I may
have been the only person up until now to never have seen Avatar, not because I
haven’t had time but simply because, I just didn’t feel it was necessary. I had
loved James Cameron’s earlier films (Terminator, Aliens and T2) and whilst True
Lies was a good fun film, it was overlong. The same can be said about Titanic
and it was by this point that I came to realize that James Cameron was one of
the most overrated directors in the business. I can now say that Avatar joins
his list of overrated films giving us nothing but visuals to drool at.
A group
of marines are sent down to a planet called Pandora in search for some precious
material and paraplegic Jake Sully is one of them since he becomes a
replacement for his dead brother. Here, Jake begins to bond with the native
Na’vis as he learns about their lifestyle and falls in love with Neytiri whilst
failing to obey orders given to him.
Here is
a premise that has been done before but the issue to Avatar arises with James
Cameron and his overuse of CGI to dazzle his audiences. Since 2009, it has
become absurd to think how people have truly fallen in love with this film
hailing it as one of the greatest ever! This has always annoyed me but having
seen the movie, this is absurd. If the visual effects to Avatar weren’t as
dazzling and there was no 3D to marvel at, then you have a movie that is
absolutely nothing special. Whilst I am not criticizing the visuals, the story
is so poorly told and the characters are stereotypical, with none of the
characters coming off as interesting in the slightest. Even Neytiri, who we as
an audience should be able to connect to, comes off as rather irritating.
Whilst Cameron’s earlier films, mainly the first two Terminator films and
Aliens were able to convey emotion effortlessly making it very subtle and
natural, Avatar truly overdoes it making many of the sequences involving the
natives mourning rather laughable.
Though
audiences have drooled about the visuals and the 3D effects, I myself saw no
true brilliance about each whether it was due to the fact that I knew the
overuse of CGI or whether it was the fact that I was able to concentrate on the
story and characters. The film itself is paced quite poorly and inconsistently.
The first hour drags along as Jake attempts to get in with the natives and the
last hour and a half suddenly becomes a much livelier and more action packed
feast than it was before. The problem with this is that the first half of the
film doesn’t provide much about Jake Sully to truly care for him and too much
is given about Neytiri and her people that it comes to the point where it
becomes rather difficult to take in anymore. This is overkill!
Even
with the poor story and attempt to overly humanize the Na’vi by providing
possibly too much story, the action sequences
towards the end of this film are truly engaging even if the characters in them
aren’t. It is mindless eye candy thrown onto the screen simply because Cameron
knew that there was no way that the film would be received the same without a
huge ‘Helm’s Deep’ of his own. Whilst ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’
had an engaging story, relatable characters, great character development, great
performances, strong writing and directing that eventually deserves to be payed
off with a huge action feast, Avatar rarely accomplishes any of the following I
listed and so the huge action feast at the end is Cameron’s way of attempting
to erase his audience’s mind of all the poor things about this film.
I am
rather surprised to say this but most of the performances in the film come off
as extremely poor when compared to Cameron’s other films such as Aliens which
had some of his better performances by actors. Sam Worthington isn’t anything
special as Jake Sully. I am still unsure on who to blame for not being able to
like Jake. Sigourney Weaver, surprisingly, gives an extremely poor performance
when compared with her performances in the Alien franchise. Most of the
performances were extremely weird making the characters they played hard for me
to take in seriously.
Those
who simply praise the brilliant visuals and simply forget about the poor story
and poor character development are those who do not truly think about this film
and give it a simple pass for its revolutionary visuals. I just ask of them to
view the film had the visuals not being at the standard that they were. As a
young George Lucas once said, “Visual effects are used to tell a story. Special
effects without a story is a pretty boring thing!” We all know what became of
this man later in his life but this is a principle that James Cameron himself
followed, until Avatar came along.
Grade- 3/10
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