Reviews Film / Avatar

Okay, seriously, people need to stop interpreting any film that notes that humans can be evil is anti-Human. The movie clearly wasn't - look at how many humans defected to help the natives.

Yes, humans can do some awful things and while this film presented them in an exaggerated fashion, things like what the corporation in the film did to the Na'Vi happen in this world every day. It is actually extremely bold for a film to show that kind of horror without cleaning it up and making it friendlier for the corporate sponsors. Good god, have you heard about the kind of crap that goes on in the name bananas?

The Native American analogy doesn't work - how are the Native Americans doing right now? Oh right, they'll never get their lands back, their suicide and alcoholism rates are through the roof, and the branch of government that is supposed to advocate for them is corrupt as all hell. And this situation is pretty similar in other countries that still have indigenous tribes alive.

Now, the characters. They're not black and white. That's called reality. The military guy just wants a fight, but he's not evil to the core - he sees his job as necessary and he likes doing his job. As long as people worked with him, he took good care of them. As far as he was concerned, the only point of being on that planet was getting the unobtanium and he saw neogotiation as fruitless. To some extent, he was justified since the Na'Vi weren't interested in moving for the sake of a bunch of strangers with guns. Parker earlier expressed that he didn't WANT bloodshed - but he was still willing to sign off on it because he valued his company more. People do this in real life - they either don't care that they're putting money over lives, or they feel that if someone else (like the military guy) takes care of the problem, they aren't "really" responsible. As the film was also a critique on human warfare (in which the men who declare war are rarely the men who will face its consequences), this is realistic.

Trudy switched sides because, like the other soldiers, she was a merc. She got close to the people who were close to the Na'Vi - she was with them the entire time they were deployed. And just wholesale murdering innocents was morally reprehensible to her regardless of whether she personally knew the Na'Vi or not - there's a pretty fine line between being drinking buddies and coming down on them with guns.

Honestly, when the movie was over, I expected this reaction. People don't like being shown that there are evils in the world that we commit and rather than confront them or try to change them cry out that the movie hates humans. I'd have said that to the brainless Ferngully (and do it all the time!), but not to a movie that actually attempts to portray events that have actually happened in the real world (though not with ten foot tall blue people). Humans as a race are not evil, but groups of them can be - and when those with no scruples gain unchecked power, it never ends well.

I wish the movie had been half as clever or intelligently written as your comment, Rebochan.

No, seriously. I do.

"People don't like being shown that there are evils in the world that we commit and rather than confront them or try to change them cry out that the movie hates humans."

I think most people simply misinterpret this. Your Mileage May Vary on if it's because they're stupid or just misunderstanding.

I dunno, I guess I just saw all of that in the film even if all blew by at a breakneck pace and a lot of stuff was literally only established with a line or two since the love story took so much of the screen time.

Then again, I can give a film that creates a logical context for a primitive race to live in harmony with the environment - like, say, a sentient planet which is controlling every lifeform on its surface via a vast neural network. You could make a truly dark film if you exploited what that could mean for the Na'Vi and their evolutionary development.

I theorize that the Na'Vi were guided from much more primitive roots to evolve into "antibodies" for the neurotree network, myself.

The problem, for me, isn't that they show that humans are sometimes bastards. The problem is that they show that humans are ALWAYS bastards. The 'good' humans die and the main character becomes a Na'Vi. So humans have no redeeming qualities?

"People don't like being shown that there are evils in the world that we commit and rather than confront them or try to change them cry out that the movie hates humans."

It's not really that. It just feels more like a completely unnecessary Captain Obvious Aesop.

And the fact that we just sat through a $300 million dollar rehash of Fern Gully minus Robin Williams.

I would like to point out how many times Parker states how he does NOT want to kill the Na'vi. He quotes bad PR in his reason for not doing so. Obviously, that means that, if he did that, then OTHER HUMANS back on earth would not have approved. It doesn't say all humans are bad. It says GREEDY humans are bad. The antagonists were a company that, according to official sources, had grown larger than most earth governments, had a monopoly over all exports from Pandora, and was large enough to have its own very sizable private military. Official sources also reinforce the idea the movie presents that doing bad things to the Na'vi would piss off a lot of humans on earth by saying that there is a HUGE amount of controversy surrounding RDA and its practices, especially regarding the Na'vi, and human activists groups had been trying to get their permission to monopolize exports from Pandora revoked so that more environmentally-friendly organizations could take over the job.

Yes, that part's not in the movie, but if you actually pay attention to the movie, it's hinted at several times. Parker not only doesn't want to kill the Na'vi for PR reasons, he's obviously not happy when it happens from a moral standpoint, either. Psychologically, the only way it's able to happen is that Parker's enabling himself to think that, as long as he's not the one actually DOING the killing, he's not responsible, even though he signed off on it. That's not just movie psychology, either; that's real psychology that happens all the time in real life.

Honestly, I was very happy when I watched it simply because they showed that some humans are bastards and others aren't, rather than doing what some movies do and labeling an entire race (in this case, humanity) as Always Chaotic Evil. And by the way, the only "good" human who died was Grace. All of the other scientists and avatars are still alive at the end of the movie, and are shown escorting the RDA personnel off the planet. I suppose it just takes a person with an eye for subtlety to notice these things, and I'm assuming yours got gouged out in infancy while you were playing with a fork.

"Why did Trudy the pilot switch sides? She wasn't friends with anyone in the mean time, really, and there was no practical benefit for her to do so- nor had she spent any real time among the Na'vi (the movies human elements)."

So... anyone who sees a group of people doing wrong and tries to stop it, or at least refuses to do it with them, must have an ulterior motive? It doesn't matter if it was practical or not, or if she got a benefit or not. She said "Screw this, this isn't what I signed on for." She signed on to protect the humans in the base. She did not sign on to participate in the wanton slaughter of hundreds of Na'vi, and when she saw the humans massacring the Na'vi, it didn't matter that she didn't know that much about the Na'vi. It was more about stopping something she knew was wrong than about taking sides with the Na'vi.

As for your other questions... "Are we supposed to hate Parker? Are we supposed to respect the military guy?" Have you ever thought that maybe you're not supposed to do anything? Ever try to form an opinion of your own rather than just thinking whatever you think the author wants you to think? The characters in this movie aren't black and white. They're grey. Very grey. Including the Na'vi, who are shown to be eager for battle, too, and ignoring the urging of the Avatars that fighting will only lead to more Na'vi deaths. They're not perfect, either, obviously. The humans aren't portrayed as evil. They're portrayed as greedy, which is different. They're not inherently evil, they're driven to do something that's (arguably) evil out of their greed. (I won't even get into the philosophical discussion on how to define evil.) Try thinking for yourself next time and forming your own opinions of characters. It's a good exercise in not being a mindless drone.

And you say the graphics didn't impress you... Ok, I can see that, but 'games like Crysis that seem superior?' The Na'vi are ENTIRELY computer generated. Every hair on their heads and every pore on their skin was CGI. And they look ENTIRELY real to me. I can't tell the difference between the Na'vi portrayed there and a real person with blue face paint on. I'm sorry, but that statement was just ignorant - Crysis doesn't even come close to matching Avatar in graphical realism.

@Shadowcat

"It doesn't say all humans are bad. It says GREEDY humans are bad."

So, Avatar doesn't only deal in black and white oversimplified platitudes, but it's also about 4 years late to the party.

-Looks at Real Estate Bubble Bust, Credit Crisis, and Lehman Brothers-

Wow, James Cameron, what an edgy guy.

Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke or even There Will be Blood explores these themes of the use and abuse of greed/capitalism more adeptly. Cameron's film is pretty much like Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor in space.

I never said that the story was innovative. "Greedy humans are bad" dates back way further than Princess Mononoke or There Will Be Blood, I'm sure. A topic doesn't have to be new, fresh, or innovative to be enjoyable. If you think it does, then you should stop watching TV and movies right now, because there's no such thing as a story in which no element in it has been done before. In fact, if movies were all fresh, unique, and innovative, and none of them contained anything that had ever been done before, this website wouldn't exist, now would it?

I'm really not sure the point of your comment. If you're trying to say that Avatar was a bad movie because it's "4 years late to the party," then you should also say that every movie that tries to make any social commentary whatsoever... no, every movie, period... is bad, because every one of them can be traced back to some precedent in literature or on the stage that had the same basic story or the same basic purpose or the same anvil to drop. And that would make them some hundreds of years late to the party in most cases.

Wow, looks like a fun little ramble we've got here. Sorry I'm back so late - internet problems where I live. And to whomever helped me get this up and posted, my most sincere thanks - I'm not nearly as good with linking as I'd like to be. On to what people have said-

Rebochan: I hate to say it, but I think you might have missed my point entirely. It's precisely because of those things that I think Avatar is a completely bland, anvilicious, and innaccurate movie. Why didn't anyone notice the similarities between native cultures on earth and the Navi? It isn't bold at all - it's something that I have to fight everyday, and I reckon most other people do to. It's not 'distant' and far off, it's in our own back yards. If the film had wanted to realistically tackle anything - for example, some of the atrocities committed by Dole and Chiquita - why couldn't they have had humanity already 'won' and 'triumphant', and then show the side effects of the Navi's culture being near-completely obliterated... And then assimilated by the human culture trying to transplant it?

I can appreciate your continuous mentioning that it happens in real life. That much is obvious. Everyone alive today know the rich get richer, the folks on top exploit the ones on bottom; I don't need a dystopic future to know that pretty much every company and political body out there is made up of folks who'd sell their kin for a dollar. That's why this film pissed me off so much - it was a film that could have been made in a million different ways with a million different complexities that opted to have a very simple story, cardboard characters, and a main character of the invading culture (who manages to essentially rope every other character into the culture into treating him as a practical god - after destroying their most spiritual site in an irrevokable way, no less! - and a budget that could have been used to actually, I don't know, help people or something. I wanted to like this movie, I really did. I just would have liked it if it had done something... Also, sorry my review was short and hard to understand, four hundred words always feels real limiting. :/ I can never say what I want to say with that, although I suppose I'd be rambling otherwise.

Pykrete: You just nicely summed up what I've been trying to say minus all my ranting, bwahahah!

Shadowcat: Easy there. I can appreciate your appreciation for the movie. It's epic in scope, and has truly beautiful graphics, I guess. But when I think complicated, I think of things like the film Solaris, Fay Grimm, or Behold a Pale Horse - to me, this feels a lot like a movie like the Matrix. It might have some philosophical or societal message in their, but it takes a back seat to the graphics. I've observed everything you mention in there, but just can't see those points as being fleshed out. For a movie with such a long running time, it feels like Parker's staring off into the distance, conflicted over his choices, the swap from military camradarie to the cold shoulder at Jake's withdrawl from the whole military-industrial society all seem glossed over. One example that really struck me as painful was the fact that Jake learns a bit about the Navi culture- only a bit, the sort of stuff that you could get out of a language survival course - through a montage. Montages aren't bad in and of themselves, but this is a deep, rich culture that James Cameron has created, or so most people say - I would've loved to find out more about the neural-network tree and their relation to it, their religion and culture, or anything like that... *anything*. Instead, a few words, the one legend that'll come back to help the non-indigneous hero tame the savages and turn them into a mighty force that, only with his help, can fight back.

Again, I didn't have enough words and perhaps wasn't cogent enough to write things out the way I'd like, but I'm not implying that you need to have an ulterior motive for doing things. Hell, I'd hope that most people don't. But what I'm trying to say is that whatever was going through Trudy's mind - we never saw it, or anything else of her character. What did she think of the Navi? What were her relations to the rest of the cast? Her hobbies, her life back on earth (friends, family, enemies?)? I understand you must think I'm unobservant but I simply didn't see any of that there, and not just for her, but for anyone, human or Navi. I'm listening if you want to spell it out for me.

Jack Uphill - Again, well said. Capitalism is a pretty damn old disease, and there have been a lot of movies that covered it far more in depth, with far more humanity. Maybe it's just the fact they can spare to look at it from one perspective - a culture being eliminated, small town life, 'old' religion vs 'new' religion, what have you - but most to me feel more geniune.

Shadowcat, er again - Really, no need to be so aggressive here. I understand you liked Avatar, but is it theoretically possible that I can feel it's a piece of shit, and respect your views and you for liking it? Anyhow, I'm gonna say this - it doesn't matter whether or not Avatar was fresh or stale, good or bad. Hell, my opinion of it doesn't matter. What does bother me is this - that a lot of people go out to see it, then feel the need to trumpet it's virtues when I see it as a very standard movie, at the least... that claims to have anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist, and challenging messages, then turns out to be extremely simplistic and heavy handed. Then, if I criticize it on what I believe are fair grounds, I get called a moron who doesn't think. To put things in perspective, this is the only movie I've been able to see in six months that hasn't been at the library or something that a friend's helped with. I was excited and felt let down. If that offends you, good for you, ride that energy, do something.

Cameron's film is pretty much like Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor in space.

And there's something wrong with that, how?

I'll admit - besides the shit love story, Pearl Harbor stomps people's faces.

For the record, I wasn't being aggressive. My little quips and remarks are just because I'm pretty much the real-world version of the Deadpan Snarker, taken to the highest extreme.

"What does bother me is this - that a lot of people go out to see it, then feel the need to trumpet it's virtues..."

And what bothered me about your review, and prompted me to respond to it, is that you went out and saw it, then felt the need to trumpet its flaws. I didn't see your review saying ANYTHING positive, and it went out of its way to trumpet some negatives that I saw as based on false assumptions, misinterpretations, and lack of observation, which I felt were in need of rebuttal. If you read my review below yours, I made sure to mention the negative aspects of the movie as well as the positive ones - I'm certainly not saying it had nothing negative about it, but your review came across to me as saying there was nothing positive about it, which to me is the exact same thing as what bothers you about it, except on the other end of the sliding scale. I never called you a moron who doesn't think, but I felt your review was unfair to the movie in calling it "physically painful to sit through," especially when you now admit that you saw it as a "standard movie, at the least," which implies that you found the movie tolerable, probably somewhat watchable, and not nearly as vomit-inducing as your original review insinuated.

Basically, if you had been criticizing it constructively, that's one thing, but you seemed to be going out of your way to say how absolutely unbearable the movie was and discourage people from watching it. I would similarly disagree with anyone who posted a review saying the movie was absolutely perfect and had no flaws at all.

BORING.

Am I the only one who appreciates the irony of people criticising Avatar's lack of originality by incessantly comparing it to other films?

It's Pearl Harbour in Space. No, wait, it's Ferngully 2. Hang on, it's Dancing With Wolves. Actually, it's The Smurfs.

"And you say the graphics didn't impress you... Ok, I can see that, but 'games like Crysis that seem superior?' The Na'vi are ENTIRELY computer generated. Every hair on their heads and every pore on their skin was CGI. And they look ENTIRELY real to me. I can't tell the difference between the Na'vi portrayed there and a real person with blue face paint on. I'm sorry, but that statement was just ignorant - Crysis doesn't even come close to matching Avatar in graphical realism."

I'm in total agreement.

Say what you will about the average acting, the mediocre dialogue or the stock plot, you cannot deny that the CGI is impressive. It is one of the few films with photorealistic CGI characters that have managed to dodge Uncanny Valley syndrome. Not to mention just how much detail has been poured into this. When I saw the film for the second time, I noticed that, when the protagonist has his bonds cut late into the film, you can actually see tiny friction marks on his wrists from being binded. A tiny little addition that 99.9% of the audience probably didn't even notice, but still helped to develop the idea that this is a living, breathing world, not a video game.

I agree 100% with everything Shadowcat has said.

Also, responding to the original comment: "Why did Trudy the pilot switch sides? She wasn't friends with anyone in the mean time, really, and there was no practical benefit for her to do so- nor had she spent any real time among the Na'vi (the movies human elements)."

Actually I strongly got the impression that Trudy was amongst one of the most experienced pilots on Pandora and had probably been there the longest, along with Grace. She's the one that flies Grace and Norm out into the jungle at the beginning, and flies them up to the mountains without seemingly much difficulty when Grace decides to leave precipitously. She also has no problem moving the mobile link station, and they apparently take it rather close in to the tree of souls, where the flux is the strongest. So I really didn't see this as "side switch" for her, rather she kept true to her ideals and morals, even against the wishes of her commanding officers.

I'll simply say this: While watching the only thoughts which occoured to me were 'this is it?'

It was good, but Avatar doesn't deserve half the credit it's been given. Most of the people viewing it are those who've not seen the technology pure cgi films develop over the years, like the Final Fantasy films or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. To most of the audience this has suddenly come out of nowhere thus leading to it being the Halo of cinema.

Decent but horribly overrated.

And the less that is said about the plot or the race of blue Mary Sues the better.

Speaking as one who was blown away by the technology and world-building employed in avatar, and as a movie-lover who has seen the final fantasy films and thinks that Avatar blew them out of the water technology-wise, I think a lot of people are missing the point. Alright so the main plot was Dances With Wolves meets Pocahontas meets Fern Gully. The point of the movie was not the plot, but the world the plot was set in. I've seen Avatar three times, and each time leave the theater a little sad, because once again I've had to say good bye to the world of Pandora. Yeah, I think I would've liked it a little better had Neytiri not been the chief's daughter—but then again, Chief's daughter is a stereotype we can attach to. Cameron's first foray into his very rich world needed a simple story so that audiences could appreciate the massive background Pandora has. Also I have two words for you. Avatar Technology. Humans walking around in alien bodies. How is that not cool?! I think this movie follows rule of cool all the way around. Now, I may be singing an entirely different tune if the second film is just as predictably plotted. But somehow, I think there's much more to Pandora and Avatar than this site gives credit.

"It was good, but Avatar doesn't deserve half the credit it's been given. Most of the people viewing it are those who've not seen the technology pure cgi films develop over the years, like the Final Fantasy films or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. To most of the audience this has suddenly come out of nowhere thus leading to it being the Halo of cinema."

In regards to the Final Fantasy films, two words: [Uncanny Valley].

The Spirits Within and Advent Children may have been beautiful looking, but they were never able to humanise their characters - both physically and mentally. Avatar manages to do this with 9 ft tall blue cat people.

As for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, I don't really see what the fuss is about. The "everything is green screen" aspect was novel at the time, but that didn't prevent the robots and the setting from looking majorly fake. Even 300 - albeit four years later - was able to do a better job at integrating greenscreen with live-action. Avatar, on the other hand, integrates both the virtual and human elements seamlessly and crafts a (if you'll excuse the cliche) living, breathing world.

"Am I the only one who appreciates the irony of people criticising Avatar's lack of originality by incessantly comparing it to other films?"

That's not irony at all. It's perfectly expected; if you think something is derivative, it's (in part) because it reminds you of something.

"A 300 million dollar environmental fable - wonder how many holes in the world Cameron tore[...?]"

That's irony.

"That's not irony at all. It's perfectly expected; if you think something is derivative, it's (in part) because it reminds you of something."

But it is ironic when people use the same trite argument to argue that Avatar has a trite plot.

@Shadowcat

You've totally missed my point and just set me up as a strawman. You defend the story by saying that the film isn't that humans are bad, only that greedy humans are bad. First, this doesn't make the story any better. And also, my point wasn't that themes have to be new to be entertaining. That much is obvious, since I mentioned two 21st century films that have the same themes as an example. The difference between those films and Avatar is that they explore it with much more depth and/or add something new.

"Basically, if you had been criticizing it constructively, that's one thing, but you seemed to be going out of your way to say how absolutely unbearable the movie was and discourage people from watching it. I would similarly disagree with anyone who posted a review saying the movie was absolutely perfect and had no flaws at all."

But reviews don't have to be fair or balanced, especially if it's limited to 400 words. They're perspectives, so someone writing them can choose to focus on positives or negatives. I think this is just an excuse you're using to criticize the review, when you really don't need to justify replying to someone's review.

But reviews don't have to be fair or balanced, especially if it's limited to 400 words. They're perspectives, so someone writing them can choose to focus on positives or negatives.

The point is, the reviewer completely contradicts himselfself by melodramatically declaring it to be "Physically painful to sit through" in the title and complaining that the "graphics didn't even impress", before packpeddling to say that it was "a very standard movie", "epic in scope" and with "truly beautiful graphics".

Again, for all the complaints of the Hatedom that Avatar was overhyped, I cannot read a single negative review about it without someone degenerating into hyperbole. A "central background theme" turns into "overbearing anvicilous writing"; "average writing and acting" becomes "paper-thin, unlikable characters"; "excellent CGI" becomes "passable CGI".

It just seems that the original review is a case of someone so desperately wanting to hate an overhyped film that they will take any issues and run the bloody marathon with them.

And also, my point wasn't that themes have to be new to be entertaining. That much is obvious, since I mentioned two 21st century films that have the same themes as an example.

You know what else Avatar had? Guns. I mean, that was - like - so unoriginal. I can think of so many films from the 21st century that have guns. James Cameron is so unimaginative and cliche.

Seriously, surely on this website, people must understand that obeying certain tropes is not necessary a bad thing.

Holy shit this movie sucked. Oh my god I was nearly crying by the end it was that bad. It was Fern Gully. It was fucking Fern Gully... but it was nowhere near as awesome as Fern Gully even with quadruple the budget. What a shit stain on the cinematic map. Fuck you James Cameron, you worthless son of a bitch. That move was so fucking boring. FUCK. ARGHH. GROWLLLL.

No, you don't win any internets.

Too late bitch.

Furthermore the special effects in Avatar weren't even that good...

"Furthermore the special effects in Avatar weren't even that good..."

This is objectively wrong. It's not even a matter of opinion. It can be your opinion that it had bad art design and therefore the effects went to poor use, or you could argue that the good effects were hindered by the poor storytelling- but saying that the effects "weren't even very good" is wrong on a raw technical level.

@Above:

But they weren't. The effects in Avatar were less believable than the effects in District Nine (Which was made on less than half the budget and had a challenging and engaging plot with well though out characters), particularly the scenes in which Na'vi (The giant blue men) and the regular humans are together, the obvious fakeness of the blue people is hard to deny. Whilst it all looks pretty, it doesn't look real. Furthermore nothing in Avatar hasn't been done before. Sin City and {{300}} both used no real sets, with very few exceptions, and crafted their own worlds entirely out of CGI, and both were better films than Avatar (300 was ripped off hilariously badly even). And Beowulf already used motion capture technology and created a world which was much better looking than Avatar. Avatar is a cartoon by comparison.

It makes me sad to think that in a year where some of the greatest science fiction films of all time (Moon, District Nine for example) have been released, the one getting all the attention is the idiotic special-effects filled piece of pop culture cash cow puff running at an ass-numbingly dull three hours of bad writing, no character development, more cliches than Battlefield Earth and Oscar Bait. But it doesn't matter what I, the black sheep thinks, because James Cameron is bathing in money right now thinking up ways to film the exact same movie slightly differently and call it the sequel.