One of the things i love about being at home is that i go and watch films far more often than when I am at uni. Aside from sport, films are my main passion in life. I adore them. I have an extensive collection and will often be found perusing the likes of Empire and Total Film, searching IMDB for news and watching every trailer possible. I have even formed a tentative film production company with my best friend,called “Free Man productions”, inspired by our hero.
- Like his most famous creation, we knew Cameron would be back
And so Mark and I went along to the Odeon in Southampton, in part to inspire ourselves, but also to check out James Cameron’s latest effort, and the most hyped film of the year, Avatar. Cameron is famous for his big hits, including Titanic, The Terminator and T2 and Aliens. Oh and True Lies (genius).
12 Years in the making
Avatar is Cameron’s first film since Titanic was released in ’97. He has been working on Avatar for the bulk of that time, drafting and redrafting, chopping and changing and constantly pushing back the release date. The man even came up with his own virtual reality camera system to film it with. But for a film originally meant to be released in 1999, a ten-year wait brings a lot of expectation.
The story is as such. Earth is becoming uninhabitable, and so man has moved light years through space to a moon called Pandora, where they have found a rich supply of a mineral named -wait for it- Unobtanium (I am not sure whether that is ridiculous or brilliant). Unfortunately the biggest mining site is right underneath the home of a tribe of Pandora’s natives, the Na’vi.
- Saldana and Worthington as Neytiri and Sully (in Avatar form)
What to do? The site administrator (played by Giovanni Ribisi) wants them out of the way, but preferably painlessly. So he has two options. On the one side the military, led by a cold-blooded, hard-boiled, sonofabitch(and any other military clichés out there), Colonel Quaritch ( Stephen Lang). And then there is Signourney Weaver’s Dr Augustine, a biologist who has created a way of fusing Na’vi and human dna to create “Avatar’s” (Na’vi bodies controlled through humans in pods) with which to approach and befriend the indigenous population. Easy right?
Wrong. Our hero Sam Worthington is one of the Avatar controllers, Jake Sully. A crippled and jaded former marine, theAvatar allows him to walk again, but he agrees to be a doubleagent for Col Quaritch in return for leg repairing surgery for his real body. But then he meets and falls for Na’vi native Neytiri, daughter of the Na’vi chieftain (voiced by the very lovely Zoe Saldana). You can tell conflict is around the corner, and it doesn’t take long for all hell to break loose, with
- Zoe Saldana at a screening of her other 2009 blockbuster
Sully forced to choose between his people of birth, or the people he has come to be a part of.
Colours of the Wind?
SO lets start with the criticisms. A new world being exploited by capitalists, with a native people with an affinity for nature…the story is Pocahontas on another planet. Right down to talking trees. And it is very predictable. Although a very enjoyable action film, you can tell what is going to happen in the end from the middle, as there are so many blunt hints as to what the characters are going to do. I kept hoping to be surprised with a twist or two, but to no avail. It all unfolded exactly as I thought it would. Never really a good feature in a film.
The acting from Worthington was also a little wooden at times, and I’m not convinced Michelle Rodriguez’s sympathetic marine was any different from any character she has ever played. That or she just can’t act? Weaver was very good however, and to be fair to Worthington, having seen him in the morally ambiguous hero role in Terminator Salvation, perhaps it is no surprise that I was a little tired of the same sort of stuff in Avatar.
- Worthington’s Sully with his Avatar
So the story wasn’t that original, and it was a little too long, but it was engaging, and Idid not notice “numb bum” (thedeath knell of any film) much at all. On the whole, I was actually very impressed, and in this case, the story didn’t need to carry the film.
Make Another World
This is because the effects were the most stunning I have ever seen. EVER. Cameron has not just created a virtual camera system, he has created Pandora. An entire planet. Watching in 3D may as well be watching as if in real life. And the landscapes and creatures he came up with are mind-blowing. The sky scenes are exhilarating as well as magnificently captured, and frequent slow motion shots only add to the effectiveness of the 3D. I really have run out of superlatives. The battle scenes were fantastic. And towards the end, the film contains a scene that rivals the splitting of the Titanic for sheer epicness. I really feel like I just spent the last couple of hours on Pandora, observing its weird and wonderful inhabitants do battle with equally eye-opening human technology.
The visuals add so much depth to the film that it easily bumps it up from a story based 6/10, to a well-rounded 8.5/10. Those who know me will know that i do not believe in total perfection, and so i don’t believe that a 10/10 exists anywhere. Well I was wrong. The visuals are 10/10 every time.
A Must See
I highly recommend this film to anyone. Even if you aren’t a fan of sci-fi, it is an experience that you should be a part of. Let James Cameron take you to another world. After all, he has spent 12 years building it, so you don’t want that to go to waste now do you?
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