“Avatar” Review | Aaron’s experience.

This is the first in what I hope is several installments of “Avatar” reviews ending with my own sometime before New Years. If you have a review of “Avatar” you wish to submit, please visit our contact page here, or mail to popbunker at mailas.com. – Dale

Written & Directed by James Cameron
Staring Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver
Twentieth Century-Fox 2009

Avatar is a new kind of movie experience. For me, this was clear early in the process. Like most did, I found nothing appealing about the initial trailers or the general plot. But as release date neared, I learned a bit about the technology James Cameron used to film Avatar, and I read about all the critics who, like me, had gone in skeptical but came out raving and falling over themselves to write the most praiseworthy review. Of course, they admitted to the completely unoriginal story and the wooden dialogue and characters. But I wouldn’t care about this, I was told. Now I knew I had to at least see the film, and in 3D for sure, but what to expect? Do I play it safe and expect another pretty-looking shoot-‘em-up with dull interactions and obvious plot points? Or do I allow myself to hope for something more?

In the end, I did hope for more (I am an eternal optimist, after all), and I left slightly disappointed. The reason is that, for me, the idea that a story can be subsumed beneath brilliant filmmaking conventions is unrealistic. Movies are just another way to tell stories, and I believe that when a director focuses on the means rather than the end, the final product is ultimately hollow and soulless. The story is like the core of the apple; it must be there for the full object to come into being. An apple without a core can still taste as sweet, but it is isolated and fleeting. Nowhere close to a perfect analogy (we don’t eat cores, at least I don’t), but that’s how I feel about Avatar.

You can read all about what Cameron did and what this movie looks like. Yes, it is new and amazing and thrilling. I’ve read it stated that the visuals allow the source material to become fresh again. Here, I disagree. Source material is made fresh with unique, deep characters, interesting dialogue, and surprises. Avatar provides little of these things. The gruff Marine who has been dealt a bad hand in life is played by Sam Worthington with little more vocal emotion than his Terminator. The evil Colonel is more of a caricature than R. Lee Armey in Full Metal Jacket, and I don’t think it’s completely intentional. Even Sigourney Weaver can’t do much with this script (although Giovanni Ribisi does manage some attitude for his corporate raider).

With a movie full of stock types, the dialogue and surprise stuff is tough to pull off. The surprise that does this movie does produce is mostly achieved through the visuals of the final battle scene, which took too long to get to and is an unabashed rip-off of the entire plot of FernGully. That’s the movie I really want to see after watching this – while its forest dwellers are not as shiny and they don’t jump out of the screen at you, they are eloquent and earnest and you will care about them.

Go see Avatar (in 3D, of course). And then, if you haven’t before, watch FernGully. The latter may not taste quite as sweet, but its core is brimming with life. It will plant its seeds in you and grow, unlike Avatar, which will careen through your system like corn on the cob and just as quickly come out the other side, lost forever. Other – better – movies will be made with this new technology, and by better storytellers than James Cameron.