Review: Avatar, by James Cameron & co

DAAAAAAANG.

I knew I said I'd posted my last post for 2009, but then my parents took me, my bro and my lady to see Avatar and I was compelled to bust out a review before the images faded.

So, here it is.

HOT DAMN.

Let's get this straight, right out the gate. Avatar is not a deep movie. The plot is a pretty shameless Dances With Wolves analogue - white man go infiltrate natives, white man fall in love with native woman, white man join natives and learns to live with nature etc etc - but if you pay to see a James Cameron flick expecting twists and turns then you've got your priorities muddled. Just as Roland Emmerich is your go-to guy for mindless destruction, and Tarantino is the master of idle conversation, James Cameron is all about pushing new tech. Look at Terminator 2 (Oscars for makeup and FX), The Abyss (Oscar for FX), Aliens (Oscar for FX, again), and Titanic (he built and sunk a goddamn ocean liner, and then won 11 Oscars, including FX). The man pushes his tech. He knows how to make the screen sing.

Avatar sings.

Critics have said that Avatar has the best 3D animation of any film, ever. For the most part, I agree. Avatar certainly pushes the tech farther than any director has dared before - there are 10-15 minute stretches in this film where absolutely everything you see is completely seamless and believable CG. No puppets, no actors in suits, no plastic plants. When Avatar heads out into the jungles of Pandora, everything is fake. And yet real.

See, what Cameron has done here is not simply use CG to augment reality, or insert CG creations into pre-filmed scenes, or recreate known environments using CG (although he does all of those at times). Cameron has, in Pandora, created an entirely believable alien ecosystem, and he presents it to us in lush and tactile detail. Bio-luminescent flower pods, floating mountains, six-legged dog-like scavengers, hammer-head rhinos... this planet is packed with some truly demented creations, and in the hands of a lesser team they'd seem cheesy and plastic. But Avatar cost more to produce than the GDP of the Democratic Republic of São Tomé (that's a fact) and as such, everything in this crazy, crazy mixed up world feels as real as the chair I'm sitting on, the tree out my window and the cat on my lap.

James Cameron makes us believe in Pandora. As such, we believe in the Na'vi.

The Na'vi are ten foot tall blue critters that live in the jungles of Pandora, and are as such the main protagonists. Their language and culture is a blatant Native American/Peruvian/African/Aboriginal Australian mashup. I'm not fussed. What matters is that, like the plants and monsters and waterfalls of Pandora, the Na'vi are completely real on-screen. There has never been, in the history of cinema, human-like characters animated so fluidly, or with such life and warmth in their expressions. I don't think Cameron could have done any better with prosthetics and bodypaint. There is so much solidity to the Na'vi, so much complexity in their facial tics and twitches...

Watching the Na'vi navigate their strange planet is a joy as well. They swing through the trees and climb floating vines and leap from stone to stone much like monkeys in Jodphur leaping from rooftop to rooftop. There is such grace in their movements and yet the animation doesn't fall into the trap of being too smooth, too slick. They feel real.

And, finally, the 3D. I've watched a bunch of 3D flicks in recent months, and none of them have felt this good. There is very little overt 3D in Avatar. Nothing leaps out at you like in Coraline, or Monsters Vs Aliens. Here, the 3D is subtle and understated. Instead of popping, like Coraline, it simply works to make everything feel more... present. It's hard to explain, but there were a few times in Avatar when I literally felt like I was a silent onlooker as opposed to a disconnected viewer. The characters and the flora and fauna were close enough to touch.

BUT

Does this make it a good movie?

I think so. There is nothing WRONG with Avatar. The plot is servicable, with a few holes that don't really jump at you until you leave the cinema. It's a solid 6/10 story. It's well paced and the characters are fun. That's all you need for a summer blockbuster. There is nothing insultingly stupid about the plot, characters or acting, and that's good enough for me. This, combined with the absolutely groundbreaking visuals and sterling directing by Cameron, turns Avatar from a movie into an event. This is a new benchmark not only visual fidelity but in how audiences will expect to experience cinema in the future.

You'd be a tosser to miss it simply because the plot is Pocahontas meets Space Smurfs.