My wife and I went to James Cameron’s Avatar for her birthday recently. I just had a couple of things to mention about it:
- My wife liked it. She really liked the 3D aspect; it reminded her of the fun of experiencing 3D movies as a kid in Disneyland. She’d like to visit Pandora, albeit via an Avatar, perhaps, for safety’s sake.
- tvtropes has plenty to say about it.
- I consider it to be Art, but don’t think highly of it as a film. I still like it.
Let me expand on 3 a little.
I really like what they did with the visuals of the movie. The 3D was good when it wasn’t broken, since it was more atmospheric and spatial than a mere gimmick. The art direction is solid, with consistent visual appeal. The world is lush and interesting. The characters are actually my favorite part, because they feel plausible. The animation and characterization is excellent; they don’t feel animated, they feel alive.
Compare the characters to those in the Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within movie. The difference in static appearance isn’t much (stills from either film read pretty well compared to each other), but the Avatar characters move more plausibly, complete with imbalances, personality and body language. I’m not sure whether this is a leap in motion capture or animation technique and technology (or just more money thrown at an issue), but there is a marked difference between Jake Sully’s Big Blue and Aki Ross. Dodging the Uncanny Valley by using not-quite-human characters also probably helped significantly. Either way, this is why I tend to stress that animation itself is more important to selling the sense of life than high resolution textures and 3D glasses. The Disney animators tend to believe similarly.
Pandora, the movie’s fictional world out thataway somewhere in Plot Space, looks like it could be a real place. It’s interesting and pretty. The floating mountains are especially awesome in my eyes, though the biophosphorous neon jungle might be more appealing to some. I can only imagine that an IMAX viewing of the show would be rather exhilarating, especially in the flight scenes.
So… it’s all very pretty. The story is almost paint-by-the-numbers, though, and it really clashed for me. It’s been compared to Dances With Wolves, albeit with blue body paint and technogeek body swapping (the titular “avatar” technology). I could certainly nitpick a LOT of things in the film, but it’s not really worth it. It’s not a bad story, exactly, but it’s nothing all that spectacular, innovative or interesting.
Then again, one might wonder if the market really wants innovation?
I had a similar reaction to Cameron’s Titanic, actually. It was pretty, and the visuals of the boat sinking were spectacularly crafted. The story, though… cut it out, and I might like the film as a whole. It would have made a great documentary or historic dramatization, sans DiCraprio and the naked chick. (Is it terrible of me to find it funny that Global Warming nut DiCaprio effectively froze to death in that film?)
Similarly, Avatar would have been a great artistic tech demo (Picasso’s early Cubism could be considered a tech demo, and it’s considered Art), or even a fantastic game, sans the caricature story and almost-romance with blue almost-naked almost-people. It’s not a terrible film, and it’s a pretty good “experience”. It looks really good.
I guess that’s enough to make money, though. Why do we even care about innovation, again?
I mean, there’s got to be something more importan… ooh, sparkly blue thingy!!!
The innovation is that someone finally made a 3d movie where 3d is more than a gimmick. He basically advanced the technology which also enhances a generic Pocahontas/Dance with Wolves storyline immensely. Watch this in 2d, and it is ugly and uninspiring. This tells me: He did something right. Beowulf and many other movies by Zemeckis NEVER achieved this level of immersion through amazing 3d technology.
He did not change many things, he just used improved 3d technology and the result was amazing.
This said, I still do not get it why Titanic was such a spectacular success. Not that I would not like the movie, but it is none of my favorites either. Interestingly, I have already almost forgotten Avatar, too. The story did not impress me, there are movies and books who had a by far more lasting impression.
But I remember that it was spectacular and I was amazed – something that all other CGI orgies and attempts to present a movie with compelling actors and storyline did not achieve last years.
I think your wife is onto something, Tesh. Avatar IS a kind of 3hr version of Outer Space Mountain. Think how much better it could have been if it also had a superior script. Cameron is developing “Stanley Kubrick Syndrome”. That’s where their earlier films, written by writing professionals, are better than their later ones which they insist on writing themselves.
(I wrote about the film, too.)
I enjoyed Avatar purely on a “hey that was fun” level. It didn’t make me think but neither did it annoy me. It simply existed and made me smile occasionally with some nice pieces of CG animation.
Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. Not everything needs to be the be-all and end-all of mental stimulation. This is where the serious art critics amongst us could comment about what we should appreciate and what we shouldn’t etc but that’s beyond me.
However, I think the reason it – and Titantic – are so successful is precisely because they didn’t challenge people too much. The general public like to go to the cinema, escape their worries and just have a little care-free fun. They don’t want to think too deeply, they don’t want their world to be rocked or their morals challenged. Again, nothing wrong with that so long as accept it for what it is.
My S.O. and I enjoyed Avatar, which we saw last Friday. I have to agree that the plot is trite and uninspired, and yet the world and the characters were beautifully rendered. My S.O. isn’t especially fond of scifi in general but she wants to see Avatar again, which says something. Then again, $1.33B also says something I suppose.
The most impressive thing about the movie for me was definitely the technology, from the manifestation of the environments of Pandora to the amazing new motion capture process. I’ve never seen CG characters express themselves so fully; the only thing that’s ever come close was Gollum yet I think the Na’vi surpass that rather high standard. I don’t know Sam Worthington’s face well enough to make a meaningful comparison between the actor and his avatar, but seeing Sigourney Weaver as a Na’vi was spectacular; her expressions were accurately conveyed on a CG face to the point where it was her in every meaningful sense. That’s frankly astonishing.
I saw it first in 2D as the 3D was sold out. I loved every minute of it, even if I could guess what was going to happen next in the story the world was that engaging and the characters were decent that I felt a part of what was happening. I went back a week later and saw the 3D version which was, of course, amazing. I love engaging and well develeoped worlds, you can believe that Pandora exists out there somewhere. Is it a perfect movie, no, but that doesn’t stop it from being up there as one of the best things I’ve watched over the past few years. Not everyone will agree with me but for my own personal tastes, this floated my boat (if you pardon the pun).
I was unimpressed by the script. In fact, every 20 minutes, I would tell my Gf “this is what will happen in the next 20 minutes”, then checking everything. Think I got 95% right. I wasn’t sure Sigourney Weaver would die…
As for the movie, well, 3D does not work with my eyes. Seems my vision is bad enough that it just is “blurry” when it should be “Oh my god, oh my god”. And bluriness leads to headachiness, and headeachiness leads to crankiness.
Darkside of the technology… Which is sadly becoming mandatory now !
Also, am I the only one who thought at the end “enjoy your 8 years of peace before they come back for the orbital bombardment” ?
I’m right there with you, Modran. The VERY BIG CORPORATION isn’t going to give up on “unobtanium”. They’ll be back in the sequels, in numbers and with nukes.
BTW, I’ve read plenty of tales of theaters where the calibration is off, leading to large numbers of unhappy viewers. It might not be your eyes.
Oh, yes.
The “Sky People” can take what they want via orbital bombardment and recovery or even biological weapons. The place is already hostile to humans, may as well disintegrate the biome and take the fancy rocks when the place is lifeless. They already know enough about the Na’vi biology to craft plenty of ways to exterminate them.
Maybe that’s a slippery slope position, but the Na’vi “victory” here is extraordinarily ignorant and premature.
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I haven’t even seen it yet, and agree with you. Which makes me question the validity of the praise and awards it’s getting.
Best movie in the history of the world? Say whaaaaa?
It may be best looking movie in history, but let’s not discount some of the greatest movies ever, and not just ones I like.
Gone With the Wind
The Godfather
One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To name a few.
Indeed. It’s pretty, no doubt, but that’s about all that I’d really recommend it for. That may be enough, depending on personal tastes… but it’s not enough to hail it as The Best Movie Evar!!1!
Then again, I pretty much detested Titanic, so I’m probably not the target audience.
Responding to #3, it’s like Dances With Wolves in outer space. The plot is predictable and formulaic. Special effects are quite good, characterization good, sometimes engaging. As for the philosophy behind the movie, references to avatars, reincarnation, spiritual rebirth, sanctity of life, and interconnectedness of all living things are far from subtle, take me back to the 70s. Perhaps the referents are new for the new generation?
[...] Avatar Art [...]