Avatar

For the purposes of this review James Cameron will be referred to as: King Of The World (KOTW)

I have been accused in the past (mostly by Robbie and mostly about Beowulf) of making up my mind about a movie before even seeing it and then going just to confirm my preconceived notions, as if I do not give a movie a fair chance. I wanted to avoid that with Avatar, so I waited. I was not excited at all about this movie, but I did not want it to cloud my judgment, so I wanted to wait a few days and let the reviews trickle in. The reviews came out and just about everyone was raving! It was the greatest movie, ever. The effects are game changing, and the 3D technology was flawless. People were giving it 4 stars, or an A+ or a perfect 10. It really became the must see movie. It was a movie that was going to bridge the gap between mainstream and critical success. The 2009 version of The Dark Knight, or something similar. It lept into the top 150 of IMDB. It shot to the top of many top 10 lists. The KOTW himself declared no one could make a best of the decade list until they had seen Avatar. So, perhaps I was wrong. Critics and friends whose opinions matter to me were all saying it was the game changer it was made out to be. Roger Ebert has been gushing over it on Twitter since before it actually got released. So, with all of this in mind, I finally went and not only did I go see it, I went to The IMAX to watch it the way The KOTW intended me to watch it.

In a future where humans are called Sky People, Jake Sully(Sam Worthington) is a paraplegic former marine who is thrust into a new position because his identical twin had the job before him, but died and Jake's genes are the perfect match. His job is to lay down in a pod while his brain and body are connected to these wires and he can control a giant blue creature. These creatures are the indigenous people of the moon called Pandora. The Na'vi are a tribal people who in tune with nature and animals. In fact, their long ponytails can be synched up with the various plants and animals and memories and data can be exchanged and downloaded. The Na'vi take no pleasure in killing anything, but they are warriors. The Sky People are trying to get the Na'vi to move their home base because their home base happens to be on top of the largest supply of something called Unobtainium. The Greedy CEO's want the unobtainium for some purpose that I do not recall. Jake's job is to earn the trust of the people and then politely ask them to leave. However, Jake's military loyalties are used by a mean nasty, stereotypical Colonel (Steven Lang) and Sully starts providing the Colonel information on how to attack them. Due to these weird jellyfish energy things, Sully is not killed by the first Na'vi he meets. The Na'vi tribe decide that because he is a warrior, they will give him time to learn their ways and prove he can be one of them. The more he learns, the closer he gets, he falls in love, realizes he has made a collosel mistake and then tries to rectify that mistake.

The world of Pandora is an imaginative, gorgeously colored and designed planet. The Na'vi look very cool when not moving too much and all of the designs and colors of the animals and plants that reside on Pandora are nearly breathtaking. The attention to detail is exquisite and there is never a moment when you cannot look behind the main action and see something that could be cool. I love the big red orange, dinosaur/dragon thing and the weird dog looking things. The CGI is not cheap and it looks good. The film does not look as photoreal to me as it does to others, but I was not distracted by the entire world being rendered in CG. There is a really cool explosion, and a few cool slow motion moments when Sully is just getting adjusted to having legs again in his Na'vi avatar body. The KOTW obviously has a bright imagination and through a use of brand new CG and motion capture technology, he does an admirable job of creating this world and the first hour of the film goes to pain staking measures trying to immerse us in this world.

Here is the problem: I DID NOT CARE ONE BIT!! When the movie began and we were treated to trite, boring, laughable voice over dialogue, I knew this was going to be a big turkey of a movie. With lines that include a "We're not in Kansas" reference, and the most cliche, god awful dialogue I have heard in a long time, Avatar's good will from the effects gets used up quickly. Then, you have actors who are clearly not comfortable with the dialogue or the effects as all of the performances are awful and wooden, especially Zoe Salanda, as Sully love interest. Every time she delivered a line, I was trying not to cringe. The Colonel gets nothing but stereotypical war dialogue, like The KOTW watched every war movie and took out the most used dialogue and stuck it in this movie. Sigorney Weaver does not fare much better with a terrible performance and a creepy CGI face at the end, a la Patrick Stewart at the end of Wolverine. By the time we got to spend time on the planet, I was so tired of listening to the script that I just wanted a mute button.

Of course, the dialogue is not helped by a big helping of sucky story. Bad dialogue and a horrible story is the exact opposite of two scoops of awesome. It is two scoops of suck. Two giant scoops of suck, served to you by The KOTW himself as he tries to convince you it is amazing. See, it has to be amazing because it is a message film!! You are not allowed to hate a movie that teaches us to love the Earth and wants us to go green. We have to love this movie because it shows us that if Native Americans had giant dinosaur/dragon things, maybe the outcome would have been different! Wait, this is an allegory? You don't say. Oh, in case you are not sure, the movie goes to great lengths to make sure we understand The KOTW is condemning our entire sense of history while at the same time pontificating on some new agey philosophy. The KOTW is a philosophy 1 professor and we have all been forced to take a 3 hour seminar without any questions being able to be asked. We just have to shut up, listen and come out the other side wanting to SAVE THE TREES!! In fact, the trees house memories and if we pray to the tree goddess, she will repay us at the exact time we need it!

The KOTW is never one for being subtle, after all he did proclaim himself The KOTW, so it is no surprise we can see the beats of the story coming a mile away. Only 4 people have ever ridden the giant red orangey dinosaur/dragon thingy, hmmmm, what could that possibly mean? Sully has 30 days to achieve his mission, hmmmm at what point will he fall in love? And so goes Avatar. I am not saying every movie has to be twist heavy, but everything in this movie is so easy. Sully has a good heart, and the jellyfish can tell that, so he gets to stay alive. The chief and his wife quickly decide he can stay, even though they have never liked the Avatar program. These just scratch the surface of how EASY things go in this story.

Notice how all of this is about the movie itself. The movie is terrible because it is a bad movie. The story, dialogue and acting are all terrible. The action sequences are too blurry and unfocused and in 3D there is far too much going on to register anything truly awesome. But, the 3D is not why this movie is bad. The movie is bad because it is 160 minutes of trite dialogue, bad acting, a director with heavy handed douchiness and far too much downtime that could have been cut to make a tighter movie.

Now on to the 3D or tech side of things:

3D is a stupid-dumb way to watch a movie. If you like the gimmick, good for you but stay away from me with that noise. Horror movies can work in 3D because I like to watch jaws fly at me, but Avatar was going to be the cure for all of that nonsense. It was made specifically for 3D and The KOTW created tech to make it seamless. If by seamless he meant EXACTLY THE SAME, well he succeeded. My headaches, the blurry screen every time I tilted my head, the heavy glasses, the labored screen watching, the ghosting, the people with longer fingers and arms than a normal person should have, the blurry people when they moved fast and the slight color definition loss were all present and accounted for. It was as if this movie just followed the checklist from my experience watching every other 3D movie I have seen. I am sorry, but if you want 16 dollars from me, well 1. Don't have the movie be a disaster, and 2. do not give me a headache.

People want to compare this movie to watching Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings and I get it. Those two movies along with Jurassic Park changed the way effects are used in a movie. However, Star Wars has a kick ass story, a cool performance from Harrison Ford and amazing action sequences. Jurassic Park has solid writing, good performances, genuine thrills and a great story. The Lord of the Rings trilogy has these mind blowing effects on top of being a truly spectacular movie. Avatar just has the effects. If I am going to watch a movie just for effects, give me 2012, at least that movie has the good sense to know it is silly and it acts accordingly. Avatar tries so hard to be so serious about everything that it does not want to acknowledge that the story is just Fern Gully or The Last Samurai in 160 minutes instead of 85 minutes.

If Avatar is where movies are headed, I am packing it in. If big budget blockbusters start moving towards 3D and more theaters put in 3D, I am going to seriously hate it. It is a stupid gimmick that is being used just to get extra money from a crowd that does not know any better. I get that event films are meant for mass consumption and usually I like that. I love big ridiculous movies, but I have to draw the line at a movie not even managing to be entertaining for more than a few minutes in its entire bloated running time. I really want to know how people can actually think this is a great movie, even a good movie. Avatar is the kind of movie I wish I could never have to hear about anymore as it just angers me to know I wasted precious hours of life sitting through it, when I had a bad feeling from the beginning.

Final Grade: D

P.S. I was not alone in this, the theater was completely sold out and I would have expected a serious applause when it was over, but only like 5 people clapped and the other people in my group were not impressed either and they were excited for it.