There are two things I knew beforehand about Avatar. The first is the most obvious one, that it has incredible CGI. The second is that it doesn’t have an original plot. I had very low expectations for the film because I have a problem with big budget CGI films. The problem I have is that these kinds of movie concentrate heavily on the special effects and forget about developing the story. Hollywood seems to forget that a movie is as good as its script. When you have an excellent script, you have an excellent movie. Anything else added to the film are just props.
A great example where special effects are awesome but the movie is crap is Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The movie has tons of effects that are pretty to look at. It really shows you how George Lucas wanted his Star Wars universe to be. But the script was horrible, therefore the movie was horrible. The original Star Wars movies are great because they had an excellent script. C3PO could’ve been a man wrapped in tin foil and it still would’ve been a good movie. It’s a timeless classic with no references to when it was made unlike the modern prequels.
Let’s look at the plot outline for Avatar: A paraplegic marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home. -IMDB
From the previews I could tell that the plot is basically the conqueror type of genre where a civilization (humans) wants to get rid of the natives (Na’vi) to mine their natural resources (unobtanium). So I had my doubts about the movie. The movie is pretty predictable but it’s entertaining. The world of Pandora is fascinating to watch and that’s what makes it different from other movies with the same kind of story line. My exact words when I got out of the theatre were:
Avatar is a re-done plot with a layer of novelty. The layer of novelty is what makes the movie interesting. #
The main character, crippled ex-marine Jake Sully is your typical puppet. He does what is asked of him. After an encounter with a native in his Na’vi body, he is ordered off the record to spy on the natives, gain their trust, and try to relocate them so that the mining can begin in the natives home that happens to be the largest mineral repository of the land. The Na’vi are very connected to nature and worship/respect Eywa which is basically a Mother Goddess much like Gaia. The concept that the Earth is alive and that everything is connected is not new, but it’s represented beautifully in the film. It’s hard to fight fire with bows and arrows so a military strike is on hold while the scientists try to find a diplomatic solution.
In terms of plot, it has been called “the same movie” as Dances with Wolves. In reference to various themes in the plot, parallels have been drawn between the premise of Avatar and that of Poul Anderson’s 1957 short story “Call Me Joe”, where a paralyzed man uses his mind to remotely control an alien body. Other reviews have compared it to the films FernGully: The Last Rainforest and Pocahontas. Cameron himself acknowledged that the film is thematically similar to classic going-native films such as Dances with Wolves and At Play in the Fields of the Lord. -Wikipedia
Spoiler alert!
Being a cripple, Jake enjoys being in his Na’vi body where he can run, climb, and swim. He slowly starts to become one of the natives himself but is faced with the impending date of the destruction of the natives home that he learned to love. He ends up taking the side of the natives to fight the humans but must prove himself worthy as one of them first. The natives win after the destruction of their home and casualties from both sides. The humans are kicked out except for a few trustworthy ones and the crippled hero earns his Na’vi body at the end.
The movie is beautiful to watch and the story is not bad, it’s a decent marriage. Would I see it again? Sure. My dad and daughter loved it. So I’m guessing she’s gonna want it when it comes out on DVD and I’ll have to watch it with her.
Avatar is definitely James Cameron’s way of showing George Lucas how to take a simple story and make it into a good scifi film with awesome special effects.
