The Obligatory 2009 round up: Avatar

Being honest, Christmas wasn’t as big of an entertainment disappointment as some people would have you believe, especially if you happen to be British; We had Eddie Izzard performing really quite well in the BBC remake of the day of the triffids, David Tennant bowed out not so gracefully in what surely has to be the longest goodbye in recent TV history, not to mention Doctor Who history – but was seen again on a good number of BBC stations, reading kids bedtime stories, and the not so light hearted Hamlet. We’ll get to all of that shortly, but I think the big thing, at least for me was the viewing of the awesome, utterly brilliant Avatar.

Now, I’m going to shoot from the hip and explain from the outset that this was the first film that I’ve ever seen in 3D; I’d had the chance previously to watch Toy Story and even A Christmas Carol in the format, but passed as Jim Carrey doesn’t especially interest me these days, and I didn’t think Toy Story could offer anything more in 3D that it already had in its original format – in fact, the fact that there’s been this recent movement of transferring films such as those mentioned made it all nothing more than a fad. I was wrong. Kind of. I still maintain re-editing a film for the sake of making it 3D is a cynical piece of Hollywood marketing to say the least, and can only provide you with half the entertainment that an original production can, at best.

This is where Avatar excels; James Cameron created the story with the 3D technique in mind. OK, granted, the story wasn’t extremely original, and could hardly be ranked up there with Tolstoy or Shakespeare, but it is, nonetheless cinematic history in the making. I personally felt, and I realise that my view may be curried by the fact that this was my first 3D film, that what I was seeing was the future of Cinema; not just from the point of view of having a pair of glasses on to watch a film (that would very probably literally give you a headache without), but from the techniques that have come out of James Cameron alone. Up until now, it’s always bothered me that even with the very best motion capture framing, the lips were ever so slightly out of synch of what was being said by the animatronic; WETA is a prime example of this in terms of their work with Gollum – if you look closely, very closely to the way Gollum speaks, he doesn’t quite parry up with the lip movements that would be delivered from Andy Serkis.

This is a new Ball-Game though. The techniques used in the film to synch the way Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana speak as their Avatar forms is, for want of another word…Epic. Quite simply beautiful and leagues, literally evolutionary steps above anything that’s coming from either Peter Jackson or Robert Zemeckis right now;

Avatar takes place on a moon that Orbits a gas giant, much like Jupiter called Polythemus; Pandora (the moon) has been occupied by humans for the sake of a rare mineral that we as a species have now become extremely dependent upon called Unobtanium, that’s replaced the fossil fuels on our world as a primary expendable fuel source. Humans would be able to mine this without any kind of incidence, if it weren’t for the most intelligent indigenous species called the Na’vi reacting with a not completely unjustified amount of hostility towards their homeland being mined for a planet far, far away.

This is where the protagonist of our tale comes in. Jake Sully, it turns out is a twin of a scientist who was due to be deployed to Pandora. Why would a scientist go to Pandora? Well…Sigourney Weaver heads a research team, that endeavours to find a peaceful, diplomatic solution with the Na’Vi for mining rights on the moon, but has thus far been met with a good amount of distrust; unfortunately, Jake’s brother dies before he can make it to Pandora, and so, because each of the Avatars that are genetically created for the scientists to “drive” cost $20 million apiece – they enlist Jake to act as a security guard for excursions into the world. It’s during that one of these excursions that Jake becomes separated from that party, and rescued by Neytiri; and this is where the adventure, and the understanding of a beautifully symbiotic relationship with everything on the planet begins.

I’ve heard the film be described as Pocahontas in space, and I suppose, as a short synopsis goes, it’s fairly accurate; But Cameron has created a world here that’s so rich, and imaginative, and Bioluminescent that it should not, under any circumstances be trivialised by the merits of the tale alone; it should be judged by the merits as a whole, not just one part of the jigsaw puzzle.

It’s honestly hard to describe how enamoured I am with this film; I left the cinema 3 hours later feeling thoroughly satisfied, awestruck, and unable to say anything but ‘wow!’ on the whole trip home with my father, brother, brother in law and sister (who continued to spend the next 3 or 4 days mocking how excited I was getting during the movie, or the times I spent reaching out for dust particles and flower petals in front of me). I’ve mentioned repeatedly that I haven’t felt that inspired, that thrilled by a film since I saw ET, or even Return of the Jedi on the large screen (26 and change years ago, for those paying attention) – I really hope Hollywood doesn’t shy away from taking risks in the future; the fact that people are still out there that are willing to innovate and push boundaries does nothing more than demand that Hollywood, and the Cinema going public in general support such endeavour.

In all honesty, I was one of those people that initially mocked the idea of Cat people in space, with a look and story that many in the sci fi blogging circle noted as having been done before (to put it nicely), but I don’t think I’ve ever been so delighted to actually have been proven wrong. The only downside to this is that after having a chat with a couple of friends, I’m wary of seeing the film again in 3D; indeed, I’m wary of seeing it at all, because as one friend stated: “I’d like to preserve the innocence.” And that makes sense. Like me, he has a habit of picking films apart, understanding technique, or working out how something is animated, and in all honesty with a lot of good films, it takes the joy out of it. I don’t mind so much with something as god awful as the pirates of the Caribbean films, but this, for me is up there with Vanilla Sky – for example. The beauty of this film is not only that it’s a beautifully produced film, but that it’s one of the only action films this year that can claim to be the kind that positively doesn’t require you to check your brain at the door as you put your ray-ban esque 3D glasses on.