Possibly the most beautiful movie I have ever seen, Avatar is visually stunning and a revolution of filmmaking. The 3-D technology that director James Cameron employs is flawless, but the greatest feat that Cameron has pulled off is eradicating the line between humans and their animated counterparts. In recent years, Pixar has released some of the most visually enthralling and entertaining animated films (Up, The Incredibles, Wall-E), and this praise is well-deserved in that the stories are solid and immerse the viewer in a world of fantasy. The difference between Pixar productions and Avatar is that it is inherently easier to suspend disbelief while watching Pixar films because they are animated, and the audience mindset is immediately transferred to an animated realm of fantasy.
Appropriately, there is praise for the impeccable scenery that makes up Avatar‘s alien world of Pandora, but this is secondary to what Cameron has done by composing the Na’vi. Their body movements are fluid, and their interactions with each other are believable in that the characters don’t appear to be composed in a computer and cut and pasted in the same scene as if they were bits of cell-animation. Most important to the maintenance of disbelief are the intricacies of the characters themselves. The greatest risk in marrying live-action and animation is the transition from humanoid characteristics to those that are computer rendered.
Avatar begins with scientists, engineers, and soldiers (all live-action) transported to a military base set on the perimeter of Pandora, and the movie quickly establishes itself in the science-fiction/fantasy genre, inherently risking audience detachment when the characters shift from live-action to animated counterpart. Most prominently in animated/live-action films, the softened features of the animated doppelgangers make the transition noticeable, which serves to detach the audience from the world of fantasy and perpetually asks them to readjust to the visual dichotomy. Likewise, such softened features are binary: they either represent an amorphous creature associated with evil—think Gollum from Lord of the Rings—or caricatured innocence—see Mr. Incredible from The Incredibles or Russell from Up.
However, in Avatar the transition from live-action to animation is visually flawless and avoids repelling the audience because of the meticulous attention paid to the nuances of skin and facial features; virtually nothing suggests that these animated Na’vi are artificial. The skin is textured like human skin, not diamonded like reptiles. Their mouths move, and the natural lines of the face are revealed. The cheek bones adopt depth-defining shadows that convey emotion without needing the quotidian verbal exaltation. Anger is visually emoted without the “aaarggh,” frustration without the “hmmpph,” confusion without the “huh?” and disappointment without the “ah…no..no.” In other words, while cartoons, the Na’vi are not cartoonish.
Amidst this praise, Avatar lacks a story that consistently carries a film for two hours and forty two minutes. It’s a love story that is occasionally injected with a diaphanous metaphor about white-male imperialism on indigenous, peaceful worlds (think Pocahontas). In themselves, there’s nothing wrong with love or the metaphor, but the attraction between Jake Sully and Neytiri is perfunctory and is reminiscent of Jack and Rose from Titanic. The visuals in Avatar make it leagues better than Titanic, but the romance is similar: both women slum and suddenly fall in love–seemingly because that’s what appears in most How to Write Screenplay guides. Likewise, the metaphor is heavy-handed and ironically makes the live actors cartoonish — particularly narcissistic antipath Parker Selfridge (really? Self?), and warmongering Colonel Miles Quaritch, who uses the phrase “Shock and Awe” to refer to mission parameters. Thus, I’m not even sure if the metaphor is diaphanous or a re-creation.
Given the awesomeness of the film, perhaps the mediocre story is a venial sin — and perhaps fifteen years isn’t long enough to pen a story that doesn’t mimic the film that won you an Oscar in 1997. In the end, Avatar might have made the word “film” (in its literal sense) an anachronism, and as a friend pointed out after seeing this film, “we just witnessed this generation’s Birth of a Nation” in regard to its impact on every other film that attempts to incorporate 3-D as part of its medium. Can’t say that Avatar won’t become one of my guilty pleasures when it hits HBO; can’t say I’ll watch anything beyond the immense battle scenes; can’t say that Neytiri didn’t make me question the inappropriateness of loving another species. Time will tell.
DYL MAG Score : 6.5 (could be a 7 when I invest in a blu-ray player)
