The visual experience of a lifetime.

Grade: A

Avatar

Indian Release Date: 18/12/09
CBFC Classification:  U/A
Running Length: 2 Hours 41 Minutes

Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore
Director: James Cameron
Screenplay: James Cameron
Cinematography: Mauro Fiore
Music: James Horner

Finally it’s here, the way to this day has been lit by the beacons of publicity overkill in every manner possible, praise had been heaped upon James Cameron & his vision even before anyone saw the finished product. Having awaited the release of Avatar eagerly since I first heard about it & being a die-hard Cameron fanboy (especially for his Sci-Fi work) my expectations for Avatar were at stratospheric levels due to everything I had read & seen (the ‘Avatar-Day’ sneak peek included). I expected nothing less than to be left speechless at the end of it all.

So does Avatar stand true on those impossibly high expectations?

Unfortunately the answer is no.

Is Avatar then a major disappointment?

Hell no, it’s one of the finest visual cinematic experiences you’d have on the big screen & if you miss watching this in a theatre in 3D, god help you cause you’d probably have missed out on something that future generations might refer to as the first leap into a new era of filmmaking technology.

The year is 2154 & we are introduced to Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a former marine who’s lost the use of his legs. On learning about his twin brother Tony’s death, Jake’s offered the chance to be his replacement on the Avatar project on a far off planet called Pandora. A mining consortium has set up base on the planet Pandora looking for an extremely rare & expensive mineral. The only thing that stands in the way of the humans strip-mining the planet are the Na’vi, a local indigenous race of people who are fiercely protective of their ecosystem. The Na’vi have sleek, elegant features almost like those of a cat only with blue skin.

The Avatar project involves creating synthetic clones of the Na’vi by combining Na’vi & human DNA. Those clones called avatars are controlled by humans to interact with the natives, learn about them & gain their trust. The “gaining their trust” part of the equation is to get the Na’vi to relocate to another place since their tribe camp rests on the largest deposit of the mineral the mining corporation so desperately wants. The Avatar project is run by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) whose constant efforts are to ensure that matters are handled by diplomacy rather than brute force ‘shock & awe’ treatment being advocated by the militia hired for protection by the mining company. Jake is selected to be a replacement for his dead brother because his brother’s avatar would make a perfect DNA match for him & the company would rather put an inexperienced guy in the field than spend a mini fortune on creating a new avatar for someone more qualified.

When Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the head of the militia on Pandora learns of Jake’s past as a marine he offers him a deal, the expensive operation to get Jake’s legs back would be paid for & in return Jake has to pass on all information about the Na’vi’s defenses to Quaritch. Jake out of a sense of loyalty to the military & the desire to walk again agrees. However on the very first outing in the field gets separated from the rest of team & is left to fend for himself in a hostile world which he has no training to survive. During the night when he’s on the verge of becoming a snack for some predatory dog like creatures he’s saved by a Na’vi female by the name of Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) who takes him back to her tribe. Jake gets accepted into the tribe & Neytiri starts to train him in the Na’vi way of life which he grows to love slowly (all the while reporting back to Quaritch) but when the corporation grows impatient & decides to send in the troops to force the Na’vi out, his loyalties are tested.  

With the ground-breaking technology on display James Cameron didn’t forget the basic need of any good movie, an involving plot. Even though the plot is a variation on a story witnessed before in countless movies, right from live action features such as ‘Dances with Wolves’, ‘The Last Samurai’ to animated features such as ‘Princess Mononoke’, ‘Pocahontas’ & even ‘Atlantis: The Lost Empire’ & many more, it is pretty competently handled. It’s a good old fashioned epic with clear segregation of the good guys & the bad guys & draws enough allegories to real life events like the wars America has waged in the past fifty years to the era of colonization brought upon by the “white man”. It also weighs in topics such as global warming, corporate greed & racial intolerance & all with a deft touch, it never gets overly preachy. Though I find the irony in a movie which takes a stand against capitalism & technology yet it’s very existence is possible because of the very same factors.
 
The movie’s “good guys” are the Na’vi & Cameron very well understands the need for the audiences to forge a bond with these blue-skinned aliens & he spends an inordinate portion of the running length in getting us to observe the Na’vi way of life. The Na’vi way of life & garb are modeled on the Native Americans & Cameron even went to the extent of creating a thousand word vocabulary from scratch for their language. The smartest thing (creating a truly despicable adversary always creates instant sympathy for the underdog & especially when that underdog has bows & arrows while the adversary has armed to the teeth gunships, your loyalties tend to get skewed) he does is to paint the humans (the corporate guys & the militia) in shades of absolute black hence because of our loathing of those characters we feel a strong kinship with the Na’vi in their battle to fight for what is rightfully theirs. Though I have to say the characterization of the Na’vi never moves beyond the obligatory “in touch with their roots” natives’ mould which most movies of this kind portray them to be. There are no grey characters which does make the plotline far more predictable than Cameron would have probably liked.

Many movies might have tried selling you the dream of taking a journey to a place unlike anything you have seen before, Avatar actually makes that dream a reality. Pandora isn’t just a set or a computer generated background (though it is), it’s a world of almost lyrical beauty. The plants, the animals, the forests, the landscape, the people, everything is created with such detailed precision that you’d believe your “Not in Kansas anymore” just like Col. Quaritch puts it & all of it filtered through the revolutionary 3D technology arrests you in this alien world completely. Not only the alien world of Pandora but environments like the sickbay where Jake is being treated early on in the movie or the military compound are beautifully rendered.   

The revolutionary new 3D technology (I saw it in non-IMAX normal Digital 3D) is something I had witnessed during the sneak peek & I’m still blown away by the manner in which Cameron integrates it into the movie to bring Pandora to life. This isn’t the old-school gimmicky 3D with stuff being hurled at you to go ‘oooh’ & ‘aaah’, this is a sense of complete immersion in the movie on screen with every tiny grain of sand displayed in 3D. Images of the bioluminescent plants, the night sky etched out like a painting, trees the size of mountains which house an entire tribe of people, mountains which actually float mid-air, the majestic yet dangerous dragon like flying creatures, seeds of the Mother Tree (a holy tree of the Na’vi) which float like jellyfish in the air, insects buzzing around, even the grass thrown about, I could just keep going on all day about all the mesmerizing sights that are accentuated by the use of 3D. This is also one of the first 3D movie I’ve seen in the theatre which didn’t make my eyes hurt & need me to remove the “snorkeling goggles” every 20 minutes or so.  

The Na’vi are created using motion-capture technology much like Gollum was & Cameron even takes it a few notches above Gollum in making the Na’vi look unbelievably realistic. Don’t even think about a Jar Jar Binks joke!

James Horner’s background score fits the tone of the film perfectly though if you pay attention you can catch the signature tune he first used in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock & later recycled for Aliens.

The actor who seems to be having the most fun is Stephen Lang, his Quaritch is the embodiment of the evil military guy & Lang plays it with all the right menace to truly make us despise him. Zoe Saldana is another standout even though her character is completely CGI-rendered; she brings out the humanity (Na’vi-ity?) in Neytiri effortlessly. Sigourney Weaver who gets some of the best lines is classy as ever. Giovanni Ribisi as the greedy corporate head of the mining colony is sure to remind you of Paul Reiser from Aliens. Sam Worthington is far more effective in his human avatar than his Na’vi one but he does a solid job overall. Michelle Rodriguez plays the tough as nails action female role & though it’s a two bit role with no purpose other than to get the main characters out of tight spots, but she does an effective job.        
 
Now for the big question, which is, if I liked the movie so much why was I still disappointed? The answer is more to do with me & my expectations from Cameron than anything what the movie had to offer. As a 9 year old kid I remember feeling all choked up as I watched Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2 lower himself into the molten metal pit at the end to self destruct with Brad Fidel’s iconic terminator theme play in the background or when I watched Aliens later remember the feeling of dread & tension watching the motion sensors pick up approaching movement while the grunts barricaded in a room wait for the aliens to attack only to discover the aliens have taken an alternate route into the room. Almost every Cameron movie has those moments of energy which bring out these raw emotions in you that stick with you long after the movie is over, it’s something extra like an x-factor. Unfortunately for me that very x-factor is something that I felt lacking in movie (and the main reason for not getting an ‘A+’ rating) though quite a few scenes did come close to generating it.

Avatar is a triumph for the uncompromising vision which Cameron had nearly 15 years ago, this is his labor of love. The real achievement beyond anything else is the astonishing technology which plunges the viewer head-on in a world unlike one they have ever had the privilege of witnessing before. The plot though recycled from a dozen other movies is still able to keep you hooked on till it’s predictable conclusion & serves it’s purpose well as being the backbone of this bewitchingly beautiful body.

Final Verdict: Watch it for the world of Pandora alone & make sure it’s in 3D, it’s an experience you’d not want to miss.

Grade: A

 

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