I heard bad things about AVATAR. Mind you- I only heard them weeks ago- Im not one of that group of people that had been following its progress for years. I hadn't even heard of it until a month ago.
I heard good, I heard bad, but even the bad reviews mentioned how great it was visually- so off I went- one last Christmas present to myself.
I'm not into any kind of video games so I didn't even really know what the word "Avatar" meant before going into the theater.
This seemed almost like "Aliens 5" (or did they make a 5th on of those? I've lost count) with the space Marines and cryo sleep chambers. It really felt like "The Company" from AlienS(
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090605/) is the same one in this one- instead of terrafarming the Planet LV-426 they're strip mining the planet Pandora .
You tell me- it sounds like the same company- theyre space ships and robot exo skeletons and fighter planes all look and move the same. They ACT the same.
I saw it in 3D so it was a FEAST for the eyes, every where you turn theres some kind of FX to fill your eyeballs.
Sigourney Weaver- is she Ripley? No but pretty durn close....
People have said that this movie is all fx and not a very original plot. Well what can I say? I was immediately thinking of Kevin Costner amoung the Indians in DANCES WITH WOLVES and a bit of THE EMERALD FOREST. It also seems like Cameron cribbed from APOCALYPTO , FernGully and lots of other " save the forest" movies. With a touch of the JURASSIC PARK movies ( esp Part 3- my fave) and of course a touch of LOTR....
SPOILERS begin here...
The Effects, and I dont mean stuff laid on top of footage effects- this is a fully contrived WORLD here- are amazing. Kinda reminded of one of the planets in the " execute order 66" scene from Revenge of the Sith (2005) .
Right away I guessed that he would be "the chosen one" and that he'd get together with that girl and summon up some magic power from the earth(*) spirit and lead an insurrection against the strip miners. And yeah- he'd have a final showdown against that macho Marine and that the girl would save his ass.
(*) Pandora spirit- shut up- you know what I meant.
Come to think of it, the hero is an outsider whos "plugged in" artificially to their world and has to save them from the machines- he's NEO from THE MATRIX!
(Although Ive read that Cameron wrote this way before any of these movies Ive mentioned came out).
Our hero has to learn their ways, and of course he masters them better than they do- theres the jealous prince who wants to see our hero fail and those tow have to partner up at the end. And every little thing they encounter- rememner them because they'll come back in the climax. "Only the most amazing warriors can ride the red Dragon" Hmmmm- why tell us about THAT? I wonder if THATS gonna come up later. At least they didnt have that old crone say that Jake Sully was their prophecized savior.
The Jungle people are clearly an American Indian analogy- when the braves on "horses" came in to ask Pocahontas why she was taking Capt John Smith into the Indian Village it just hammered it home. I also like Camerons not so sly jabs at the invasion or Iraq- "Lets fight terrorists with terror"
the ending- Apocalypse now meets Return of the Jedi....
You just know that out hero would have to have one last hand to hand duel with the Colonel Miles Quaritch. That Marine guy in the robo armor reminded me of the crazy Navy Seal in Camerons " The Abyss". "Chacon" the Chopper pilot WAS Vasquez from ALIENS ( at first I thought it was the same Actress!).
Sounds like I hated it- no. I loved it, only a nitpicker like me would pick up on those things. In any Cameron movie from the first Terminator movie on... you can tell where he's putting in ideas lifted from other movies.
Great movie, I suppose that Cameron knew that if he was hitting us with so much bizarre alien imagery he'd have to give us a familiar story. And tell it spectacularly.