So the time has come. Lord Cameron has released a new narrative film! And it isn’t some smelly love story starring a pre-pubecent Leo DiCrapio, oh no, it is a futuristic SciFi (NOT SYFY…STFU NBC) epic set on a distant planet and features “Very Hard to Kill” aliens, combat Mecs, Sigourney Weaver and its directed by…JAMES CAMERON!!! –THAT SHOULD BE ENOUGH I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO WRITE THIS, I SHOULD BE WATCHIN THE FILM AGAIN RIGHT NOW!!!!!!! But im not. Instead im wondering why everyone is shitting all over themselves for this film…
First a few high points. If you want to hear about the technology that Cameron basically invented for this film, looks elsewhere…YES it is incredible, and YES one MUST see this Film IN 3D IN THEATERS, so just go for the 3D experience, its worth it, but im not interested in writing about it, I don’t like 3D and I never will. LONG LIVE 16MM REVERSAL! What I am interested in writing about is the design of the Navi…I distinctly remember when a close friend saw the first official images of the Navi, he was fraught with disdain, infuriated with what he interpreted as a clumsy, un-original sketch barely on the level of some high-school deviantART portfolio. At the time I was sympathetic towards his argument, but I have since seen the light. The design of the Navi is not the result of a untrained student, instead it is a truly skillful design. I will go as far as to say that it is perhaps the most brilliant aspect of the film. What Cameron did with the Navi was create a creature that is truly alien but at the same time undeniably human. Avatar is not a story about aliens, it is a story about humans…or at least that is how the Navi are perceived. And this is important because it made it possible for the viewer to truly relate to the Navi, to connect with them on a human level, and draw so much more from the film. Cameron walked a fine line between too outrageously non-human (which would defeat dramatic attachment to the characters) and too human (which would defeat the wonder of the film). Although one could easily argue that there have been countless non-human characters who have been personified in various ways to promote a dramatic attachment with the viewer (E.T., R2D2, Alf, Roseanne, ect.), my argument isnt that the design of a relatable character has never been done before, but rather it is that the Navi allowed for a unprecedented amount of human-ness in the characters, a quality that built a truly strong bond between the on-screen character and the viewer. The Navi were human enough to be understood as and related to in terms of human emotions, yet they were fantastic enough to transport the viewer away from earth! Admittedly my point is difficult to articulate, but Cameron has certainly tread new ground through the mythic Uncanny Valley, an achievement which is truly remarkable.
Also, I must say that the finest bit of writing in the entire screenplay -besides the “RoboShank” (thank you/Filmcast)- is the situation Sam Worthington’s character Jake Sully finds himself in. A former Marine, who as a result of an accident is now confined to a wheelchair, Sully is given a new body in his Avatar, all of a sudden he can not just walk but run, jump (and later fly around on dragons)! The prospects of such a miraculous healing are profound, I know it is just a film, but this narrative device is awe-inspiring.
And now for the Ugly… To be honest, I do admire this film, to really sit down and try to poo-poo on the film would really be quite trite-but the film wasn’t perfect, in fact, when and where it does faulter, it does so well, so very, very well:
Exhibit A: “Unobtanium” the retardednessity of this name is quiet impressive, but I guess Cameron felt that the rarest mineral this side of Alpha Centauri should really have a clever name that alluded to how magically unobtainable it is… but then again if Cameron had picked a slightly less redumbulous name for the earth-saving ore, he would have had to come up with a better name for the “Flux Vortex” (the electronic dead zone around the floating mountains) and that would have been too much work for the poor old screen writers, I guess.
Exhibit B: Remember when in the first Matrix movie it is explained that when you plug into the Matrix your body is connected to the Matrix and if you die in the Matrix you die in real life also? –What was great about this little screen-writing device was that it added Jeopardy to the film because even though our characters were in a computer simulation, there lives were in fact on the line, thus creating DRAMA…anyway, how did Avatar handle this out-of-body plot structure? It didn’t, there was never any mention of the Avatar-controller’s actual lives being in danger, sure their “very expensive” Avatars might have gotten destroyed, but as far as the viewer was concerned, the actually human controlling the Avatar was basically invincible. Then, at the end when Joel Moore’s Avatar is killed in the final battle, we see him in the very next scene emerging from his Avatar-control bed perfectly OK… The problem with this approach is that it completely zaps all of the DRAMA out of all the Avatar shots, I mean if the Avatar “dies” then so-what…the person controlling the avatar is perfectly fine…the Avatar is nothing more than a tool, and no one ever cried about a broken hammer. This human life-isn’t-on-the-line approach really killed a lot of the high-tension scenes for me, specifically when Sam Worthington’s Avatar is chased by the Pandora-Panther early in the film, or when Neytiri is trying to save Worthington’s “sleeping” Avatar from the giant bulldozer the morning after they totally boned...would it have been too much to switch things up a bit and add a quick line or two about peril the controller was in when using an Avatar, I mean Cameron went out of his way to explain that the Navi are hard to kill because their bones have a “naturally occurring carbon fiber” in them…
Did I like the film? YES. Is it a “Game Changer” NO! So why all the stink? WHY is everyone soo excited about this film?!? Has every movie critic in America forgotten about the importance of Drama, Jeopardy, or Intelligent Dialogue…Or was everyone completely blind-sided by a 3D planet full of Blue Cat People, Dragons, and Florescent Plants???-I believe the answer is the latter, and I also believe that James Cameron knew this would be the case all along.
Film is entertainment, more specifically, it is entertainment for the masses, although the medium of Film can be employed to entertain the Intellect, it must be accepted that Film and The Cinema are Entertainment for the Masses. James Cameron understands his audience; he understands that they work shitty jobs, endure empty relationships, depend on excessive drug, alcohol and food consumption to get by, and enjoy evenings at the Movies where they expect the explosions and orgasms that are missing in their own lives. And Cameron knows how to deliver.
