We Hate Hollywood

Written and directed by James Cameron
Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Peter Mensah, Laz Alonso, Wes Studi, Stephen Lang, Matt Gerald
Rated PG-13 for violence, profanity, and brief alien nudity
Rating - 2 bullet holes

I apologize that this review is a month late.  I understand that everyone else has seen the movie but thought I should still weigh in on arguably the biggest spectacle of the last decade.

Everyone by now knows the plot.  In the year 2154, a mining corporation led by the ruthless Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) wants to snag a load of - ahem - unobtainium from the planet Pandora.  Unobtainium is worth a fortune and desired so badly that military force is being used to drive out the natives (the Na’vi) who live in a giant tree atop this mineral deposit.  The military is led by the bloodthirsty Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) whose ace in the hole is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), an ex-marine who is now paralyzed.   Sully’s twin brother was involved in a revolutionary experiment led by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) to have his genetic identity imprinted into the body of a Na’vi.  His brother has just been killed, and Sully is the only viable candidate to take his place.  His mission is to infiltrate the Na’vi and gain intelligence that will help Colonel Quaritch in his mission.

First of all, I will agree with the masses that this is a visually stunning film.  I am not at all a fan of 3D, but this is actually a film where 3D enhances the viewing experience.  I don’t think this film will work near as well in 2D on DVD.  Here, the 3D gives depth to the film which is necessary for the expansive, lush, jungle environment of Pandora.  We get very little of that 3D gimmickry with objects flying towards the audience.  And speaking fo 3D…in the year 2010, can we not get better 3D glasses?  At our screening, we were given these huge awful green plastic glasses with huge rims that only Carol Channing could love.  It made us all look like overgrown grasshoppers.  At one point, I looked around and the first thought that came to mind was My God, we look stupid.

Speaking of stupid, I want to get back to the story.  Avatar is exceedingly heavy-handed.  A planet named Pandora?  Not exactly subtle.  Then again, Cameron has never really been the subtle type.  But one of the worst blunders of the script is in the name of the mineral - unobtainium.  Unobtainium!!  The more I think about this, the angrier I get.  Yes, I know the film is an allegory, but we aren’t that stupid.  Or are we given the gargantuan box office numbers?  Unobtainium!!!  A sixth grader could have come up with a better mineral name.  Even worse, we are not told why unobtainium is wanted so badly or what the hell it is used for.  We just have to accept the fact that this is a mining operation worth killing over.  Deal with it.  Sorry, but that isn’t good enough.  We have to know what the stakes are for this story to work.

A good story needs a solid hero and villain.  A believable hero and villain.  Jake Sully works for me.  While his journey is far from original and offers pretty much nothing new in the whole knowing-your-enemy-and-becoming-one-of-them plotline, I believe in his compassion for the Na’vi and his fight for what is right.  Where the film took another huge misstep for me was with Colonel Miles Quaritch.  And I know the nerds will attack me for this since I’ve heard a lot of praise for Stephen Lang’s performance.  His performance is ok but it’s the script I have a problem with.  Lang is given so many cliched lines such as muttering “Let’s get this over with.  I want to be home for dinner.” before attempting genocide.  He comes across as cartoonish, and I just found myself laughing internally at him.  Again, I feel the heavy hand of Cameron “The guy is evil.  Accept it dammit!!”.  That was the biggest surprise to me, actually.  I have liked all of Cameron’s previous films and he has given us some memorable villains.  Not here.

I was actually bored with a large portion of Avatar.  I knew exactly where the story was going from the beginning.  There was not one surprise along the way.  None.  I’m not saying that I need a “wow!” or “aha!” moment every 15 minutes, but the story needs to engage me.  Because I knew where the story was going, all I could do was look at the pretty colors for 160 minutes.  The film has been compared to Dances With Wolves, and it’s a very valid comparison.  If you’ve seen that film,  you’ve seen Avatar.  I’d heard this accusation before going into the film and thought “Surely, it can’t be that obvious”.  Yeah.  It pretty much is.

The film isn’t without its merits.  In addition to the visuals which I appreciated, there is a good chemistry between Sully and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), the daughter of the Na’vi chief who teaches Sully about their ways and falls in love with him.  I believed their relationship with each other and with the world around them.  With a better script, they could have had something even more special.  There are also some good battle scenes between the military and the Na’vi.  Cameron certainly has an eye for action, and it definitely is on full display here.  Speaking of action, here’s another chuckle I got from the film.  In a briefing, Colonel Quaritch discusses how the 10-12 foot tall Na’vi are designed physically and warns “They are very hard to kill”.  Yet later, we discover that a couple of bullets to the chest is pretty much all you need.

In all fairness, will a younger generation not familiar with Dances appreciate the story and be moved by it?  Possibly.  And that is cool.  But, I hope this isn’t seen as the gold standard for story-telling.  I fully realize I’m in the minority here.  The film is breaking box office records, winning awards, and garnering the acclaim of popular film critics that I respect.  To me, the film is a pile of dog shit wrapped in a pretty box made of unobtainium.