Avatar (2009)

It's nice to know that in this world there are still filmmakers who know how to make a solid action movie. Who know that an action movie isn't really about the action at all, but about the characters who carry out the actions. That Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) become completely identifiable and sympathetic in this movie is one of the only real reasons it works.

The film that took 12 years for Cameron to bring to us, Avatar, has certainly been analyzed as a Dances with Wolves, Smurfs, and Ferngully hybrid, and if you like boiling movie's plots down to essentially what they resemble, then this a fair assessment. But Cameron's picture succeeds because it takes what could have been a very silly story, and makes it believable. Sure, this movie is ridden with clichés, and every moment is predictable, but Cameron spends so much time painting the world of the Na'vi and their indigenous land that you fall for them as Jake Sully does.

The movie takes place some odd years in the future (it is never said, though keen eyed people probably picked up on the dates on video diary screens), where the natives of the planet Pandora reside upon a mineral source that is worth lots of money. So, naturally, corporate fat cats want to buy the land from the people and mine the shit out of that stuff. Problem is, the natives won't budge.

Sully is a paraplegic, and is assigned to Pandora when his brother is killed. A rather expensive avatar (Na'vi look-a-likes) was made for him, and since Sully shares the same Genome, he is the perfect money and time saving candidate for the job. Soon, he inhabits the Na'Vi's body and goes to learn about their people.

A lot of the characters in this movie are more caricature then character; Stephen Lang plays the evil Colonel, though really he is just doing his job. Giovanni Ribisi is the above mentioned fat cat, and Michelle Rodriguez plays the only soldier with enough of a conscious to decide killing innocent blue people is wrong. And on the Na'vi side there are the old, wise clan leaders and the hot head warrior that challenges the outsider.

But the movie stands above most other genre pictures because it marvels at the scenery and beauty that is surrounding them. 60% of the film is CGI, 40% live action, and you really can't tell the difference most of the time from scene to scene. The settings, the small creatures, and plants, trees and textures are so pain-stakingly detailed that they absorb you. The world of Pandora is unfolded to us as it is to Sully, and never overloads you with information.

I was skeptical of this movie, but by the time Sully tames a pterydactol thingy and flies through the air, I was sold on the movie and completely exhilarated. At that point, my brain took a backseat and I just drowned in the imagery and action at the end. I fought and fought the movie, and the movie deservedly one.

Maybe most surprising about this film is how patient it is. This is not an action heavy movie; there are few scenes at the beginning when local wildlife attack the naive Sully. But the Colonel doesn't roll out the artillery until the end, and the final action sequence is so epic it makes up for the "lack" of action and shooting earlier. Really, that is so rare for a movie these days to actually make its audience wait for the big battle at the end.

What's even more remarkable is that this movie is a blockbuster hit now, and is not based on anything concrete. Obviously it is an update of our genocide on the Native Americans way back when, but there is no comic book, novel, or anything else that this was based on. All the characters came from Cameron and his crew, and originality like that is about near impossible to find in Hollywood. Of course, the script could have been injected with a shot of originality too, but the creatures make up for that.

A note on the 3D in this picture: it is quite unlike what I have seen before. It doesn't call attention to itself and make things pop out of the screen to hit you. Instead, it just amplifies the scenery and creates more depth to what is going on. I've become less of a fan of 3D in the past year due to the insane amount of films that come out in the format, but here, the 3D doesn't drive the movie, it only serves to enhance everything. That being said, I also saw this in IMAX, and was quite confused as to why the image didn't fill the screen; I expected bars on top and bottom, but there were also pillars on the sides, so the image didn't stretch across the whole screen. Was it like that at other IMAXes? (and I mean real IMAX, not bullshit new IMAX).

This movie has set the bar pretty high in terms of photorealistic CGI; I've never seen anything so convincing, and wonder when the time will come that a whole movie will be created that is completely CGI, without actors (just voices), that is totally convincing. I honestly hope this never happens; CGI can't replace flesh, and Cameron wisely keeps the real actors in live action scenes instead of replacing them. Cameron and Peter Jackson know that CGI should only be used to enhance your movie, not drive it, and filmmakers like Michael Bay and George Lucas believe that computers can do everything.

I hope Cameron doesn't take another 12 years to make another movie; though he knows how to utilize CGI, he also lets the script for the most part take a back seat to it. But this is a smart movie; it doesn't say anything new, but it reiterates what we know, and there is a certain poignancy in watching a line of humans being marched onto a space ship and sent back home, defeated, in the end. "They killed their mother," one spiritually in-touch character says. It's a kick-in-the-pants reminder that we can't continue winning forever, and that eventually, the human race will lose.