Avatar

(2009)

Dir: James Cameron

 

 

What the hell Cameron? You used to be so good. A soldier sets out as part of an expedition for unobtanium. What the fuck is that? It’s really astonishing to think how far you have fallen. You used to be right up there. You were part of the pantheon of Science Fiction greats. This tale of evil industrialists trying to bulldoze the hell out of a big blue planet and its big blue inhabitants is beneath you. The most astonishing revelation I had when watching this was just how unsubtle it really is. The characters are paper thin caricatures. Industrialists are bad. Blue toned natives are good. That’s the best you can do?

A lot can be forgiven in a film – even if it is derivative and shallow – if it manages to entertain you. I know I was entertained for about ten minutes. It’s over long. The special effects, while impressive, aren’t mind blowing. The 3D is annoying and actually off putting. In regards to the subtitles, which popped out of the screen making it hard to keep your focus on them, I got especially pissed off. The film to me is not much of a leap forward for special effects or even just in technical terms – Jurassic Park, Toy Story, The Matrix, Gladiator oh yes Cameron’s T2 – they were leaps forward. Not this. It was demonstratively one big showcase for 3D technology, done in a way that ironically was rather one-dimensional.

 

Sick of it yet?

 

Since then 3D has started to dominate the big screen and even the small screen too. That is this film’s lasting legacy. The technology it has introduced hopefully will allow other filmmakers to put it to some better use. The film itself is really just ‘shrug’. It’s not terrible. It’s just plain average.

** ½ / *****

 

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There’s not a lot of praise that can heaped on James Cameron’s Sci-Fi marathon. It does have merit-worthy attributes, but it’s just so hard to focus on these considering the man behind this film. The Terminator, Aliens, T2, True Lies, make no mistake about it, those films alone qualify Cameron as a true great; stories sizzling with sparkling originality and engaging dialogue. We all thought that the mind-numbingly long The Abyss was a blip on his otherwise untarnished record (hey, I like Piranha II okay?) but it appears that it was actually one big wet omen. Big, loud, dumb, blue and expensive. I’m not talking about Didier Drogba, but the kind of films Cameron is now making.

Both Titanic and Avatar have made a shed load of dosh and are sitting pretty as the two highest grossing films of all time. At least, unlike Titanic, Cameron does manage to fill Avatar with some entertainment. Stephan Lang’s Colonel Quaritch chews his way through the 3D jungle scenery with ridiculous aplomb, a stark contrast to Sam Worthington’s charisma vacuum. Why do people keep casting him? He looks utterly at sea next to Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saldana.

But this film is all about the 3D. That’s how it marketed itself. There were no great claims made about the plot or the dialogue, so were we wrong to be surprised when ‘Dance With Smurfs’ appeared? Cameron insisted for years that he was making “the future”. The visual future. And he has done that. Since Avatar’s release we have seen 3D film’s take over, with the likes of Alice in Wonderland and Toy Story 3 following in big daddy’s blue footsteps, rocketing up the all-time box office list. But will it last? Everyone knows Avatar looks ‘nice’, but game changing? The success of 3D is down to one thing: cost. It is cost, not quality which has helped these films to conquer the box office, but the bubble is set to burst. As much as Cameron might say otherwise, this won’t last.

** ¾ / *****

“In this film, there are blue people. Furthermore, there is a man in a giant robot who tries to kill a magical tree.”