Avatar (2009)

James Cameron revived himself to bring us another movie people will see in theaters six times each, supplementing his bank account for another twelve years. This time it's Avatar, a really pretty video game complete with abrupt dialogue, running, and plenty of weaponry.

The concept is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-marine, is taking his dead twin brother's place, in an operation focused on mining the ridiculously-name unobtanium on the planet Pandora. He's now part of a scientific team lead by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) which uses avatars of the native population, the Navi, to learn about them and the biology of their planet.

Jake becomes the driver of his brother's avatar and the aforementioned running ensues. While the concept is complex, the story beyond that is practically nonexistent. And what is there feels very recycled. Some have been saying it's Fern Gully, Pocohantas, and Dances with Wolves rolled in one. I'm inclined to agree.

Luckily the actors bring serious gravitas to some ridiculous dialogue. They try their best to make lines that are clearly there just to inform the audience or to hit you over the head with a message seem like something their character might naturally say.

This movie's strongpoint is definitely its visuals. Cameron and his team have made advancements in CGI but since the focus was definitely on that, I couldn't help but be reminded a bit of The Phantom Menace fiasco. And many of the vehicles created look like they've been lifted from the Halo series as well as other video games (although one vehicle is clearly a retooled piece from Aliens). On top of the CGI though, Team Cameron uses 3D to their advantage. There were no cheap "Hey, look this thing is pointing at/reaching out to get you." shots.

Part of the problem with 3D in this movie (and probably others to come) is that like any other live action film, selective focus is used. While this technique is employed to draw your attention to a specific place in a scene, in 3D the issue comes up where something appears physically closer to you but is out of focus. Sometimes the out of focus item isn't closer to you but since it still pops out from the background, it can still be distracting. And that messes with your brain. The headache the whole thing gave me eventually passed as my eyes were worn down and beaten into submission.

Avatar runs nearly 3 hours. It appears since Cameron was also the editor (in addition to the director/producer/writer), there was very little left on the digital cutting room floor. When you see a slow-motion screaming/running/things exploding sequence, don't be surprised when yet another one comes five minutes later. If you didn't get enough of a soaring sequence, don't worry you'll get another one soon enough.

Rating: 3/5

Recommended for: People who enjoy the color blue and small children with long attention spans.

Extended Review: Dr. Augustine's group goes through all the trouble of growing these incredibly expensive Navi avatars so they can infiltrate the native population. And yet, the avatars wear human clothing which looks nothing like the very distinct Navi garments. It seems like a lot of trouble to go through just to announce that you're not really one of them without even saying a word. The Navi are quite large (about twice as big as humans) so I guess it'd take longer to walk through the forest if you weren't using your avatar. Also, I guess this way the humans can talk to the Navi eye-to-eye. But there seems to be no reasoning behind making the Navi so tall except to and yet another element of different-ness. When the humans and Navi are in the same scene, it just looks ridiculous.