FTB_Screamer
15-12-2009, 09:46 AM
Was it worth the wait? (http://movies.ign.com/articles/105/1054370p1.html)
Avatar UK Review
We've finally seen James Cameron's epic sci-fi, but was it worth the wait?
by Orlando Parfitt, IGN UK
UK, December 11, 2009 - Until relatively recently James Cameron's science fiction epic Avatar was shrouded in secrecy. After making billions of dollars with Titanic, the director retreated from the limelight to finetune the technology needed for his mysterious new project.
For years we saw only tiny glimpses of the film, but were told that Avatar would be somehow ground-breaking; that its super-advanced 3-D motion capture technology would take filmmaking to the 'next level'.
When we finally saw some actual footage however (in the shape of the first trailer back in August), there was a fan backlash. "It a FernGully rip-off!" said many. People began to seriously supsect that Avatar could be an almighty car-crash of a movie.
After attending one of the first screenings on Wednesday however, we can confidently say the naysayers were wrong: Avatar is a triumph.
Sam Worthington as a rather glum Jake Sulley.
Sam Worthington stars as Jake Sulley - a paraplegic ex-marine shipped to the planet Pandora to replace his dead twin-brother in the 'Avatar' programme. Pandora is a beautiful-but-deadly world in a neighbouring star system, and the source of the ultra-valuable (and stupidly named) mineral Unobtanium. Naturally a sinister corporation has set up a base on the planet and want to start mining the ore.
Standing in their way however are the indigenous aliens - the Na'vi. Blue-all-over and standing at nearly 10-feet tall, these critters are "very hard to kill" and have so far proved impossible to budge from the valuable Unobtanium sites.
That's where the 'Avatar' programme comes in. Humans are unable to breathe the toxic air on Pandora, so the experimental project - set up by Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Grace - sees humans transfer their consciousness to half-human, half-Na'vi hybrids. Grace hopes to use the programme to build bridges with the aliens and gently persuade them to get out of makind's way. The military hope to use the Avatars to collect reconnaissance for a planned military attack.
Enter Jake Sulley. Delighted to be able to walk again, he bounds into the jungle on a scouting mission, but soon begins to fall in love with both the Na'vi culture and the beautiful young alien Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). With an epic battle for the fate of Pandora looming, Jake must choose his side.
Pandora looks pretty.
As storylines go, this is nothing we haven't seen before. The plot is hugely reminiscent of the likes of Dances with Wolves and The New World, which see a 'civilised' westerner forced to live amongst a supposedly backwards society and slowly fall in love with the 'noble savages'.
Most of the characters are also archetypes. Worthington is the dumb grunt; Saldana the headstrong princess; Weaver essentially replays her performance as monkey-obsessed anthropologist Dian Fossey from Gorillas in the Mist; Giovanni Ribisi is the slimy company man and so on.
In the context of the movie however, this broad characterisation works perfectly. Avatar - despite its supposed 'newness' - is actually very much-old school filmmaking.
The movie is reminiscent of the great epics of yesteryear - from Gone With The Wind to Spartacus to Gladiator. These classic movies relied on universal themes and instantly recognisable characters to drive their monumental stories, and Avatar is no different. This is drama on a vast canvas and painted with broad brush-strokes. It's stirring stuff and the audience is powerless to prevent being swept up in the action and the emotion of it all.
Every character - no matter how cliched - is played with conviction and earnestness by the pitch-perfect cast (which bravely Cameron populated with talented thesps, rather than big stars). You believe in the romance between Jake and Neytiri. It is understandable why Dr. Grace has become so enchanted by Na'vi society. You even understand the motivation for Colonel Quaritch's dastardly plan. But the characters are in the service of the story, not the other way round.
Unlike the other recently released CGI-heavy movies against which Avatar will be judged - the likes of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Terminator Salvation - the film is superbly constructed, brilliantly establishing the characters, their relationships and the situation, and then drawing all strands together for an epic, action-packed finale.
Cameron - opposed to many of the other directors in Hollywood entrusted with big budget action movies such as McG and Michael Bay - has once again proven himself to be a master storyteller. It's insanely difficult to keep a special effects-heavy, two hour-plus action movie exciting and emotional until the closing credits. The Dark Knight managed it last year, and Avatar has succeeded in 2009.
Jake in Avatar form.
The genius of the film is taking this superbly constructed narrative and familiar roll-call of characters and parachuting them into the utterly alien, visually sumptuous, digitally created Pandora.
Avatar is a beautiful movie and genuinely looks unlike anything you've ever seen on a cinema screen before. The mix of near-photorealistic motion-capture CGI aliens and live-action humans smothered in a kind of glossy CG sheen gives the flick a slightly removed, dreamlike, ethereal quality.
You are never sure whether what you're seeing is actually photographed or created digitally, which has the effect of forcing your eyes to accept everything on screen. Pandora's lush vistas and neon jungles will linger long in the memory, and contrasts beautifully with the dirty and ugly human war machines.
The visuals are enhanced hugely by the use of 3-D. Despite being heavily trumpeted as revolutionary, the format is actually used in a very subtle way. There is very little of the frankly annoying and extremely gimmicky three dimensional cliches seen in the likes of Beowulf and A Christmas Carol.
She's gorgeous! The lovely Zoe Saldana as Neytiri.
There are no waggling spears in the audiences' face in Avatar and other effects which serve only to distance the viewer from events onscreen. Instead Avatar does the opposite - displaying multiple planes of vision in equal focus which heavily immerses the audience in the action. Combined with the gripping script, the use of 3-D results in an utterly engrossing experience. If you can, make sure you see Avatar in the format.
In the face of so much excellent work, some of our quibbles seem almost churlish. Some aspects of the story that were only hinted at could have been explored more fully, especially the mental deterioration of Jake as he struggles to cope with living parallel lives. Some might also find the environmental message slightly too preachy, or that the veiled references to American foreign policy are perhaps not developed enough.
But to dwell on some underdeveloped themes is to get away from the point, which is this: Avatar simply blew us away and utterly exceeded somewhat middling expectations.
After a year where most of the blockbuster movies disappointed, James Cameron - the master of the genre - has come back after a long hiatus and delivered unto us one of the most exhilarating, barmy and eye-wateringly gorgeous movies of the decade.
4.5 out of 5 Stars | 9/10
Avatar UK Review
We've finally seen James Cameron's epic sci-fi, but was it worth the wait?
by Orlando Parfitt, IGN UK
UK, December 11, 2009 - Until relatively recently James Cameron's science fiction epic Avatar was shrouded in secrecy. After making billions of dollars with Titanic, the director retreated from the limelight to finetune the technology needed for his mysterious new project.
For years we saw only tiny glimpses of the film, but were told that Avatar would be somehow ground-breaking; that its super-advanced 3-D motion capture technology would take filmmaking to the 'next level'.
When we finally saw some actual footage however (in the shape of the first trailer back in August), there was a fan backlash. "It a FernGully rip-off!" said many. People began to seriously supsect that Avatar could be an almighty car-crash of a movie.
After attending one of the first screenings on Wednesday however, we can confidently say the naysayers were wrong: Avatar is a triumph.
Sam Worthington as a rather glum Jake Sulley.
Sam Worthington stars as Jake Sulley - a paraplegic ex-marine shipped to the planet Pandora to replace his dead twin-brother in the 'Avatar' programme. Pandora is a beautiful-but-deadly world in a neighbouring star system, and the source of the ultra-valuable (and stupidly named) mineral Unobtanium. Naturally a sinister corporation has set up a base on the planet and want to start mining the ore.
Standing in their way however are the indigenous aliens - the Na'vi. Blue-all-over and standing at nearly 10-feet tall, these critters are "very hard to kill" and have so far proved impossible to budge from the valuable Unobtanium sites.
That's where the 'Avatar' programme comes in. Humans are unable to breathe the toxic air on Pandora, so the experimental project - set up by Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Grace - sees humans transfer their consciousness to half-human, half-Na'vi hybrids. Grace hopes to use the programme to build bridges with the aliens and gently persuade them to get out of makind's way. The military hope to use the Avatars to collect reconnaissance for a planned military attack.
Enter Jake Sulley. Delighted to be able to walk again, he bounds into the jungle on a scouting mission, but soon begins to fall in love with both the Na'vi culture and the beautiful young alien Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). With an epic battle for the fate of Pandora looming, Jake must choose his side.
Pandora looks pretty.
As storylines go, this is nothing we haven't seen before. The plot is hugely reminiscent of the likes of Dances with Wolves and The New World, which see a 'civilised' westerner forced to live amongst a supposedly backwards society and slowly fall in love with the 'noble savages'.
Most of the characters are also archetypes. Worthington is the dumb grunt; Saldana the headstrong princess; Weaver essentially replays her performance as monkey-obsessed anthropologist Dian Fossey from Gorillas in the Mist; Giovanni Ribisi is the slimy company man and so on.
In the context of the movie however, this broad characterisation works perfectly. Avatar - despite its supposed 'newness' - is actually very much-old school filmmaking.
The movie is reminiscent of the great epics of yesteryear - from Gone With The Wind to Spartacus to Gladiator. These classic movies relied on universal themes and instantly recognisable characters to drive their monumental stories, and Avatar is no different. This is drama on a vast canvas and painted with broad brush-strokes. It's stirring stuff and the audience is powerless to prevent being swept up in the action and the emotion of it all.
Every character - no matter how cliched - is played with conviction and earnestness by the pitch-perfect cast (which bravely Cameron populated with talented thesps, rather than big stars). You believe in the romance between Jake and Neytiri. It is understandable why Dr. Grace has become so enchanted by Na'vi society. You even understand the motivation for Colonel Quaritch's dastardly plan. But the characters are in the service of the story, not the other way round.
Unlike the other recently released CGI-heavy movies against which Avatar will be judged - the likes of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Terminator Salvation - the film is superbly constructed, brilliantly establishing the characters, their relationships and the situation, and then drawing all strands together for an epic, action-packed finale.
Cameron - opposed to many of the other directors in Hollywood entrusted with big budget action movies such as McG and Michael Bay - has once again proven himself to be a master storyteller. It's insanely difficult to keep a special effects-heavy, two hour-plus action movie exciting and emotional until the closing credits. The Dark Knight managed it last year, and Avatar has succeeded in 2009.
Jake in Avatar form.
The genius of the film is taking this superbly constructed narrative and familiar roll-call of characters and parachuting them into the utterly alien, visually sumptuous, digitally created Pandora.
Avatar is a beautiful movie and genuinely looks unlike anything you've ever seen on a cinema screen before. The mix of near-photorealistic motion-capture CGI aliens and live-action humans smothered in a kind of glossy CG sheen gives the flick a slightly removed, dreamlike, ethereal quality.
You are never sure whether what you're seeing is actually photographed or created digitally, which has the effect of forcing your eyes to accept everything on screen. Pandora's lush vistas and neon jungles will linger long in the memory, and contrasts beautifully with the dirty and ugly human war machines.
The visuals are enhanced hugely by the use of 3-D. Despite being heavily trumpeted as revolutionary, the format is actually used in a very subtle way. There is very little of the frankly annoying and extremely gimmicky three dimensional cliches seen in the likes of Beowulf and A Christmas Carol.
She's gorgeous! The lovely Zoe Saldana as Neytiri.
There are no waggling spears in the audiences' face in Avatar and other effects which serve only to distance the viewer from events onscreen. Instead Avatar does the opposite - displaying multiple planes of vision in equal focus which heavily immerses the audience in the action. Combined with the gripping script, the use of 3-D results in an utterly engrossing experience. If you can, make sure you see Avatar in the format.
In the face of so much excellent work, some of our quibbles seem almost churlish. Some aspects of the story that were only hinted at could have been explored more fully, especially the mental deterioration of Jake as he struggles to cope with living parallel lives. Some might also find the environmental message slightly too preachy, or that the veiled references to American foreign policy are perhaps not developed enough.
But to dwell on some underdeveloped themes is to get away from the point, which is this: Avatar simply blew us away and utterly exceeded somewhat middling expectations.
After a year where most of the blockbuster movies disappointed, James Cameron - the master of the genre - has come back after a long hiatus and delivered unto us one of the most exhilarating, barmy and eye-wateringly gorgeous movies of the decade.
4.5 out of 5 Stars | 9/10