Avatar (2009) - Film Review

Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang & Sigourney Weaver

Screenplay: James Cameron

Directed By: James Cameron

Certificate: 12

 

Avatar is one of those few films that almost absolutely everyone seems to have watched. There seriously aren't that many other films I can think of that have been so universally viewed and financially successful at the same time. Avatar was a phenomenal success in 2009, grossing over $2.7 billion dollars and was not only the most financially successful film of that year, but went on to become the highest grossing film in cinema history. Even adjusted for inflation, Avatar stands among the likes of Titanic, Gone With The Wind and the original Star Wars. It also spent a very long time in development, with the original concept for Avatar originating in 1994. And according to director James Cameron, the film only spent so long in development because the necessary technology hadn't yet been developed to capture his vision. So after such a long wait, and with such incredible box office takings, does Avatar live up to its dizzying ambitions?

 

In 2154, paraplegic ex-marine, Jake Sully, replaces his deceased identical twin brother on a science project on the habitable moon, Pandora. Pandora is home to the native Na'vi tribe: blue-skinned 10ft tall humanoids. However, the Na'vi come under human threat as their home sits right above a mine of the valuable mineral, Unobtanium. In an attempt to communicate with the Na'vi, the humans' science division adopt avatars – Na'vi-human hybrids operated by genetically matched humans – and try to better understand their culture. But when Jake, in his Na'vi avatar, begins to get more drawn in and becomes initiated into the tribe, his loyalty to his own species, and his loyalty to the Na'vi become conflicted.

 

James Cameron has long had a habit of utilizing the latest technology and pushing limits when it comes to visual spectacle. Aliens, The Abyss, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day are all large, ambitious films that represent breakthroughs in visual effects technology, and Avatar is no different. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say probably a good 80-90% of Avatar in its finished state was made on computer, and the overwhelming majority of the film is a visual effects spectacle. Such a heavy reliance on visual effects can often be a risky business, but thankfully in the case of Avatar, it pays off. There's a wealth of beautiful landscapes, vast alien jungles and equally vibrant, colourful wildlife and fauna on show throughout the film. The extensive use of motion-capture to bring the Na'vi to life is brilliant, and the human performance underneath it all never feels limited as a result. As with most of the design work in Avatar, the actual design of the Na'vi can't be faulted for its imagination, and the combination of human, monkey and cat feels like nothing we've quite seen before. Avatar definitely doesn't fail to deliver when it comes to visual spectacle, and it can boast plenty of long, impressive action sequences too. It all culminates in an intense and climactic finale lasting at least a good twenty minutes – it has you completely invested and is easily one of the highlights of the film. Impressive as Avatar is from a production and effects point of view, it is crucial to note both to audiences and to filmmakers that it isn't because of the film's vast $237m+ budget. Yes, a budget like this helps, but simply throwing money at a film doesn't automatically mean it looks good. Look for example at another 2009 sci-fi film, District 9 – a film with just a $30m budget. Even with this much smaller budget, I have no hesitation in saying that District 9 looks every bit as good as Avatar. More money doesn't automatically equal a better-looking film, it's the behind-the-scenes talent that does that, and it's something both Avatar and District 9 have.

 

Technical prowess isn't the only thing that seems to have been carried over from James Cameron's previous movies. When re-watching Avatar for the purposes of this review, it surprised me how many moments felt copied and pasted from his previous work, specifically from his 1986 Aliens film. When Avatar begins with a ship full of marines landing on a far-away alien world, introduces the use of mech suits, and then sees an alien vs. mech suit fight for the finale, it can't help but feel borrowed. Now Aliens is one of my absolute favourite films, so if James Cameron did want to rip himself off, he's at least taking from the best. But at the same time, there is a bit of a clash between these borrowed elements and the strikingly original imagery seen in the rest of Pandora. It's also worth addressing Avatar's two hour forty minute runtime. It's not the longest film in the world, but at the same time it's pretty hefty. There's not enough necessary content here to quite justify that runtime, and this film feels like it needed a lot of bloatware taken out to get it down to about two hours at the most.

 

It may be overly long, but something I did really appreciate from Avatar were its themes and how it approached them. It's really not hard to see the themes of corporatism and environmentalism in Avatar, and its encouragement of protecting the natural world is not only timely, but it helps ensure that it will remain relevant to audiences in years to come. There's a lot of revisionist themes to be found in Avatar, and revisionism has lately become a bit of an area of interest for me. At the time of writing this review, I've recently completed a module on Westerns at university, and the influence of Westerns on Avatar is great indeed. Until I sat the module, I had no time of day for Westerns whatsoever, and while it's still not my favourite genre, I feel I have more of a respect and understanding of them. In particular, I've developed a bit of a fondness for revisionist westerns that challenge our pre-conceived notions of things such as Good vs. Bad. In many ways, Avatar plays out like a revisionist western, and it put me in mind of what has recently become one of my favourite films: Dances With Wolves. Over the course of the film, Jake's attempt to communicate, and his eventual absorption of the Na'vi culture is really not that different from John Dunbar's induction into the Sioux tribe in Dances With Wolves. You honestly don't have to look hard to see how influenced Avatar is by the Western. The use of spears, horse-like creatures, bows and arrows by the Na'vi vs. the guns and heavy weaponry deployed by the marines is your classic Settler vs. Native divide. Even the reason for humans being on Pandora, to mine the precious Unobtanium (incidentally, one of the least subtle and most ridiculous names for anything ever), can be read as a metaphor for Native American lands.

 

So while the thematic content is one of the best things about Avatar, what about the actual story and characters themselves? Well, the results are much more mixed to say the least. On the whole, most of the cast give decent performances and do their best to cover up some pretty lacklustre characterization. There is one exception to this however, and that's our lead character, Jake Sully. While not the best character I've ever seen put to screen, he is the only one who appears to go through any sort of character progression – his character arc is both engaging and feels believable. Other standout performances come from Zoe Saldana, who does a terrific job being able to put across a range of emotions through all the motion-capture effects needed on her character. We also have Sigourney Weaver in a supporting role, and as should be expected by this point, she's fantastic with everything the script asks of her. There's also the main antagonist, Colonel Quaritch, and despite being quite a formulaic character, Stephen Lang comes across as so tough and intimidating in his performance that it didn't actually bother me too much. What bothers me more, and the thing that restricts a lot of the characters in Avatar, is a general feeling of self-satisfied smugness. There are little moments and lines of dialogue in this film that can come across as very cocky, and it can be hard to get into when it seems so pleased with itself. For example, at the start of the film when the marines first land on Pandora, you can hear the soldier in charge rallying his men saying “Let's have nobody dead today, looks very bad on my report”. Later on, we see some of the characters looking in awe at Pandora's floating Hallelujah Mountains, and the pilot says with the cockiest grin: “You should see your faces.” These are tiny moments I understand, but it comes across as trying to be cocky or witty when the film doesn't feel like its done enough to earn that. I don't know if this attitude was something else that got taken from Aliens, but the difference is that it worked for that film. The cocksure attitudes of the marines in Aliens meant that they could be brought down a peg or two and grounded by characters such as Ripley, and especially once the xenomorphs show up. Here in Avatar, there's nothing like that to ground anyone, so it instead just comes across as grating.

 

So does Avatar still hold up in the years since its release? Just about. The incredible and ambitious use of visual effects, as well as the ultimate message of the film mean that it will in some ways age well further in the future. But the lack of engaging characters and originality in the story, damage its prospects beyond this. For what it is, I think Avatar is still a good, solid film, certainly not one of the best ever, but it still holds up. However, as far as its future's concerned, I have serious doubts about whether anyone actually wants the four sequels James Cameron supposedly has planned. Avatar very much feels like lightning in a bottle, the majority of its success coming from its then-unrivalled special effects and how it capitalized on the craze for 3D films at the time; so I'd be hesitant in planning any more than one sequel right now. With a ten-year gap between films as well, and not much demand to see Jake's story beyond the first film, it feels like audiences will have gone on to other things already. But who knows? I could be completely wrong. This is after all James Cameron, director of the two most financially successful films ever released, and with a long history of pushing film technology forwards to get audience attention. Who's to say he won't surprise us all with Avatar 2?

 

 

Avatar

 

7/10