Avatar – A Review

I finally managed to get in to see it today, a week and two days after opening.

Karen went with me and we opted for the non-Imax 3D version.

I don’t know what Roger Ebert was thinking – maybe invites to some nice parties or something – but I certainly did not leave the theater “feeling the same way I did after seeing Star Wars”.

No comparison, in fact. Star Wars blew me away. True, I was much younger then, but.

I was even younger when I left the theater after watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and that blew me away too.

Both of those films did something that Avatar did not and can not do. They presented things we’d never seen before on the big screen. (Kubrick’s zero-grav scenes had special effects folks scratching their heads for months. Star Wars did the same.

Avatar does not show us things we’ve never seen before – it shows us a better version of things we’ve already seen.

(I think it will take the introduction of the first immersive 3D/holographic 360 surround film to show us “something new”.)

On the other hand, better was gorgeous!

The Na’vi are most certainly not attenuated smurfs, the mechs are mechs, the airships impressive if not aerodynamic and Pandora is truly a lush Eden with a eye candy stretching off to the horizon in every direction.

I strongly suspect that each and everyone of the plants we’re shown in all of their phosphorescent glory are either real plants or ones that existed on our planet at one time (on land or beneath the sea). If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but if not, it was a neat trick to show them as alien botany and point an accusatory finger right back at every (ignorant) member of the audience.

Story? Holes galore, ranging from the mildly stunning (arrows that bounce off bullet proof plastic one time and penetrate to deadly effect when they need to the next) to Yet More Stupid Military Tactics (realism sacrificed to visual impact) to show-stopping fact that if it weren’t for bad writing, there’d be no story at all.

In some respects this doesn’t matter. Cameron goes for heart-string tugging and plucks them quite effectively. You’re meant to care about the Na’vi and their world and to hate (most of) the humans, and you do.

You’re given time to experience the wonder of Pandora (even if some of it is physically impossible but then again, who doesn’t want to see real floating mountains? Take that Sir Hillary!) and a lot of it made me want to go there and walk through that jungle, even if I’d be too stupid to live and would fall prey to indigenous life forms within the first couple of minutes.

(Peggy: the biology makes NO sense, unless you can believe that hexapedal, quadrapedal and bipedal creatures would evolve side-by-side within the same ecosystem and so far as flying creatures being used as mounts for 12 foot tall blue elfs, well, we won’t even go there…)

The films was peppered with homages to other Cameron offerings and numerous, numerous SF flicks:  I’d have to have a DVD version of the flick I could study for quite some hours to even begin to catalog them, but they are most assuredly there.

So far as ripping off SF stories – absolutely.  Cameron has obviously learned his lesson since some prior missteps in this regard (I can just imagine one of the money men saying “no lawsuits this time, John”), so where borrowed, the concepts and plots are surrounded by some much other stuff that while it is clear to an afficianado where this, that or the other thing came from, it would be impossible to prove derivation or to find a smoking gun.  Off to top of my head I’d add Slan and the Pern stories to the mix of stories that have already been identified.

(My problem with this issue is that yes, SF writers borrow from each other all the time, or answer one high concept with another riff that plays off the same idea, but they’re all contributing to the collective pool.  Film takes these things, adds nothing to the pool and fixes, forevermore, a particular image that becomes associated with the trope(s).  I’d have been more than mollified if Cameron had stuck in an acknowledgement to the entire genre at the end of the flick – not one admitting influence by any particular author or work but something along the lines of “if not for the nearly 100 years of SF literature that precedes me and the works I’ve enjoyed since childhood, there would have been no Avatar.  Thanks for all the great stories”; at least it would give some a thing or two to think about.  Though that’s probably too much to expect, especially from director types who are supposedly all about their egos being tied up with their ‘creativity’.)

I also have to mention that about two years ago I noted here that I was waiting for the first true multi-media event to take place, one in which the movie is released at the same time as the book, as the game, as the animated tv show, as the plush toys, audio book & etc., etc., and I’m fairly pleased with my own prognostication that the marketing of Avatar has seen the realization of a good portion of that concept (yes, I’ll take credit.  Directors are not the only ones who’s egos are tied up with their creativity).

I doubt that doing so was part of the “plan” – much more likely that it was done out of necessity to recoup the investment, but there it is nonetheless.  If Avatar makes a profit (huge as it looks to be), the opportunity to release other properties in a multi-medium fashion can only be enhanced.

Avatar is well worth seeing and is pretty much going to become one of those cultural touchstones (like 2001 & Star Wars):  you can’t call yourself a ‘fan’ unless you’ve seen it, legions of new fans will be born/created by the experience.  Unfortunately – sigh – I think it is also the movie that has put the final nail in the coffin of the argument between story over visual experience, with ‘the experience’ having won.

How long do you think it’s going to be before we start seeing “films” that are nothing more than travelogues of interesting and fantastical worlds?  Not long if Avatar has the influence I think it is going to.