{"id":7187,"date":"2009-12-22T07:32:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-21T23:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/12\/22\/avatar\/"},"modified":"2018-03-14T11:17:14","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T03:17:14","slug":"avatar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/12\/22\/avatar\/","title":{"rendered":"Avatar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blogavatar01\" Avatar<\/a><\/em> (2009) \u2013 at Cineleisure Orchard yesterday. James Cameron is one of those movie directors whom Hollywood seems happy to sign off huge budgets to produce pet projects of his\u2026 and with good reason why. He makes films only once in a while, but every one of them turns out to be financial winners for the studios. His last three films were: Titanic<\/em> (1997), True Lies<\/em> (1994 \u2013 will there ever be a sequel\u2026?!), and Terminator 2<\/em> (1991) \u2013 all huge successes at the box office.<\/p>\n

To be honest, I\u2019ve also been influenced by the hype concerning Cameron\u2019s most recent production, Avatar<\/em>. Heck, even broadcast television in Kumamoto was saturated every night with news and theatrical trailers of Avatar<\/em>. The film had been in production for the last 15 years now, and cost USD237 million to make \u2013 possibly the most expensive film ever \u2013 in part due to the new 3D video recording technology that Cameron created specifically for this film.<\/p>\n

The story\u2019s set about 150 years into the future where humans have found a lush moon called Pandora, and are intent on mining it for a precious mineral called Un<\/strong><\/em>obtainium \u2013 no kidding. Unfortunately, Pandora despite its beauty is also hostile on account of its unbreathable atmosphere for humans, flora and fauna, and its blue-skinned humanoid but giant natives, the Na\u2019vi. Unpersuaded to move and relocate off a rich Un<\/em>obtainium deposit, the humans resort to force, but not before employing their genetically grown Na\u2019vi controlled mentally by human operators in a scientific program called Avatar to infiltrate and gather intelligence about the Na\u2019vi for the upcoming battle. The story takes a turn when their own human operator, Jake Sully, falls in love with Neytiri, a princess of the Na\u2019vi tribe.<\/p>\n

Just to get it right out of the way: the visuals in Avatar<\/em> are splendid. Not just in terms of its texturing, modeling, animation, character and world design. It includes even cinematography. Ling was surprised when I told her that just about everything that constituted outdoor scenery \u2013 and a good portion of the interior scenes \u2013 were computer generated.<\/p>\n

Unlike the other CG-fests like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen<\/em>, the (virtual) cameras employed in Avatar<\/em> aren\u2019t operated by steroid-injected monkeys. It\u2019s actually possible to follow the action and many thrilling set pieces when Sully leans about and explores the almost fantastic world of Pandora.<\/p>\n

As for the cast and characters, there\u2019s a couple of familiar faces: especially Sigourney Weaver, who plays the lead scientist sympathetic to the Na\u2019vi tribe. There\u2019s also Sam Worthington who most recently starred opposite the surprisingly wooden Christian Bale in Terminator: Salvation<\/em>, and also Michelle Rodriguez who\u2019s always fun to watch, and no surprises here again when she plays the Latino military chick.<\/p>\n

Of the lot though, it\u2019s Stephen Lang who plays Colonel Miles Quaritch and whom audiences are going to enjoy watching immensely. I remember Lang only from two films: Gettysburg<\/em> and the prequel Gods and Generals, <\/em>but he looks completely different here: all buffed up with a fierce scar, playing a hard-as-nails military soldier who is itching for the military solution to the predicament. Funnily, while he\u2019s clearly one of the two \u2018evil\u2019 antagonists (the other is Giovanni Ribisi from the Saving Private Ryan<\/em> alumni and who plays the corporate shrill), his motivations aren\u2019t entirely unsympathetic. Whether you agree with the guy and his methods or not, at least you can see where he\u2019s coming from.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

Minor spoilers ahead<\/em><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I also found Avatar<\/em> disappointing in a number of regards. Firstly, the characters aren\u2019t all completely fleshed out, and most seriously with the two leads Sully and Neytiri. Sully starts off with good potential: he\u2019s in the Avatar program because he\u2019s the genetic twin of the last deceased operator, but his background and training are entirely different. The film makes a big deal of this in the first 5 minutes, but is forgotten for the rest of the film. Opportunity lost there to have added a few more subtexts to his character disposition. Neytiri fares little better: aside from being Scully\u2019s mentor and later love-interest, she has little else to do by way of significant story outcomes.<\/p>\n

The most serious defect however was that Avatar <\/em>plagiarizes from other well-known films, the most obvious ones being Dances with Wolves<\/em>, and to a lesser degree The Last Samurai<\/em>. There were no surprises in this film for me: the themes and story are the same as the earlier two films. You get human aliens barging in on natives who\u2019re learned to live in harmony with nature and their surroundings and who sing kumbaya all day long.<\/p>\n

There\u2019ll also be one human being who\u2019s the maverick and who joins in the natives to learn about them, and by film\u2019s end will turncoat against his own race. Big battle ensues which can go either way: either the natives lose (as in Dances with Wolves<\/em> and The Last Samurai<\/em>), or they win \u2013 the one and only story surprise in Avatar <\/em>for me. I\u2019d expected them to get wiped, though they nearly do. Beyond that, Avatar<\/em> is essentially about John Dunbar\u2019s American Indians in space.<\/p>\n

On the last, I guess it\u2019s James Cameron\u2019s little way of saying that humans must stop as they ravage green Earth as this time, they can\u2019t win against the forces of nature.<\/p>\n

On the overall, Avatar<\/em>\u2019s still a must watch especially if you\u2019re not allergic to 3D glasses. If nothing else, it\u2019s a visual spectacle and is already touted to sweep the Oscars next year. I just didn\u2019t find the story terrifically original or refreshing, which was a huge downer as you know pretty much how the story is going to turn out.\u00a0 Between this and the other overtly alien sci-fi film this year District 9<\/em><\/a>, I found the latter a far more intelligent film (though let down in other areas).<\/p>\n

\"star[3]\"\"star[3]\"\"star[3]\"\"blankstar\"\"blankstar\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Avatar (2009) \u2013 at Cineleisure Orchard yesterday. James Cameron is one of those movie directors whom Hollywood seems happy to sign off huge budgets to produce pet projects of his\u2026 and with good reason why. He makes films only once<\/p>\n

Read More Avatar<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}