Okay I’ll admit it, I thought Avatar was going to be amazing. To be honest, I’d hyped it up to unreasonable proportions and sadly I was disappointed. I’m probably going to give away some of the plot so treat this as a spoiler if you’ve not seen the movie yet.
Let me jump straight into it:
Starting off with the good, the world of Pandora is truly something amazing. What blew my mind me so much is how insanely intricate everything was. From bugs to animals and to tree’s, the world is perfectly detailed and works in sync. There is a heirachical food chain as well as a wide array of plants and animals that fit perfectly with each other. I honestly don’t think there was a single leaf that felt out of place in that movie.
My second favourable aspect of Avatar was the acting. Unlike certain directors (*cough* George Lucas *cough*) who seem to make good actors sound wooden and dull the cast of Avatar was flawless. Sam Worthington as lead character Jake Sully was a particularly good casting and I honestly believed that every person in that movie was perfect for their roles. Sigourney Weaver was also great and even though Giovanni Ribisi had such a small role, his portrayal as a troubled corporate boss with a directive to complete was great.
Obviously the 3D effects were pretty amazing as well, especially in light of how amazingly detailed the world of Pandora is. Now lets move on to what I didn’t like.
The first and biggest problem with Avatar for me was the fact that the story was so poor. If you haven’t seen the movie then I’ll save you some time and money: go dig out your old Star Wars (the first trilogy) boxset, take some acid to add the visual effects and you’ve basically got the Avatar experience for a fraction of the cost and in the comfort of your own home. Quite simply, it’s a “unlikely hero goes on to save the day despite going against his own people and being a total screw-up in his past” story. The plot was a mashup between Star Wars and Lord of the Rings just with better visual effects and 3D. While the story was as old as time, the issue here is that you ended up with a dull, plodding movie.
In a two and a half hour movie, you need to do a lot to keep people’s attention and at least an hour of the movie was self-indulgent effects for the sake of it. Again, the highly predictable storyline meant that there was never any tension of pacing. You always know the hero will survive and succeed “against the odds by way of sheer tenacity and determination” and as such, you’re never left worrying about his success. For that matter, the whole reason for the human’s to be on Pandora is to mine “Unobtanium”. Surely, with 15 years of development, James Cameron could have come up with a better name for a mineral than “Unobtanium”? Anyway, I might have a short attention span but I found myself quite bored through long stretches of the movie and never once caring about whether the main characters lived or died.
On a final note, I think 3D must be the biggest gimmick of all time. Sure it’s nice to have things swishing around infront of your face and “being there” but the simple fact is that it doesn’t add to the story and just seems like a lazy device to add an extra, unnecessary layer of graphics to an already overloaded world. 3D is going to make film makers lazier as they can rely on a graphical boost rather than working their plot harder.
I can’t help but wonder whether I hadn’t seen Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds” the day before I would have seen Avatar in a better light. “Basterds” is about the same length, has ridiculously long dialogue’s but retains the most important part of a movie: pacing and tension. Avatar fails on both counts due to the fact that it’s slow but more importantly never builds tension and as such never allows you to really connect with the characters.
If I had to judge Avatar purely on storyline I’d give it a three out of ten at the most. However, taking everything else into account I’d give it a six or even a seven out of ten. I’d recommend everyone to go see it as it really is a marvel of movie making but if they’d just tweaked the storyline to be vaguely difficult to predict, I’d imagine this would have been the movie of the decade.
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I think you’re being a little harsh…
1. Avatar has everything I look for in big Hollywood entertainment. Awesome characters, huge explosions and a beautifully imagined and recreated world. I’ll go watch indie films for mind melting story lines. I want entertainment, and entertained I was.
2. 3D is the business, watching a regular film just seems archaic now. (However, I do agree in worrying that it will encourage “lazy” movies) ~I’ve seen it in both 2D and 3D~
I have happily paid to watch this movie at the cinema 3 times, they must surely be doing something right?
P.S I think the name “unobtainium” was deliberately tongue-in-cheek.
Just came out of watching Avatar and didn’t get to see it in 3D. I agree that the story is one that has been told for time immemorial but I think must Hollywood movies are. The premise & ’story’ always the same, just different environment, characters, etc.
Anyway, I actually enjoyed it and didn’t really feel the two and a half hours, probably because I needed a break from reality. Pandora is amazing. How it was created and is interconnected.
Entertaining not mind-blowing.
The first time I actually came across Unobtanium was in The Core – the best sci fi cheese fest of all time. Apparently though, it has quite a history and it seems that Cameron was doing a “nod” toward classic sci-fi. I don’t know how true this is considering the mans ego though.
As for story…well I don’t expect much else from him other than predictable. I just wish someone would stop letting him write dialogue. I will never get over Terminator and his damned “I came back in time for you Sarah” line. Most cringe worthy line ever.
All this being said, I actually haven’t been to see this overhyped “marvel” yet. One, because it’s overhyped and two, I friggen hate the abundant use of CG when there is a lack of a decent story – the one thing I have heard over and over.