Avatar

So as promised I got the star rating for Avatar up on Saturday. However, I thought that a little more discussion about it was in order.

As far as this film representing the next leap forward technologically in film, I can tell you unequivocally that you can believe the hype. It is hands down the most amazing looking film I've ever seen. Cameron has managed to create a living, breathing world in a way that has never been done before in the history of film. And he has done it, presumably, almost exclusively with CGI. And the fact that I say "presumably" is itself a remarkable statement. Because I simply can't tell. There are things I saw which I have no possible idea how they would have been created without CGI, but there's no "dead giveaway" that makes me able to say for sure that it is. I think that Cameron learned (which, sadly, George Lucas did not) that most of the time where you run into trouble with CGI is when you have CGI characters present with non-CGI ones. He sidesteps this by basically making everything (and everyone) CGI. I counted only a very small handful of scenes where CGI and non-CGI characters were present in the same shot, and the shots were either so brief or they were so laden with other effects that your eyes aren't drawn to the differences. Ccompare this with, for example, the scene near the beginning of The Phantom Menace when we first meet Anakin. Anakin's master is all CGI and we don't believe for a moment that he's actually in the shot with the actors.

It only took me about 20 minutes into the film to realize that it was a guaranteed Oscar winner. Seriously, if it doesn't win Best Visual Effects they should just do away with the award. Sorry Star Trek, looks like you picked a bad year to come out.

Basically the movie looks so amazing that even if everytime a character had opened their mouths to speak chimp noises came out instead it still would have been a 4/5 star movie. So it should have been a no-brainer for it to earn 5 stars. So why only 4.5? Well, the story and dialogue are quite underwhelming. The story (in its largely spoiler-free form) is basically The Last Samurai meets The Secret of Mana. It's a serviceable story and it's never boring but it also abounds with cliches. I can totally forgive that, because the look of the film is so spectacular that in a way it's nice to be in the confines of a familiar story. You can feel free to look around and admire all the little details (and believe me there are a TON) without having to worry about getting lost. The dialogue, however, is another story. There's at least a half dozen examples where one character says to another character something that the other character would obviously already have known and it's clear that the only point is to provide expository dialogue. It just feels very unnatural. Also, there is just no form of subtlety here at all. As just one point that isn't a spoiler of any consequence but just summarizes it perfectly, the humans on the planet are mining for a rare mineral. And rather than just name it something that already exists, the writers decide to invent a new one and the name they choose is "unobtainium". The film is unabashedly pro-environmentalism and anti-war. There's nothing wrong with that but, again, some form of subtlety would be nice. The worst part is that it's unnecessary; the themes would have come through just fine without several characters basically outright stating them. It feels dumbed down, and maybe that's the point. All in all, it's certainly not something that ruins the movie but it is a detraction. I just wish they'd spent maybe $2-3 million less on the effects and invested in a decent rewrite of the dialogue.

Overall, the movie is just what it promises to be: a true cinematic experience. If you are thinking that you will eventually see it, do yourself a favor and see it the way it was meant to be seen: on an IMAX. The 3-D is awesome but not compulsory, in my opinion, but the large screen is. I don't know how the film will hold up once it gets to Blu-Ray but I guarantee you anyone that pops it in for the first time is going to say "wow, this would have been amazing to see on a huge screen." Don't be that guy (or girl).