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12/22/2009 12:37:42 AM - James Cameron's Avatar
I went to see Avatar tonight - December 21st, 2009 - with Margarita in 3D.
It's considerably better than I expected. I was hoping for a 6-7 out of 10 and I'd give it about an 8. I had to deduct at least a solid point because at times Cameron goes off the deep end on the script. For example, at one point he has the bad guy human Colonel exclaim to his troops, "We will fight terror with terror!" The problem is that the line was uttered in response to the bad guy humans attacking the Na'vi, blowing up their sacred tree, and killing loads of them. In response, the Na'vi start gathering all of their clans together but haven't yet staged any kind of retaliation. So...to exactly what "terror" is the human Colonel referring? The line doesn't make any sense given what just transpired (how gathering connotes to "terror" is beyond me), and Cameron's decision to include it says more about what he wanted to say than about how well he formulated the context within which such a line would make sense.
That said...the visuals are spectacular and the story is actually pretty good. There are some distractions like the Na'vi chieftain being voiced by the main bad guy Indian from Last of the Mohicans. (I didn't check the credits, but it was obvious as soon as you heard him speak his first line.) Basically, you have blue 10 foot tall aliens that act like American Indians in many ways...and lo and behold, their native accent (at least for the chief, if not the others) is just like them as well.
There are other weak spots. You don't get a sense of what drives the bad guy human Colonel at all. He's just cookie-cutter bad with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. You don't get a sense that he's got some sort of twisted ambition (a la Commodus in Gladiator), that he's compensating for some kind of personal tragedy in his life (a la V in V for Vendetta), or anything else that would give the guy a single iota of goodness...and therefore make his character a bit more believable, tragically misguided, or whatever.
Similarly, there's a Na'vi warrior - who eventually becomes the tribal chieftain - that initially doesn't like Jake Sully, the story's protagonist. You never really care about him, though, and that's a tragedy because he was the best opportunity to intelligently show Jake gradually gaining acceptance into the Na'vi tribe. The female Na'vi with whom Jake spends most of his time transitions to liking Jake much sooner, and that's fine because he spends most of his time with her and you could assume that they have some kind of a "special bond." The rest of the clan, though, maintains a lack of trust in Jake...until they don't, and the transition is so quick that if you blink you miss it. If you want a better example of the "savage foreigner" gradually being accepted into the entire clan (with a single climactic moment earning the respect of the warrior that initially just wants to kill him), check out Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai.
In any event, I would definitely recommend seeing it...and in 3D. The 3D is very well done. I'll wind up buying the Blu-Ray as well, but I'll have to wait to get the home 3D experience since 3D TVs won't be out for another couple of years or so.
- TZ
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