Am I watching the same movie as everybody else’s watching?.i was asking this to myself sitting in the last row, so I could catch the best 3D angle. I couldn’t possibly have been watching the same Avatar as everybody else. People are raving about this, calling it "a milestone in film-making" and "revolutionary". All I saw was an unoriginal, uninspired bore fest of a futile sci-fi "epic". This was my answer at the end of the show.
PLOT:
Alright, plot, as if this movie actually had a plot worth mentioning. You’ve got this moon called Pandora(wow, real original) and it’s inhabited by a bunch of creatures and NAVI’s, with the aid of their own hair they can plug into the trees and animals just like your Ipod hooks into any USB port. Makes sense, cool? Well a bunch of evil, nasty humans come along to spoil the party, infiltrating the natives with spirit vessels they call "avatars" so that they can get this rare, elusive mineral called, and no, I am absolutely not making this up, "unobtainium." Yes, they actually called it that and expected us to take it seriously.
The intellect of the audience has been lowered down with this movie. Then standard romantic part with a twist in second part, the main character is obviously the chosen one, because some force says so and of course we have a baddie from the army and the stupid leader who just wants money too. The aliens win the final battle and the lead character becomes one of them. How original.
This could be a hit plot for kid’s comic aged below 10. Anyways, that’s the plot of the movie.
The "revolutionary" part of this film everybody is praising is the CGI, and I can’t comprehend it. There isn’t a single moment in this film where I at any time believe a computer generated creature on screen actually exists, even in the world being portrayed. Maybe if they had just animated the whole thing I would have been able to fall for it, but the mixing in of live-action actors made all the CG look terrible. They couldn’t even get machines right. There are mechanical suits in this film that move with the most illogical and unnatural movements. Earlier this year, the film District 9 had a very similar mechanical suit that was far more believable, and that film was made for at least ten times less money. In fact, the creatures in District 9 were also far more believable than anything portrayed on screen in this film.
STORY:
I’ll not talk about the story because bits and pieces of the script, from the actual story to the cheesy dialogue are lifted from dozens of movies with similar theme.
CHARACTERS:
There is not a single character in this film i felt attached to. The two main lead characters Jake and Neytiri had this over the surface love story without any depth in their characters and there’s this general (the most interesting character in the film), he doesn’t have half enough personality for himself. All he does is come off as a very generic, rarely threatening force who can be taken down by spears and rocks.
Speaking of rocks, there were these floating mountains in the film. It’s never explained how they float, even though they spend an awful lot of time around them and talking about them. They just sort of float there without any explanation and we’re just supposed to accept it. I can accept these creatures polluting the screen constantly, even if none of them are very inspired(I’m still trying to figure out the string jellyfish though.they called them divine souls). I cannot accept giant floating masses of rock that have no sustainable way of staying in the air. What’s more is that they somehow have waterfalls without any source from which the water could come. Gawd.
RATING:
I can sort of see why people might be enjoying this film, but as for me, only CGI can’t make a movie "milestone" or "revolutionary". There are other aspects of any motion picture which overall takes to call it what people have called AVATAR to be.
It’s 1 out of 5 for me and that only because of its CGI.