variations on the main tribe we get to know.

Rating: ★★★★½

Entertainment

Very entertaining. I was caught up in the story fairly early into it, and found the survival stuff very tense and the action stuff very engaging. I cared about the characters and their various plights.
Again, my criticism stems from the predictability of the story and the character’s actions which, for me, always hinders my enjoyment.
Rating: ★★★★☆

Summary

Well worth the watch. Not sure if 3D makes a difference or not, some folk liked it, others not so much, others still didn’t really care. I think the film is good enough all around to survive without the gimmick.
Looking forward to seeing how it survives rewatching and the translation to the smaller screen.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆

Tags:

categories Cinema, Film | Dave 24.12.2009

2 Comments to “Avatar”

  1. By Michael, 07.01.2010 @ 04:11

    Interesting that you gave it four stars. When you were discussing it with Andrew you seemed more critical of it than that. Has time decreased your liking for it now that the inital blush of watching it has worn off?

  2. By Dave, 11.01.2010 @ 01:30

    Actually, it’s because I wasn’t factoring in the entertainment value of it. I was slating it due to the unoriginal and predictable storyline, while ignoring the fact that it still did have me caught up in it. Since that conversation, I’m now factoring in ‘entertainment’ as well as style and substance.

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