Sunday, January 17, 2010

Little Fish Review: Avatar


Vital Stats:

Movie: Avatar
Directed by: James Cameron
Featuring the acting talents of: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, and Computer Technology

Review in long:
(Contains spoilers, but do you really care?)

Jake Sully is our hero in Avatar, and his backstory is he had a brother who died, lost the use of his legs, blah blah blah “I’m a depressed yet smart-alec ex marine.”

Big evil villains want to take over beautiful planet Pandora, because it has a big supply of a really awesome mineral called “unobtainium.” I’m assuming Big Evil Company had already depleted the copious amounts of “reallyhardtogetium” from that last planet they invaded, and so needed a new mineral to set their evil sights on. Big Evil Company hires Jake to go help them find a diplomatic way to get rid the the native people of Pandora. He gets hooked up to an avatar, which lets him wander around as if he is one of the native people called the Na'vi.


The Na'vi are Native American cat-Smurfs who came to Pandora by way of Jamaica. (Ostensibly to engage in 24 hour raves, as the majority of the planet is made of or derived from glowsticks)

Jake gets stuck on the planet and is found by a particularly foxy cat-smurf named something I can't remember. She teaches him the ways of her people, and he becomes a warrior and blah blah blah you know the plot. Even if you haven’t heard the plot, you know the plot.

Jake falls in love with cat-smurf lady, he realizes Big Evil Company is evil, and the Na’vi are magical and awesome and should be saved. Big fight happens. Good prevails.

The point of Avatar isn’t the plot. It’s the visuals. And I must say, the visuals are quite stunning. Somewhere between reality and video game graphics are the Na’vi and their ravetastic forests, and it’s actually really fun to watch. You even got some emotion coming through on the computer-generated eyeballs. That’s a pretty big achievement, considering the creepy soulless computer-eyes have been criticized in films like the Polar Express and Beowulf

I’m generally pretty big on story, and I assumed I would hate the film because the plot was so generic. I actually found myself enjoying the film, and it only had a handful of groan-worthy moments.

Those moments include:

-The “baby, sure, it started out as an assignment, but it’s different NOW! I love you!” speech that breaks him and the girl up for that extra tension before the film wraps up. So cliche.

-The jarring narration that came back in after about an hour of no narration that included the phrase “I would have to take this to a whole other level.” Really? A whole other level? Was it off the hook as well?

-The generic tribal/racial stereotypes. After you saw them you got used to them and didn’t care, but each time one came on the screen I felt kind of racist. Like “oh, I get it, they braid their hair in cornrows- like black people! Ew, racist me, racist me.”

-I was also really bugged by how the Na'vi accentified “jakesully” even though they seemed to have enough of a grasp on non-accented English to get it right.

Review in short:

I was surprisingly not irritated by Avatar. In fact, I was honestly entertained. Definitely worth seeing. Not only do you get pretty pretty visuals that actually entertain throughout, you get solid storytelling (even if you’ve heard it before) and the good old thrill of cheering for the underdog in the climactic fight at the end.

Anything else?

* There are lots of theories about the racism present or not present in Avatar. A good link to start you off is here, which discusses one person’s opinion of Avatar and white guilt fantasies, as well as gives a nice overview of plot. Or you could just Google “Racism in Avatar” and I’m sure you’ll get a lot of hits. I did. I haven't come to my conclusions about the element of race in Avatar, but I certainly think the conversation is an interesting one.

* Papyrus (the font) writes a letter to Avatar - hee hee hee

*Apparently, people are really upset about how the movie Avatar isn't real. Seriously?

*And Lastly, it's been confirmed that there will be a sequel to Avatar. I'm thinking it's either "little cat-smurfs on the prairie" where the Na'vi struggle to rebuild their home/find a new home OR it takes place years later, Jake's child finds a human to fall in love with, and we go with a "The Little Mermaid" theme. Either way, I'm sure James Cameron will go all technology crazy and mess up his own work, and we'll all hate the sequels, just like we all hate the Star Wars prequels. (Damn you, George Lucas)

No comments:

Post a Comment