Richard's Online Journal
Avatar
Fun fact: Every time someone watches Avatar on an iPhone, James Cameron has threatened to kill a kitten. True story!
You know how when you go to a Pixar movie, all the technology is in service of the story? Avatar sounded like it was going to be that, but really, it’s not.
Is it visually impressive? Sure. Technologically advanced? Absolutely. It’s easily the most stunning Mighty Whitey film ever made. But that’s all it is. For all the loving attention paid to making moss glow and the forests ripple authentically, the effects hide a depressingly tame, cliched movie that says absolutely nothing new.
Not for the first time, there’s a certain irony to a film built around the evils of imperialism promptly deploying one of its most tiresomely outdated concepts — the Westerner who stumbles into an ancient native culture and largely takes it over by Just Being Better. In three months, he becomes one of their best warriors, their effective leader, a spiritual powerhouse (even able to recruit their god herself into battle), goes from being a demon in a fake alien suit to a fully-fledged member of the tribe, performs a literally legendary feat of heroism, and of course, hooks up with the Chief’s beautiful daughter. Sigh. Of course he does. He’s American! Human, anyway.
(UPDATE: Re-reading this, I realise I slightly glossed over this one. Avatar is a genuinely amazing movie in terms of technology, and it looks absolutely fantastic. It pushes just about every element of both 3D and CG to its absolute max, and you will be impressed by that, the background details, much of the world design and so on. Likewise, the acting and basic characters are absolute fine. I’m just more of a story guy than an effects guy, so that’s what usually sticks with me when the big explosions and motion tracked 3D are just a memory, and in that, I found Avatar depressingly tired)
The aliens themselves, the Na’Vi, are incredibly disappointing. They’re blue humans, slightly taller, and with a USB cable in their hair, but otherwise, just a completely generic indigenous population to contrast with the Evil Humans. The more the film goes on, the more depressingly non-alien they are, from the fact they kiss, right down to their basic body shapes — sexy alien babes with beads over their oddly mammalian breasts to avoid annoying the censors, muscled warriors with pert CG buttocks… it’s DeviantArt: The Movie. Their spiritual philosophy is entirely stock, with the one genuinely interesting twist involving the nature of the setting going largely underused in favour of more explosions. They could have been anything. They’re not.
You’d think that all the CG would allow for a genuinely alien alien, but really, these guys could have been just as effectively done with a few prosthetics and a gallon of blue paint. I’d actually have preferred that, because no matter how amazing the technology is — and it’s genuinely stunning — there wasn’t a moment these guys were on the screen where I didn’t see them as computer graphics and they didn’t feel like a carefully constructed ‘safe’ alien designed to not scare off a mainsteam audience.
Worse, the hybrid of styles really meant that when main character Jake (sigh, stop calling action heroes Jake, Jack and John already) goes from his live-action body to his Avatar form, it feels more like cutting to a different movie than walking outside, no matter how much CG bridges the gap. Mind you, I’ve seen worse…
Avatar’s failings are annoying, because the endless running time could have allowed for some genuinely interesting social exploration instead of just rehashing the same old imperialist vs. Noble Savage stuff. For instance, there’s a particularly eye-raising scene during the main character’s training where he gets his own flying dragon monster thing to ride on. The chief’s daughter who’s training him explains that this is a bonding process, where he chooses his dragon monster and the dragon monster chooses him. In practice, their definition of choosing is ‘it will try to kill you dead’, leading to a tender scene where our hero forcibly subdues and mind-rapes an intelligent creature into being his bonded servant. At the very least, that deserves a “What the hell?”
But no. The Na’Vi are essentially perfect angellic beings, by law, so none of that happens. If only they had the smarts to realise that dropping rocks into rotors will work better than shooting spaceships with bows and arrows…
(Another, equally unmentioned bit of oddness is that despite the Na’Vi themselves going as naked as their humanoid forms and the movie’s PG rating will allow, the human characters in fake Na’Vi bodies whose specific goal is integration and understanding are inevitably found stumbling around in T-Shirts and shorts, which is just silly. Never mind the misplaced coyness over their blue naughty bits, where the hell are they buying these Na’Vi sized outfits? It’s just something we’re not meant to ask, I suppose, like why the ruthless humans with their space ships have never heard of orbital bombardment, or exactly how much the Na’Vi know about what Avatars actually are…)
Spot the villain, win a prize!
As for the 3D glasses, frankly you can keep them. Yes, they add depth to the scenes, and the 3D is the best yet, but I’d rather have non-shimmering graphics and eyeballs that don’t hurt like hell after the three hours or so in the cinema. You really won’t miss out on that much if you only see it in 2D, and you’ll probably find it a much more comfortable experience. Still, you may as well go the whole hog and don the glasses, if only to be sure you’ve seen it as intended. It’s not a great movie in itself, and it does very little of interest with its story, but at least it’s damn pretty.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go buy some Optrex.
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There are 25 Comments on this story
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Here’s another one then: “It’s so long, they give everyone a catheter along with their 3D glasses. It seems silly at the time, but you’ll be grateful by the half-way point.” Posted by Richard on December 17, 2009 |
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The not alien aliens is a general problem in SciFi and not that surprising. It’s hard to ‘identify’ with an Elcor (from Mass Effect) or something snail-like for example. Nice write-up though. Posted by Rain on December 17, 2009 |
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Hard, but not impossible. And you can often get around that by focusing on identifying with the character identifying with the alien. Posted by Richard on December 17, 2009 |
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I hate it when this happens. When it has been out for a while I would like somebody to do a mashup video of snippets of all the hype and interviews with James Cameron (which I’ve managed to see 8 of despite not being interested) with some of the dullest and cliched scenes. Then it would be like the EDGE™ big preview features and the reviews two months later. Posted by Cunzy1 1 on December 17, 2009 |
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The worst Avatar thing I’ve seen was a Bones episode almost half made up of bloody product placement. I was amused to see that one of the characters involved is actually in the movie, but still, gah. Posted by Richard on December 17, 2009 |
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@Rain, I really felt for the Elcor, they were by far my favourite race from Mass Effect. Mind you, in games I usually play the character I imagine that I might actually be if I saw aliens. Your typical Xenophobic, pro-human, scr*w the small green things person. I might be open minded and tolerant here, but you know where you stand with pretty much any creature on earth, less so with aliens (well, what aliens might actually be like, not human imagined aliens). Posted by Lack_26 on December 17, 2009 |
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“We are the Xilusians. Is it not interesting that we look much like a walking version of the beast you call spiders? Ah, you greet us with your mighty Thrower of Flame. How gratifying.” Posted by Richard on December 17, 2009 |
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Reminds me of Childhood’s End were the aliens looked like devils. Posted by Rain on December 17, 2009 |
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It’s not so much a quote as a worst case scenario for when we finally found the Federation. Posted by Richard on December 17, 2009 |
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PLAYBOY: How much did you get into calibrating your movie heroine’s hotness? Riiight. Posted by Nick on December 17, 2009 |
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So in conclusion… stay home and watch Enemy Mine? Posted by Tyler on December 18, 2009 |
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Or Avatar: The Last Airbender. Not the M. Night Shameonyou one, the Nickelodeon series that is fantastic and has Toph in it. Posted by Richard on December 18, 2009 |
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Speaking of the M. Night Shameonyou version of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode were discussing it last week when I was driving home. Somewhat inevitably, they didn’t know much about it (other than what was in the press release) and they started making Airbending = Farting jokes. I almost crashed my car. Posted by Iain on December 18, 2009 |
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Amusingly, they already changed the name once — it was The Legend of Aang over here to get rid of the word ‘bender’ in the title. Posted by Richard on December 18, 2009 |
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It depends, as a scientist I think first contact and aliens would be awesome. But playing as a Xenophobe is more fun in games. But yeah, the aliens in Avatar make no sense, on the other-hand, would the film work if he took over a giant bug that release pheromones. Actually, that could be a good commentary on what it means to be sentient. Posted by Lack_26 on December 18, 2009 |
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@Nick Maybe there is such a great advantage in possessing tits and getting screen time that non human actors evolved them too. Whether or not they function or if they are just fleshy protrusions that just resemble tits takes us too deep into the realms of almost fanficcery. Posted by Cunzy1 1 on December 18, 2009 |
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Heh. I’m reminded of something I wrote in a recent column about 2010 predictions.
Posted by Richard on December 18, 2009 |
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“They could have been anything. They’re not.” This. Pretty much sums up Avatar movie. In the beginning 30 minutes I thought it might be taken to some genuinely interesting places. So much more could have been done with the setting rather than just amazon + dinosaurs. The characterization never really breaks past “i am a scientist”, “i am an evil military type”, “i am an unscrupulous business man”. There where glimmers where you could see a more substantial movie poking through, but it never really materialized. and ditto goes for everything said about a rehashed imperialist vs savages, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind managed to take the same environmentalist concept and make it much more interesting, than the occasional oblique reference to “humans fucked up their first planet, now they’re looking for others, damn EARTH RAPERS!!!” Still, looked pretty though. Posted by John on December 22, 2009 |
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The one I kept thinking of was Princess Mononoke, especially its treatment of Lady Eboshi — the villain, but not because she’s a snarling evil monster — and the way it handled the forces of nature when finally unleashed. Posted by Richard on December 22, 2009 |
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I think some time explaining a bit more of the backstory would have been better spent than dragging out that tiresome end battle for what seemed like hours. That evil colonel looks like an escapee from Gears of War with even more ridiculous dialogue: “SHUT YOUR PIEHOLE!” Posted by Nick on December 27, 2009 |
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You say you wish they would be more alien, but then you raise an eyebrow when something happens, that’s not logical to you as a human. The dragon taming that is. Posted by MacQ on December 30, 2009 |
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Er… where did I say the dragon taming was illogical? I don’t have a problem with that scene for what it contains, just that the way that it plays out compared to the film’s standard mindset that the Na’Vi are flawless Mary Sues whose perfection should never be questioned. If anything, I’d have liked to have seen more of that kind of stuff, just more intricately explored. Ditto for the connected-world concept which gets very short shrift in the name of having a big battle. Posted by Richard on December 30, 2009 |
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He basically tames the dragon as the indians tamed the horses. I don’t see a problem with the overall picture here. Posted by MacQ on December 30, 2009 |
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But I agree with you on the clothes of the avatars and that the Na’Vi don’t seem too suprised to have them amongst them. They just say that they are some devils and that’s it. This part could use a little elaboration. Posted by MacQ on December 30, 2009 |
Man, this just came out. I’m going to go see it now and make all those jokes afterwards and Lisa will never know.
Posted by Jazmeister on December 17, 2009