Avatar (2009)
Country: USA
Production Company: Twentieth Century-Fox, Dune Entertainment, Giant Studios, Ingenious Film Partners, Lightstorm Entertainment
Producers: James Cameron, Jon Landau
Executive Producer: Colin Wilson, Laeta Kalogridis
Director: James Cameron
Screenplay: James Cameron
Cinematographer: Mauro Fiore
Cinematographer, LA [3D System]: Vince Pace
Editors: Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron
Music: James Horner
Production Designers: Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg
Art Directors: Todd Cherniawsky, Kevin Ishioka, Kim Sinclair
Costume Designers: Mayes C. Rubeo, Deborah Lynn Scott
Special Makeup Effects: Antony McMullen, Keith Marbory, Gary Yee , Kevin McTurk/Stan Winston Studio
Second Unit Director: Steven Quale
Virtual Cinematography System Creator: Robert Legato
Visual Effects: Joe Letteri/Weta Digital
Special Effects: Steve Ingram
Creature Designers: Wayne D. Barlowe, Neville Page
Sound Designer: Christopher Boyes
Sound Editors: Addison Teague, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
Costume Designers: Mayes C Rubeo, Deborah L Scott
Stunts: Garrett Warren, Allan Poppleton
Length: 163 mins.
Budget: $425 Million*
Cast: Sam Worthington (Jake Sully), Zoe Saldana (Neytiri), Sigourney Weaver (Dr Grace Augustine), Stephen Lang (Col Miles Quaritch), Michelle Rodriguez (Trudy Chacon), Giovanni Ribisi (Parker Selfridge), Joel David Moore (Norm Spellman), CCH Pounder (Moat), Wes Studi (Eytukan), Laz Alonso (Tsu'tey), Dileep Rao (Dr Max Patel), Matt Gerald (Corp Lyle Wainfleet), Sean Anthony Moran (Pr Fike).
Synopsis: In the year 2154 Earth is a dying planet and Human corporations, with military backing, have colonized the distant moon Pandora and are strip mining it for a rare mineral. Disabled Marine, Jake Sully, takes the place of his dead brother in a program that places humans among the indigenous Na'vi, to better learn their ways and persuade them to surrender their forest to the corporation. As Jake finds himself drawn to the arcadian Na'vi and particularly their leader's daughter, Neytiri, the suits and their military cohort, Colonel Quaritch, lose patience and begin enacting a huge operation to destroy the Na'vi's most sacred region.
Review: Fourteen years in the making with 2,000 people employed solidly for the past two years, Avatar is so costly that the effects work had to be amortized across two films (Battle Angel is coming in 2011) and even then it lands in theaters as the most expensive film ever made, from the director of the most successful film in history, Titanic (1997) having pulled in 11 Academy Awards and $1.6 Billion at the box office.
Given this level of anticipation, the film stands or falls on whether producer/director/writer/editor, James Cameron, has managed to create a ground-breaking epic with broad appeal, that demands repeated viewing, and blows away everything we've seen before. Ever. This somewhat audacious goal can only be met if Cameron overcomes our jaded palate for massive summer CGI slaughter-fests like Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, Terminator: Salvation, and 2012, as well as successfully engaging our hearts and brains in his huge endeavor.
In part, he's succeeded. The world of Pandora is absolutely stunning, each leaf shimmers with detail, each spec of dust and flying insect has been meticulously brought to life and, aided by the IMAX 3D experience, you'll find yourself swatting at small creatures and waving away specs of ash, open-mouthed at the sheer beauty and scale of what's on the screen. The motion capture animation is also brilliantly realized, no unconvincing mouth movements or soulless eyes here, the Na'vi and the human Avatars are entirely relatable, we buy fully into their pastoral existence, fall entirely for Zoe Saldana (Star Trek) as the feisty warrior princess Neytiri and, if you thought Sigourney Weaver looked hot in her Alien wife beater, you'll appreciate her even more as a 10-foot-tall, blue cat creature.
Unfortunately this is almost fatally undermined by dreadfully hackneyed storytelling and, while it's laudable that Cameron's basic message is pro-environmental and anti-militaristic, everything from the banal yoga studio font used in the subtitles and logo (a modified version of Chris Costello's shockingly over-used Papyrus, for those who care), through the story – essentially a sci-fi remake of Dances with Wolves – to the dialogue, cardboard cutout villains and appalling dialogue, threatens to topple the film right up to its last half hour. We long for the comparative complexity of Michael Biehn's psychotic Lieutenant Coffey in The Abyss (Biehn was originally considered for the role of Quaritch), or the oily intensity of Paul Reiser's Carter Burke in Aliens (1986). In comparison Stephen Lang (Public Enemies) coasts on physical bulk and shock and awe, while Giovanni Ribisi (Lost in Translation) only occasionally summons enough menace to raise our ire and we greet his eventual comeuppance with a shrug. Even Sigourney Weaver's performance is weak, her line readings lacking the conviction she brought to ass-kicker, Ripley.
And yet, despite the pervading second-hand feel to proceedings (even the Unobtanium mineral McGuffin is borrowed from eyewear designers, Oakley), Cameron still succeeds. Just. His greatest strength as a storyteller has always been to place believable relationships at the heart of massive spectacle. Kyle and Sarah in The Terminator (1984), army grunts Vasquez and Drake in Aliens, and the battling Brigmans in The Abyss, and while Sam Worthington is no Ed Harris, the love story that seemed so dubious in the trailer here proves to be the anchor-point of the entire enterprise. Sully's gradual embracing of the Na'vi way of life, backed by his gleeful appropriation of a functioning pair of legs, may be totally predictable, but it's a testament to Cameron that when the final battle comes, we're emotionally engaged with both the noble warriors and their exquisite arboreal homeland.
Mainstream press have, for reasons best know to themselves, been gauging the success of this film on fanboy festival reaction - but Harry Knowles and his ilk are irrelevant to the success of Avatar. the film wasn't made for 20-something ComicCon attendees, or their middle-aged fathers, but is squarely aimed at the teenagers they were when they first experienced, respectively, The Matrix and Roger Dean LP covers. Avatar's faults are many, but there's no denying the power of the on-screen images, the basic decency of the message, and the level to which he engages his audience in an admittedly predictable tale. For all this, Cameron's film can be judged a success and he may just have invented a whole new mythology for the next generation of awe-struck science fiction fans.
*Source: Financial Times: Man in the News: James Cameron, December 18th, 2009.
January 14, 2010 at 12:24 AM
Avataar is one of the finest movies of this decade. I enjoyed it very much watching in I-MAX. You have a great blog with definitely very good reviews of the movies.
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