The humans lose but hey it looked spectacular!
James Cameron directs his first film since ‘Titanic’ in 1998. True to his usual form, he has poured an extraordinary amount of time, energy, and money into his new project. The story of the making of Avatar is almost as good as the story in the movie. Before the movie hit the theaters it had gone through more than ten years of development, four years of actual production, two years of live shooting, 300 million (or more) dollars, and the invention of new technology needed to achieve the special effects Cameron wanted. And as Ebert remarked, “it’s all there all on the screen.”
Avatar is not just a movie. It is an event in movie history. It is a movie that defines the future of movies, or at least big budget blockbusters. Like ‘Birth of a Nation,’ ‘King Kong,’ ‘Star Wars,’ and ‘Jurassic Park,’ it will find itself on top lists not because it happens to be a superior story but because it is a first of its kind. When we saw this film we saw something we had never seen before on a scale that was unprecedented. We saw for a whole new planet with gorgeous fluorescent rainforests. We saw 3-D used in a way that complemented the picture by adding depth (especially effective when a character jumps off a high cliff) instead of distracting the viewer by throwing things at us. We saw characters created completely with special effects that conveyed real human emotion. This is perhaps the most significant jump the technology in this movie enables. Avatar is the first movie that has traversed what in animation is called the “Uncanny Valley.” The uncanny valley concerns the area of animation that is looks so close to the real thing that it will actually make a viewer uncomfortable (Those look like humans but they’re Not! How unsettling). This valley is most easily seen in Robert Zemeckis’ last three movies The Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol. Zemeckis it seems was knocking on the door that Cameron finally busted down here. Where he failed Cameron has succeeded. Who knows what will come of this? The floodgates of science fiction are officially open.
The most important thing about the story perhaps is that it shows off everything that the new technology can do. In the not so far future a human corporation has landed on an alien planet named Pandora to mine a mineral named (whatever) that sells for an enormous amount of money on Earth (a planet we never see). The problem is that an indigenous tribe called the Na’vi live directly over the minerals. The corporation employs scientists to try to deal with the Na’vi. The scientists create Avatars, fake Na’vi that humans can control while in a simulation trailer. The movie has three main Avatars for three actors, Sam Worthington (the marine), Sigourney Weaver (the head scientist) and Joel Moore. It is uncanny how one can recognize immediately the actor in their respective nine foot blue Avatars. The Marine named Jake Scully goes undercover with the Na’vi learning their ways. Their ways could have come completely out of a Native American textbook. They respect and revere nature and wear nothing but loincloths. In addition, they live in a very tall tree, visit floating Rainforest Mountains in the sky, and have pet dragons they fly around on. I hope you’re not afraid of heights, because the 3-D makes the falling distance seem very real.
Of course diplomatic solutions fail, as they must in order to give the movie an opportunity for a huge climatic battle. Stephen Lang plays the hardcore scar-faced human general who leads his mechanized fleet into battle against the all-natural Na’vi. At first it seems that the war will play out exactly like the war between the imperialist Americans and the Native Americans played out (I believe a direct metaphor for this very ‘green’ movie) with the humans moving in, killing off or evicting the Na’vi, and then taking the natural resources. The Na’vi though have a trick up their sleeve that the Native Americans didn’t have. The Na’vi’s deity, Eywa, is real. I mean actually real. More importantly, it takes sides.
Here is where I sort of get off the bandwagon story-wise. Frankly enough I don’t like deities getting involved in wars. They tend to make the battle incredibly unfair and when that happens the story suffers. Movie battles are at their best when they involve clearly enabled strategy between worthy adversaries. Two very good examples of this are The Matrix (Neo vs. Mr. Smith) and Peter Jackson’s King Kong (King Kong vs. The Dinosaurs). The war in this movie doesn’t have any real strategy at all except at some times the Na’vi are winning, and then the humans are winning, and then Eywa comes in and decisively seals the victory for Mother Nature. Of Course, to me it was one of the most spectacular battles I have ever seen but something tells me that my grandkids will view Avatar just like I viewed the original King Kong (1933). A sort of okay story with really crappy effects.
By the way, it was somewhat disconcerting to me (when I wasn’t awestruck by the visuals) that the humans lost. Say I’m unfairly prejudiced against other species (not racist as they incorrectly infer in the movie) if you want, I don’t care. This movie will definitely make enough money that the studios will demand a sequel. Hopefully the humans will come back and win in that one.
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