My offical review of the film Avatar


This is a James Cameron film. This should immediately categorize the film before even knowing what it's about. This is the same person who made the film "Aliens", "Rambo II", the "Terminator" films, and "Titanic". This guy doesn't make subtle films. They are all the visual equivalent of playing music on a stereo at the loudest possible volume, and each film is more expensive than the last one (this one cost $300 million to make, a world-record). I don't think he even knows how to spell the word "subtle".

However, if you accept this genre before walking in to the theater, he does a pretty damned-good job at them. He's a very good non-subtle film-maker. None of his films will ever be discussed for their deep meaning or human emotional insights. And this film is no different. It is a science fiction story, and it is full of effects and futuristic hardware and the usual conflicts between technology and human values.

It's been said that American films are made for the eye, while European films are made for the mind. American films look beautiful, but at the expense of the story, whereas European films' primary interest is the story, but there's less visual dazzle. If this theory is correct, then this new film by Cameron is like a Snickers bar for the eyes. It is visually stunning, dramatic, and flashy. But I think it was all actually integrated into the story well. I don't think it was flashy for its own sake, but is in support of the story.

This is difficult to do in modern science fiction movies. When you read science fiction in a book, the entire focus is on the story. But when you put the same story on a screen it's easy to focus on what the story looks like, to the point where this becomes distracting from the story. I think this film was probably approached in the reverse order: instead of writing the story first and then deciding what it would look like, it was probably envisioned visually at first - deciding what should be seen, and then a story was written around this goal, giving reasons for showing as much visual stimulus as possible.

This movie actually reminded me a bit of the movie "The Mission". The story takes place on a moon orbitting a giant planet, and the moon is like a giant rain-forest. Large, thin blue people live on this moon, and they live like natives in the jungle, hunting with bows and arrows, living in a tribal culture, and worshipping trees. A corporation from Earth has sent miners to the moon to extract valuable minerals from the moon, and they view the blue indigenous people as a nuisance. But, as in The Mission, several people who live with the blue people to gain their confidence, end up "going native" and change their alliance, and fight with the people against the corporation, as the priests do in The Mission.

This film is also full of references to the war in Iraq, and environmental issues. If this film has a theme, it is anti-war, and pro-environment. In the end, the natives win against the corporate miners, and the few humans who live with the blue people remain, to become one of them. So Capitalism fails in the end, against the purity of natives (unlike real life).

All of the blue people were filmed in a way similar to how Gollum was filmed in The Lord of the Rings. Like him, they are obviously computer-generated, but they move as natural as a human moves. It was interesting to watch, and the moon's jungle is full of beautiful exotic creatures, which were fun to watch.

So, there is nothing wrong with watching a Snickers Bar in the cinema, as long as it is balanced with some deeper, more healthy "food" to watch at other times.