Avatar

So November has been the month of looking back at movies that I have given a lot of crap in the past but I felt like I needed to eventually come back to them and give an actual analysis of them and decide if they were actually movies I thought were bad. And by coincidence, two of the films I’ve looked back on have been James Cameron films, Titanic, and now Avatar.

When Avatar came out, it made all the money. It still holds the spot of highest grossing film of all time and much of the draw of this film was the visual innovation James Cameron was employing to make this movie happen. Avatar in many ways is a directors dream scenario because Cameron wrote the script a decade before the movie came out and he felt he needed to hold off on it until the technology caught up with his ambition.

And I’m going to say right here, the film is gorgeous. I always premise any comments on cinematography or visual effects with the disclaimer that those are the areas of film I need to expand my knowledge. I usually just base it off the idea of if something looks pretty, or well shot, I’ll comment on it. And Avatar looks pretty. I still don’t understand how complicated the filming was, but I recognize something state of the art when I see it. And on top of that, it’s an epically scaled movie. I think I might have forgotten this, but this movie is huge! The giant Hometree is gianormous in scale, the fight sequences are epic, and all of that is due to the visual spectacle we see in front of us. There is no dispute that Avatar is a visually state of the art film.

But the name of the Blog is Loving the Stories, not Loving the Visuals. I’ve given Avatar the acknowledgement that it deserves in the part of the film that was a visual spectacle. I’m mostly going to talk about the story, characters, and other important parts of the film and what I thought of it, watching this movie years later after the hype of 2009. But on top of that, I would like to talk about the cultural impact of Avatar and the future of the franchise.

Avatar takes place in 2154 where the resources of Earth have been depleted and humanity has expanded to planets across the galaxy mining for resources. There is a mining colony on a particular planet called Pandora. The planet is inhabited by 10 foot tall blue humanoids called The Na’vi.

In order to study the Na’vi, humanity has developed technology to insert a human’s consciousness into an avatar Na’vi and have them interact in the harsh environment of Pandora and the local population. Enter Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington), a former Marine who lost the use of his legs during his service. After his identical twin brother dies, he volunteers to take his place in the avatar program due to the similarities between their DNA. He goes to Pandora and joins the scientific team headed up by Doctor Grace Augustine (played by Sigourney Weaver).

After an accident where Jake’s avatar is separated from Grace and the other research assistant (played by Joel David Moore), Jake stumbles upon a native Na’vi woman by the name of Neytiri (played by Zoe Saldana). Neytiri is the daughter of the leader of the local tribe of Na’vi and she brings Jake to them. The tribe of course is skeptical Jake but Neytiri’s mother Mo’at (played by C.C.H Pounder) insists that they initiate Jake into their tribe. Why they think this is a good idea, I still don’t totally understand, but hey, they needed a way to bring Jake into his Dances With Wolves Kevin Costner role, so just go with it.

When Jake lets the humans know his situation, the head of security Colonel Miles Quaritch (played by Stephen Lang), and the head of mining operations Parker Selfridge (played by Giovanni Ribisi) see this as an opportunity for Jake to get in close with the native population and persuade them to move out of their home which happens to be resting on top of a huge pile of the resource they are mining.

They give Jake three months to be initiated into the tribe. The meat of the movie is this initiation process where Jake becomes accustomed to the culture of the Na’vi, their love for nature, and their connection to the earth. And in case you’re scratching your head wondering where you have heard this plot before, I can name off a couple movies that fall into this same plot. Dances with Wolves, The Last Samuari, Pocahontas, Fern Gully, the list goes on. And if you’ve watched any of those movies, you’ll know that Jake goes in with one perspective and comes out of his time with a totally new one, becoming one with the indigenous population, falling in love with the unavailable native princess, and eventually turning against the institutions he was once for because of his changed perspective on the native population.

Avatar is incredibly predictable. From the minute that you realize that this is one of those stories, you know exactly how it’s going to go down and it goes down exactly how you expect it to. Nothing is really a surprise, there are no big twists or deaths that really catch you off guard, Avatar is just predictable.

Luckily, I was watching Avatar on TV and during the commercial breaks I was able to watch some of the behind the scenes features of the film and suddenly a lot of it makes sense when you realize that James Cameron wrote this script in the 90’s and had to wait 10 years to actually get it made. It is such a script out of the 90s and Cameron wrote it before all those other movies came out, but that still doesn’t really make it feel any more inspired.

But what about the characters? While the plot may be predictable, how are the characters?

Avatar was one of Sam Worthington’s first big breaks as an actor and he’s never really been the same. 2009 and 2010 were really the big years to try and make Sam Worthington a star and I don’t really know if it stuck. The guy gets work still and I’d say that’s better than where he was before Avatar, apparently living out of his car, but I can’t say I’ve seen a movie in the past 7 years since Avatar with Sam Worthington that I’ve been blown away by Worthington’s performance.

But that’s not the point, how was he in Avatar?

He was… okay. Looking back at this movie and really any performance of Sam Worthington’s, I can’t say that the man is a horrible actor. He’s just kind of vanilla. He’s the bland hero you see in a lot of action franchises that isn’t exactly interesting but is more of a vehicle in a broader epic. Worthington is definitely not the strongest part of the film, but he serves as a typical vanilla male hero. He has a part to play and he plays it.

And I’ll be honest, that’s pretty much the same with all the characters of the film. Everyone in this film follows some kind of formula and doesn’t seem to really be that interesting of a character. Sigourney Weaver is your academic who supports the hero once he proves himself to her. Joel David Moore plays the typical nerdy side kick character who gets a small chance to be skeptical and jealous of the main character before falling in line. Stephen Lang plays your stereotypical Army Colonel who cannot be reasoned with and only sees the natives as savages. Giovanni Ribsi plays the corporate greed stereotype where he can’t be reasoned with besides with money. Zoe Saldana plays your Pocahontas stereotype where she is in tune with nature and eventually falls in love with the bland hero. They are by the numbers characters and even up until their deaths they still play the same formula.

Best example: Sigourney Weaver gets shot and they take her to try and transfer her mind from her human body to a healthy Na’vi body. While she’s dying, they’re bringing her to the place where this is going to go down and she looks at the tree and says, “I should get some samples”. That’s not what a person who would be dying would say. That is just a stereotype speaking.

I honestly couldn’t remember what the names of Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribsi, and Signourney Weaver’s characters were until I looked them up. All I saw were these very talented actors and I would just associate the character trait with the actor, not the particular character. Absolutely nothing about these characters is new or even feels inspired.

This isn’t to say these characters are bad. Stephen Lang gives a fun performance as the stereotypical Army Colonel. Giovanni Ribisi gives a good performance as the Corporate greed figure head. Zoe Saldana gives a good performance as the Pocahontas character. You’re just not going to remember anything about the characters at the end of the film. You’ll remember Stephen Lang was fun, but you won’t remember his character at all. You’ll remember a stereotype.

Even Sam Worthington is a character we’ve seen again and again before. Jake Sully is a former soldier with a disability. He goes into the jungle, meets with the native population, he realizes he is larger than his disability and overcomes it, and then he goes and fights against his former life with the native population even falling in love with one of them because he has realized that that is where he belongs. That is exactly what happens to Tom Cruise’s character in The Last Samurai! Tom Cruise is a soldier who is a drunk. He goes into the jungle, meets with the native population, he realizes he is larger than his drunkenness and overcomes it, and then goes and fights against his former life with the native population, even falling in love with one of them because he has realized that that is where he belongs.

I do have to give Sam Worthington, and in a way James Cameron some credit because the movie did make me care about Jake Sully and I really did see his progression as he learns more about the ways of the Na’vi. The story of a paraplegic being able to walk and fight the way he used to is somewhat of a compelling story. But then I think about how the story is basically the same thing I’ve seen before in The Last Samurai and Dances with Wolves and I can’t help but feel like this movie perhaps didn’t deserve the amount of money it got during its time in the box office.

And before I move onto serious critiques of the movie, I do want to discuss a personal gripe I have had with this movie since the first time that I saw it.

There is no way that the Na’vi would have actually won the final battle. I called bullshit on it in the theaters, and I call bullshit on it 7 years later.

So the final battle of the film, the humans are bringing a bomb to the spiritual tree of the Na’vi. They’ve got a large carrier plane with the bomb, a big ass hovercraft with tons of guns on it with Stephen Lang in it, and a bunch of fighter helicopters. The Na’vi have a bunch of dragons they’re flying on and some ground forces on six legged horses. This scene is prefaced by Jake Sully going across the planet of Pandora and gathering all the tribes of Pandora to unite and fight against the humans. Even still, it doesn’t look good for the Na’vi.

Now I’ve drawn a lot of comparisons to The Last Samurai, and to be honest, that is because I haven’t seen Dances with Wolves all the way through. But the Last Samurai is a perfect example in this case because that movie actually does something I did not expect in these native realization movies. Tom Cruise and the Samurai lose. They straight up lose. There’s this epic battle where the Samurai are able to fend off the weapons of the Western armies and it seems like there might be a chance of Tom Cruise and his Samurai buddies winning this fight. But then the bad guys whip out the machine gun. The Samurai still charge in bravely, but the machine gun mows them down in one of the most intense and saddest scenes I’ve seen in a war epic.

Going back to Avatar, there’s a point in the film where the Na’vi seem to be where Tom Cruise and his Samurai are. Their friends are dying, the carrier is getting closer to the tree, its about to release the payload, and all looks lost… and then out of freaking nowhere nature just say, NOOOOOPE, Na’vi are going to win. A herd of rhinos goes and kills all the ground forces, a bunch of dragons open up a hole for Jake to go in and destroy the carrier, it all just comes together way too perfectly. I was not a fan of that. In my opinion, the Na’vi had no business winning that battle. The natural progression of the story would have ended with a Last Samurai ending, and instead, they pull the happy unrealistic ending.  

And then on top of it all, the Na’vi then are able to push the humans straight off Pandora.  Yeah, apparently the humans sent every single one of their soldiers out to destroy this one tree and they didn’t have anybody protecting their home base. It went from the humans being on total offense to them being on total defense.

The ending just came together perfectly with a pretty bow. While everything else in this movie was pretty formulaic, this was unexpected in a bad way. That’s not realistic, that’s not intriguing, that’s just working the plot to play out the way you want it to James Cameron. If you wanted to have the Na’vi win, don’t put them in such a vulnerable position and then magically put them at an advantage the next second. The Na’vi didn’t earn the win at the end, it didn’t feel like a lot was sacrificed, it was just handed to them by nature.

It also really puts aside the fact that 9 times out of 10, in any historical context, this isn’t how this happens. The Last Samurai had such a good ending because it stayed historically true and the historical truth of the Samurai is that they lost. (I feel like I have to go back and review The Last Samurai because I feel like I’m applauding it more than I should). The Na’vi winning doesn’t teach anybody a lesson, and it doesn’t point out the reality that at the moment, the people fighting for indigenous people and the environment are losing.

In case you couldn’t tell, I didn’t love the ending of Avatar.

But you know what, I think in a different world I would be okay with the ending of Avatar. I think after I saw it, I thought, I didn’t love that ending, I didn’t think the movie was incredibly inspired, but you know what, it was a good movie on its own. It was visually stunning, it had a good message. That’s fine. But that is not the world we live in.

Avatar in my mind is an uninspired mediocre film. It’s a visual spectacle but overall, an uninspired mediocre film. I’ve seen worse, but it’s nothing to write home about outside of the visuals.

But Avatar pisses me off. It pisses me off for two reasons.

1. Avatar made me lose faith in what the American public will go out and see.

I said it in Titanic and I’ll say it again here, I don’t think that James Cameron is an inspiring storyteller. He is a good director don’t get me wrong, he knows how to create a spectacle. But he does not create movies with compelling stories.

And that would be fine… if we weren’t rewarding him when he doles out this shit. And that shifts the blame to the American public. It makes me discouraged that people are more interested in spectacle than actual story. It reminds me that people will spend more money to go see Avatar or Transformers, than they will to go see the other great movies that came out that same year like The Hurt Locker, District 9, or any of the other really good movies that came out of 2009 or any other film that Avatar made more money than. Titanic I can understand, but Avatar I do not.

But the second reason I can’t stand Avatar is because it is so uninspired and yet…

2. James Cameron is putting all his creative initiative towards 4 more Avatar sequels.

I want you to think back to Halloween of 2010. I'll give it, it was nearly a year after Avatar premiered, but can you think of how many people dressed up like the Na'vi that Halloween? Probably a few. Now think about Halloweens 2011 and on, hell think of this past Halloween! How many people were dressed up like Na'vi? You can tell a lot about a movie's fandom by how many people think its a good idea to go as a character from that movie to Halloween, and nobody is doing Na'vi anymore. 

Now you may be saying, Connor, you can't base a fandom off of Halloween costumes. And you're right, but can you honestly tell me that people have been crying out to James Cameron to make sequels to Avatar? I can't think of a single person who has, and yet he thinks the world is crying out for us to return to the world of Pandora. So much that James Cameron thinks we should have 4 more sequels of Avatar and make a saga chronicling the lives of Jake Sully, Neyteri, and their Na'vi family on Pandora.  But I can't think of anybody who wants these sequels. 

And with my first gripe, I can say that it's not James Cameron's fault that we give him so much money when he does these technological spectacles. He's doing what he loves and as long as we keep giving him all the money for movies like Avatar and Titanic, he's still going to keep making visual spectacles with mediocre stories. 

But I will shift the blame to James Cameron when he's so cocky that he thinks that that money equals him spending all his creative energy on Avatar. Avatar's success means that we have to return to Pandora when nobody wanted to. 

James Cameron is not a storyteller, he is an event planner. Avatar was not a compelling story, it was an event. And because of that, it pisses me off. 

Now, does this mean that I won't be going to see Avatar 2? Well no. I will still go see it, especially if he ups the ante with his technological advancements. But what is more likely to happen is that James Cameron is going to spend a lot of his waning years on a concept that people are not excited about and by the third movie, I only hope people will catch on and unfortunately make all this creative energy Cameron's putting in be a waste.

Now, I hope I'm wrong. I don't want Cameron to build up something so much and have it be a big disappointment, I do want to see Avatar become more than just a spectacle. I really hope that I come out of Avatar 2 energized over a new and original concept set in a really cool and original world like Pandora is. There is no denying that he has put a lot of work into the world he's created, I just want it to be complimented by a good story. 

J.R.R Tolkien created a beautiful world in Middle Earth. It had its own languages, its own mythology. But it was also complimented by a fun, original, and innovative story in The Lord of the Rings. That's why those movies are both so visually stunning AND great stories. Right now, I only see Avatar as one half of that pie. Something can be visually stunning and still be a mediocre piece of garbage. 

So overall, what do I think of Avatar. Personally, I really don't like it. I think it represents everything wrong with the film world we live in and I don't like seeing James Cameron getting rewarded for a really well polished piece of mediocre garbage. However, on face value, it is a fine film. It's really not that horrible. The story is very predictable and the characters are more archetypes than they are characters, but the performances of those formulaic characters are good and it is a visually stunning movie. I personally don't like the ending, but that doesn't make it an objectively bad ending. The size and scale of this movie is impressive and the story is executed decently enough despite being a by the numbers environmental puff piece. 

If you're looking for a piece about the environment and indigenous peoples, there are better films out there. If you're looking for an original sci fi story, there are better films out there. If you're looking for a visual spectacle, Avatar is for you. 

But what do you think of Avatar? Do you think it deserved the 2.7 billion dollars we gave it? Are you excited for the sequels James Cameron has in the works? Am I totally off base in my criticism of this film? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog. 

I'll leave you with this. Thank you to whoever made this crossover of the Pocahontas trailer with clips from Avatar. This is actually done pretty well. Enjoy!