Avatar
Description
A reluctant hero. An epic journey. A choice between the life he left behind and the incredible new world he’s learned to call home. Return to James Cameron’s Avatar — the greatest adventure of all time.
Please note: This edition of the film is not in 3DAmazon.com
After 12 years of thinking about it (and waiting for movie technology to catch up with his visions), James Cameron followed up his unsinkable Titanic with Avatar, a sci-fi epic meant to trump all previous sci-fi epics. Set in the future on a distant planet, Avatar spins a simple little parable about greedy colonizers (that would be mankind) messing up the lush tribal world of Pandora. A paraplegic Marine named Jake (Sam Worthington) acts through a 9-foot-tall avatar that allows him to roam the planet and pass as one of the Na’vi, the blue-skinned, large-eyed native people who would very much like to live their peaceful lives without the interference of the visitors. Although he’… More >> Avatar
May 13th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
I have to give it 1 star because it’s nothing more than a propaganda film to make Americans look bad. The irony is that Cameron made millions on this film and is just as guilty as the enemy in his film for destroying the planet with his plastic Avatar toys, encouraging unhealthy eating at fast food restaurants who serve poisonous foods, polute the planet, and treat animals abhorrently. Cameron is a big time hypocrit preaching to ignorant people while making millions destroying our own planet. It’s a shame too because it was a beautifully produced film. Too bad the message was extremely bias from a hypocritical progressive. Rating: 1 / 5
May 13th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
This is the Yahoo Movies synopsis of Avatar (probably supplied by the production company’s PR department):
“AVATAR takes us to a spectacular world beyond imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on an epic adventure, ultimately fighting to save the alien world he has learned to call home. James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of “Titanic,” first conceived the film 15 years ago, when the means to realize his vision did not exist yet. Now, after four years of production, AVATAR, a live action film with a new generation of special effects, delivers a fully immersive cinematic experience of a new kind, where the revolutionary technology invented to make the film disappears into the emotion of the characters and the sweep of the story.
“We enter the alien world through the eyes of Jake Sully, a former Marine confined to a wheelchair. But despite his broken body, Jake is still a warrior at heart. He is recruited to travel light years to the human outpost on Pandora, where corporations are mining a rare mineral that is the key to solving Earth’s energy crisis. Because the atmosphere of Pandora is toxic, they have created the Avatar Program, in which human “drivers” have their consciousness linked to an avatar, a remotely-controlled biological body that can survive in the lethal air. These avatars are genetically engineered hybrids of human DNA mixed with DNA from the natives of Pandora… the Na’vi.
“Reborn in his avatar form, Jake can walk again. He is given a mission to infiltrate the Na’vi, who have become a major obstacle to mining the precious ore. But a beautiful Na’vi female, Neytiri, saves Jake’s life, and this changes everything. Jake is taken in by her clan, and learns to become one of them, which involves many tests and adventures. As Jake’s relationship with his reluctant teacher Neytiri deepens, he learns to respect the Na’vi way and finally takes his place among them. Soon he will face the ultimate test as he leads them in an epic battle that will decide nothing less than the fate of an entire world.”
Now, if you believe the above description and want to see this probable-piece of crap movie, I think I have a large bridge to sell you in the Virgin Islands.
***UPDATE***:
Well, I saw it last night in Seoul, went to see it just out of plain curiosity. I now have very mixed and skeptical feelings about the film.
On the one hand, the visual quality of much of the movie is some of the best I’ve ever seen, and whatever technology James Cameron and his team have developed it is amazingly effective at rendering exquisitely aesthetic moving images. This technology will apparently revolutionize moviemaking for the forseeable future, that much I do agree with.
I also have to respect the skill and creativity and talent in developing elements of the Na’vi civilization, customs, rituals and values expressed in the story and the visuals and production design which the writers and artists came up with.
However, I view this film to be at least somewhat (or maybe VERY) cynical in the way that it tries to use innocence and purity in the story and motivations of the Na’vi as well as Jake and his human allies while at the same time glossing over the realities of the inherent evil of the military, and the nature of corporations and corporate economic dominance which those characters should have known about. And also while making the Na’vi people seem cluless and naiive to the point of being almost ignorant or moronic.
While much of the Na’vi folklore and Pandora’s ecology in the film is undeniably beautiful and is morally and spiritually touching and uplifting, I find the overall statement of the film after seeing it rather manipulative on the part of the producers and writers. This film is like a Cinderella fairy tale for five year-old’s. But guess what, girls do not turn into princesses in real life when they put on emerald-colored slippers. Avatar has no basis in reality in terms of life as it exists in the real world and the way we human beings, or humanoids for that matter, live and understand our life and our relations with our world and fellow people; yet its premise is, what would happen in a realistic future if corporations and the military teamed up to try and exploit and colonize inter-galactic worlds.
We are asked to believe that Jake and his buddies in the corporation and Marine squadron are “good guys”, yet they are employed by the military or the corporation, and at least in terms of the doctor and the scientists, if they are intelligent enough to have doctorates and be some of the brightest scientists in the world, aren’t they intelligent and discerning enough to know from the beginning, before they signed their contracts and chose these positions, that they would be asked to exploit people and foreign planets and engage in very morally questionable activities??
In the case of the female helicopter pilot, did she only find out recently that the military commanders often have evil intentions and that “lighting up” the natives and valuable rain forests is wrong??
When the Na’vi realize they are about to be destroyed, and decide to fight back, that is kind of like a third world country deciding to fight back against a first world power like the U.S after it has already lost. It just doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen for a very good reason — Countries, or even tribes, generally will not commit mass suicide by challenging an opponent who totally dominates them and can annihilate them at will, they will attempt more intelligent ways to survive, and eventually hope to gain freedom through outsmarting their foe.
The Na’vi only have horses and giant birds and arrows; the humans have battleships, helicopters, robot soldiers, machine guns, and also presumably nuclear and chemical weapons. When the Na’vi fight back and actually win the battle in the film, it is more than ridiculous — it is simply, and totally, implausible. And if the Na’vi had closed the humans’ school so long ago, why did they only now decide to mobilize for self-defense and fight back? Why did they allow their Dream Forest to be burned and bulldozed without already being mobilized for defense, since they already knew about and distrusted the humans and knew they were trying to colonize them??
Also, why was it only Americans and U.S. Marines who made up the corporation and the military?? In the year Avatar takes place, has the United States taken control of all off-world commerce and colonization? Has the U.S. become the world’s sole government? Or was Pandora a U.S. Zone-delineated planet? There was no explanation that I remember why all the human people were American and mostly white or fair-skinned Americans and spoke Americanized English. I didn’t see any Asians, Africans, or other types. Maybe only the U.S. and Americans are sinister enough in our present world to portray the evil parts and characters in a story like Avatar?
None of it makes any sense, but it sure is beautiful to look at at times. And the Na’vi rituals and rites of passage certainly are emotionally compelling (if you can leave your logic and common sense at the door, that is).
However, visual beauty, creative, emotional sentimentality, and high-technology filmmaking advances do not a great film make.
And, I also didn’t like the epic, ear-shattering Star Wars-type battles that Cameron felt obligated to put in for the climaxes. Must every blockbuster film have loud, over-the-top mega-battles?? I don’t even enjoy them, they give me a headache and they’re disturbing and uncomfortable to watch most of the time.
Avatar has achived some very important technologies for the craft of filmmaking, but it is nowhere near a cohesively written and thought-out film, and its amazing beauty and heart-rending symbolism cannot support the house of cards that the story is built on. The story is riddled with fallacies like a large piece of Swiss cheese. This is not a film for thinking people, this is pure escapism and emotionality with some macho action scenes which does not pass the smell test of further consideration.
I will not go see this again, all the cinamatographic beauty and elegant turns of phrases and artistic talents in the world can not make up for a story, plot and backstory that are completely illogical, impossible, and make zero sense. The fact that so much of this film is so beautiful and compelling makes it even more frustrating and ultimately irritating to watch.
Rating: 1 / 5
May 13th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Waaaaaaaahhhhh ! THIS IS SO UNJUST !!!! AAVATAAARRR IS THE WORST MOVIE EVER WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH ! Rating: 1 / 5
May 13th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
I would give this movie zero stars, but I have to settle with giving it one. Rating: 1 / 5
May 13th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Here we have James Cameron’s new film; chock full of CGI, boring action and….well, that’s it, really, nothing else at all.
So, a group of human soldiers invade a foreign planet, and the residents are peeved; so, it’s Starship Troopers, but without any intelligent satire or….anything really.
Don’t give me this “movies are supposed to entertain” argument either; that’s only one part of the role of a film, but Cameron isn’t aware of this; from his days under Roger Corman (where he should have stayed) to his newest 11 year old boy’s wet dream he’s proved this.
I end the review with a quote, on Cameron, by a man who understands cinema in its totality:
“Cameron isn’t evil, he’s not an a-hole like Spielberg. He wants to be the new De Mille. Unfortunately, he can’t direct his way out of a paper bag.” Rating: 1 / 5