Avatar
Directed by:
James CameronScreenplay:
James CameronCinematography:
Mauro FioreComposer:
James HornerCast:
Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Wes Studi, Laz Alonso, Sigourney Weaver (more)VOD (6)
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Set in the year 2154, Cameron's sci-fi epic chronicles the U.S. military effort to mine an extremely valuable mineral from a tiny distant world called Pandora whose natives are a race of blue creatures known as the Na'vi. Sam Worthington stars as wheelchair-bound former Marine Jake Sully who becomes an Avatar to Pandora. Taken in by a feisty female Na'vi (Zoe Saldana) and taught the customs of this new world, Jake soon falls in love with both - and finds himself at the center of a battle for control of Pandora. (Home Box Office)
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A great adventure fairy tale for those of us who have been waiting all these months and years for it to come, and a grand spectacle that becomes so huge in the end that human senses cannot absorb everything and a regular director can't control it. And it is right here where it shows that giving so much time to a movie sometimes really pays off until the last minute and dollar. Although the compassionate ethnic-ecological message did not hit the mark in my case, everything else is part of an opus that has never been seen before. 90% blown away for a movie that will at least not have any equivalent on a global scale in its sequel.
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Very, very intoxicating. What surprised me the most was that not only the eyes and ears experience an orgasmic throw. Personally, I felt emotion over the love affair between an earthling and a blue huntress, which I did not feel in the slightest when watching Titanic. Avatar is not just dazzling... it is alive. The film may have too much of the classic narrative schemes, but it doesn't matter, because the mind walks the familiar path and sight and hearing fly in the unimagined. There are probably many people who will point out things like activism, or that it is cold. I didn't see any of that in Avatar. Instead, what I saw was very light and brilliantly crafted telling of a romantic fairy tale about beings bound to their planet. Together with Star Trek, this year's clear winner in the heaviest weight category. [85%] P.S. I just can’t keep my mouth shut... I have a question:"A strange mixture of Moore's environmentalism, Zeman's poetics and Vinnetou's naivety "cut" with the aesthetics of The Lord of the Rings - does that mean Miloš Zeman, who embraces trees?" I probably haven’t seen as much from Karel as I had hoped.
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In terms of film-craft this is the most precise work that can be achieved under current conditions, but above-average film-craft defining new standards alone doesn’t necessarily make a good movie. Luckily, Avatar is good, but unfortunately no more than just good. It’s like despite all the attention that Cameron devotes to polishing everything down to the last, tiny detail, he forgot about the movie as a whole. Who cares that it suffers from all imaginable maladies of “blockbusters", if only Cameron had managed to enthrall us, draw us in, simply forget that this is still just a movie (it only happened to me in one scene). And the saddest thing about this is that, despite the message, in the end it will be Cameron who causes mass deforestation on out planet due to the mountains of wood needed to produce the paper on which the millions of movie theater tickets sold around the whole world will be printed, and this thought chills me more than any of the best scenes in Avatar. And all of the above applies to the extended version which didn’t concentrate primarily on emotions and characters, but again on technical brilliance. P.S.: This review was written after seeing the regular version; my subsequent visit to see the IMAX version neither improved or impaired my impression of the movie (and why should it, it’s the same movie, isn’t it?), but it did enhance the brilliant effects. ♫ OST score: 3/5
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Avatar is, in a way, like a visit to an amusement park full of tempting experiences that fully engage all the senses. It is a magnificent blockbuster, full of breathtaking action and ostentatiously elaborate visuals. It is a film on the very edge of today's technological possibilities and it shows. Undeniably, it will become the film event of the year and will be included in film history alongside other pop culture legends. It can be talked about in many ways. Firstly, it is an attempt to stop the decline of the traditional film industry, replaced by cheap video production and the internet, and to bring audiences back to movie theaters. Even for the most hardened pirates, who consider data theft a matter of personal honor and get a fit of indignation at the thought of paying for a ticket, downloading Avatar will be a waste of time similar to a desperate attempt to deflower a virgin protected by an iron belt of modesty. Avatar is a spectacle that requires the highest possible quality medium, preferably a large 3D screen with the best sound. Cameron managed to use the 3D format not for cheap effects, but to deepen the image and create true plasticity of the world depicted. In understanding its possibilities and in terms of experience with this format, he is the furthest ahead of everyone and clearly set the direction in which high-budget studio mainstream production will go in the following years. As for the rest, there is no revolution happening. The story is simple, and I am not the first person to notice its similarity to Pocahontas. I don't care that the story is not original; many famous directors in the past made a name for themselves by plundering the titles of their less successful colleagues, and many film fans would be shocked to learn that their favorite films have prototypes in completely unknown films from the past. What's worse for me is that Avatar can be considered a perfectly conventional film, which precisely caters to all audience expectations and naively distorted ideas about a noble, untouched "wild" civilization living in touching harmony with nature. It is a combination of the perspective of an urban environmentalist crossed with Karl May. Cameron does not burden his viewers' brains with anything, and that is understandable. Allegedly, his project cost (not to mention distribution expenses) around four hundred million dollars, and nothing must spoil the expectations of the producers. To criticize Avatar for its calculatedness and lack of creative courage is the same as being indignant that water is wet and fire burns. Both are true and there is nothing you can do about it. I have a problem with exactly what will fascinate many people - the beautifully colored visuals full of sharp contrasts that bring Avatar close to the commercial productions of Walt Disney. It is appealing, fairytale-like, and overly fantastic, exactly what you dreamed of as children. But that is precisely what old Walt always irritated me with. In Cameron's directing style, the characters are flat and fully subordinate to a simple plot line. Overall impression: 55%.
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The story is very pedestrian, but who cares. Thanks to James Cameron, I was again that little boy who during the deep totalitarian era, with my mouth wide open, devoured a Polish channel on a grainy black-and-white television, including the first Star Wars, or Zeman's A Journey into the Primeval Times. I devoured Avatar similarly, experiencing partly the joy of exploring the fictional world of Pandora and partly the fascination with 3D technology, which I was a virgin to this day. I really couldn't get enough of that three-dimensional image!! I have some reservations, of course. Cameron put a lot of effort io clothing his film in a 3D garb, but much less on the originality of the emotions of the characters or giving them a compelling ambiguity. All the characters are so naively one-dimensional, just like in fairy tales, but I found it endearing in a way. I hereby forbid the use of the world “cliché”, because the great James doesn’t deserve it. He doesn't deserve it because he invited me to his house for two and a half hours and shared all his hi-tech toys with me. Thanks Jim.
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