Review: Avatar

AVATAR

This movie is absolutely one of the most gorgeous movies I have ever seen. If you are afraid of heights, do not see this in 3D. However, the actual plot and storyline is fairly predictable once things get going—noble natives, evil, earth-raping intruders, and a valuable natural resource (I really liked the use of the term Unobtanium). The failure to even try to hunt out another concentration of this stuff tells you all you need to know about the humans on this planet, though of course there are good ones who actually care about intelligent life and the science of the planet. The corporate representative is an escapee from The Office, who has clearly decided that being on another planet is simply an inconvenience and not to interfere with his putting game. Colonel Hard*ss seems like a decent guy for someone in the fully upright, locked position, and I have to admit I purely adored those powered suits. However, the contrast between the powered suits and the native life is drawn with a very heavy hand.

The Avatar program allows humans to interact with the natives without having to worry about the atmosphere and/or looking like total weenies (since humans are quite a bit smaller in actual size compared to the People—not as bad as in Battlefield Earth, but once humans are shown alongside natives, fairly clear). However, even though the bodies are hideously expensive and take a fairly long time to grow, nobody ever thought to microchip them in case someone gets lost in the woods. Um, yeah. Right.

Jake Scully is a disabled Marine who is the twin of a researcher for whom a body is grown. He’s thrown into the situation with very little training (although given that he arrived on the planet in cold-sleep, could have received a lot of training and instruction if he had been kept awake. But apparently nobody thought of that, either). However, he adapts quickly and well, since he is a disabled but alive Marine. The contrast between his wizened legs and the joy of the native body is also quite apparent. I am surprised they didn’t have trouble making him come out of his ‘coffin’, though later on they show how he is forced to eat and otherwise maintain his human body.

One other thing surprised me, and that’s the native life. All of the lower life, including up to a lemur-analog, have six limbs, and yet the humanoid level has only four. Yes, we all know it’s that way so human actors can play the characters with proper movement (most small countries could easily live off what was paid for CGI as it was), but it seems odd that the Scientist (played ably by Sigourney Weaver) didn’t even comment on it—there’s another element, called handwavium, that could have been offered up in this case.

Of course, once Jake Sully is allowed to be part of the native tribe (“And then a miracle occurred”), anyone who has seen A Man Called Horse can predict the movie for the next half hour or so (and this is a long movie, so there is room for it). Jake displays how to imitate Homer Simpson falling down a hill on several occasions, but his ability to take humiliation well (remember, he was in boot camp earlier in his life) seems to work out for him, as the natives clearly show how stupid they think he is.

Another thing that bothered me was that Jake was given three extra months to try to persuade the natives to move so that the miners can start going after the unobtainium, but it seems like he spends far more time courting Neytire. He’s not paying attention to his mission. He’s having much more fun learning how to use the nerve fibers at the end of his hair to tame strange wild beasts and commune with the earth and all that, and never says a word to anyone in the tribe about the Sky People wanting to mine their land for Valuable Concessions. And when he finally does the wild thing with Neytire, they don’t use their nerve fiber hair to commune with each other. What’s up with that?

The Huge Final Battle is reasonably well done—much better than say, the Ewoks vs. the Empire, though the different tech levels are pretty much that far apart. There are a lot of native casualties because of the higher technology of the humans, but the last minute miracles have pretty much been established as possible, so that was well done. The ending is what might have been if Native Americans had written the script for Inglourious Basterds, and yet Another Miracle Occurs as far as Jake Sully is concerned.

It’s still a great movie, and worth seeing (and it is really spiffy in 3D). Just don’t expect a lot of depth in the script writing.