*WARNING: If you haven't seen the film, beware of spoilers.*
From the conflicts between the settlers and the natives in the early stages of North American development to the British rule of several parts of Africa and Asia, the oppressive and violent campaigns of colonialism and imperialism continue to cast a negative light on humanity even to this day. The nature of such campaigns and the omnipresent guilt associated with them have been explored in many motion pictures to this day, such as Disney's animated feature Pocahontas, as well as Kevin Costner's Academy Award-winning drama Dances with Wolves. But it has rarely been explored in the realm of thinly-veiled allegory known as science-fiction and fantasy...and this, I'm afraid, is the best contemporary example we have. This is Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
Our story involves a group of fighters and scientists who have come across an ancient civilization. This civilization happens to be resting on a highly valuable natural resource that some of the outsiders are hell-bent on getting their hands on. However, our protagonist has attempted to learn the ways of the natives and ends up falling in love with one of their women in the process. After realizing that all living beings are connected and that life in all its forms is the most precious miracle of all, he takes up arms with the natives against the evil military captain who wants the aforementioned natural resource. After winning the battle and saving the day he ends up "becoming" one of the natives and renouncing his former identity.
What's that? This isn't the film I'm supposed to be reviewing? But I could have sworn...oh, right, it was Avatar I chose to review, that's it! Wow, I'm sorry, my mistake.
Avatar
*WARNING: If you haven't seen the film, beware of spoilers.*
So...here it is! James Cameron's pet project 15 years in the making, boasting grand technology and visual effects the likes of which no one has ever seen before...at least not at this level of sharpness and sophistication. Does the movie itself hold anything more than its main selling point?
Well, our story involves a group of fighters and scientists who have come across an ancient civilization. This civilization happens to be resting on a highly valuable natural resource that the colonialists are hell-bent on getting their hands on. However, our protagonist has attempted to learn the ways of the natives and ends up falling in love with one of their women in the process. After realizing that all living beings are connected and that life in all its forms is the most precious miracle of all, he takes up arms with the natives against the evil military captain who wants the aforementioned natural resource. After winning the battle and saving the day he ends up "becoming" one of the natives and renouncing his former identity.
...Okay, I'm going to take that as a no.
*Sigh* Okay, well, I guess I should give a more in-depth summary than that. We have our main protagonist, paraplegic ex-Marine Jake Sully who is sent to a remote outpost on the distant planet of Pandora, where the EEEEEEVIL RDA corporation is mining the environment in order to find unobtainium, an apparently rare and extremely valuable metal. Their main obstacle lies in the fact that Pandora is populated by a group of blue-skinned humanoids known as the Na'vi, who look like the deformed love-children of Sylvester the Cat and Papa Smurf injected with steroids. The corporation has been constantly attempting to convince the Na'vi to leave their home so that they can fully take advantage of the planet's natural resources, but the Na'vi don't want to leave because of their symbiotic bond with nature, which of course, all "poor" indigenous folk have, right? Right?
Anyway, Jake has been sent to Pandora, along with other mercenaries, to provide security as well as to replace his deceased twin brother, who was also an experienced Avatar operator. However, the head of the Avatar Program, Dr. Grace Augustine, considers him to be a rather poor replacement for his apparently more qualified and more intelligent brother and dismissively lets him tag along as a bodyguard.
And just what is the Avatar Program, you may ask?
Why, it's a program through which humans implant their minds into genetically-engineered human-Na'vi hybrid bodies in order to take on the appearance of the natives. Wow, a human mind being imprinted onto a false and "simulated" body! Original, right? I don't think we've ever seen anything like that befo--
Ah, right, yes...ahem...moving on...
So Jake, Dr. Augustine and a team of scientists (surprisingly, only one of whom is Indian) are on Pandora in their Avatar forms exploring the landscape when suddenly they are attacked by a large monster, becoming separated in the process. Jake must then use all of his combat skills to survive as he stumbles through the Night Elf forest from World of Warcraft--er, I mean, the Pandoran jungle. He is almost killed by Exotic Predator#2, when he is saved by a Na'vi woman known as Neytiri. She ends up bringing him before the ruler of her clan, the Omaticaya, where her mother, the Na'vi shaman, orders her to instruct him and teach him their ways.
Meanwhile, back at the headquarters of the EEEEEEVIL RDA corporation, we meet one of two principal antagonists of this film, Colonel Miles Quaritch, the...um...excessively patriotic leader of the mercenary force.
...Yeah. I'll have more to say on his character later.
He makes a bargain with Jake: if he can successfully convince the Omaticaya to abandon their home, he will authorize the operation to cure Jake's paralysis. And so, stuff happens, Jake becomes a part of the tribe, falls in love with Neytiri, and with the help of the good-hearted scientists ("We're all connected, man! Don't you see?! We all got to be together!") ends up fighting against the EEEEEEEVIL corporation that he was originally helping in order to save the natives.
All right...where the hell do I begin?
First off, I don't know about the rest of you, but I happen to believe that if you are creating an artistic narrative in any form, and you wish to insert a social message or any political subtext into that narrative, you should try to do it in a way that doesn't speak down to your audience as if they consisted of nothing but toddlers and people with special needs. And here I thought District 9's allegory was thinner than an anorexic cheerleader! Right from the start, we're slammed with this simple formula:
EQUALS 
Don't believe me? Take a look, for a start, at Colonel Quaritch, played with an incredible amount of over-zealous "steel boner" Marine manliness by Stephen Lang. This guy is honestly the most stereotypical "army douche" you will ever witness onscreen. Right from the get-go, he is established as a patriot to an immense fault, but his most ridiculous moment by far comes near the final epic battle between the humans and the Na'vi. He is in a roomful of redneck soldiers that he has gathered as his elite force and he's giving his generic pre-battle pep talk, telling them exactly what they are going to do to these Injuns...I mean, Na'vi. It is in this one line that we see the full agenda behind Cameron establishing this character. If I hadn't been watching this movie in a crowded theater, I'm pretty sure I would have laughed my ass off at this one line: "We are gonna fight terror with terror!"
First of all, WHAT TERROR?! The Na'vi have not done anything that can be defined as terrorism! Last time I checked, you were the one who initiated that little "shock and awe" campaign to try and reduce their morale to zero, moron!
Second of all:
OKAY, SERIOUSLY, GUYS. THE MONKEY HAS BEEN OUT OF OFFICE FOR OVER A YEAR NOW. THE JOKE HAS LEFT THE BUILDING. GET THE FUCK OVER IT.
And it's not like Cameron really wants us to draw our own varied conclusions from this story, oh no! Whenever something bad happens to the noble "savages" known as the Na'vi, the movie pretty much knees us in the balls to react the way it wants us to react. When one of the trees of the natives gets destroyed, we get a nice little slow-motion montage of the scientists lashing out at the heartless military officers, with Sigourney Weaver's character screaming, "MURDERER!!!" intercut with the Na'vi weeping at the partial destruction of their forest, complete with a pretentious "AH-ee-AH-ee-AH" choir accompanied by violins.
Okay, we get it. Believe me, we got it the minute the Na'vi were first referred to as "savages". White people are imperialist, cruel, soulless bastards who only care about becoming richer than they have the right to be and who have no regard for the rights of minority groups or any life on this planet whatsoever. The military is evil, the billion-dollar faceless corporations who run operations such as this are evil, and all humans are EEEEEEEVIL. Would you mind shoving it a little more forcefully down my throat, please? I think there's still a tiny little space left in my gullet. Honestly, the only way that this film could possibly be any more shamelessly manipulative is if you had James Cameron himself standing at the front of the theatre holding up signs for every scene that said "APPLAUSE" or "WEEP OPENLY".
With that said, let's talk about the movie's main selling point: the effects. Right from the start, this movie was billed as the next leap forward in filmmaking, a movie that people would look back on and think: "Man, I remember when I first saw this piece of work change the course of how visions are brought to life on screen". All the hype based around this was based on the fact that the motion capture and green-screen effects used had risen to such a level of sophistication that it would cause the audiences' skulls to collectively cave in from sheer unadulterated awesomeness. So, is it all true? Did the effects manage to transport me to another world? Is this as much of a revolutionary technical achievement as it is billed to be?
My answer: Yes. Yes on all counts. And that is why I have this to say: if you decide to see this film, ONLY see it in 3-D. Even if you only see it on a regular-sized screen, you will literally feel like you're being swept up and taken to a completely different world with lush forests, diverse forms of wildlife and...floating mountains?
IF YOU SAY SO, CAMERON. IF YOU SAY SO.
The Na'vi themselves are beautifully rendered in all their Smurf-like glory, with textures and expressive features to rival those of the "prawns" of District 9. The brilliance of the effects, however, lies in the fact that while the creatures themselves have a very distinct look to them, the animation does not in any way hamper the performances by the human actors. In fact, here, we get what I would say is the closest thing to a perfect marriage of computer animation and human emotion since Gollum's debut that we are going to see onscreen for a long time.
Among these performances, the one which carried the strongest emotional weight was that of Zoe Saldana as the Na'vi princess Neytiri. Almost like Andy Serkis' performance as Gollum, Saldana's performance is a full-bodied transformation from one species to another. There's a certain aspect of danger to this character as she always seems ready to lash out and pounce, but also an element of vulnerability. Saldana pulls both of these elements off brilliantly, creating a character that is always engaging to watch. Granted, her movements and ululations (as well as those of the rest of the Na'vi) were a little too similar to those of the most stereotypical rain-dancing Aboriginals for me to take entirely seriously, but I think we all know who to blame for that.
The rest of the performances are, at best, mediocre, and at worst hilariously bad. Sam Worthington's portrayal of Jake was on the higher end of the shit spectrum, leaving us with no impression whatsoever: nothing too impressive (or expressive, I should say) that suggests any major calibre, but nothing that'll leave a foul taste in your mouth. On the other end are Lang (as mentioned above) as Full Metal Stereotype, the "military douche" and Giovanni Ribisi as the "corporate douche". Both of these actors don't really play characters here as much as much as they play epitomes of EEEEEEVIL, although this isn't entirely their fault, given that Cameron (who also wrote the screenplay) didn't really give either of them much to work with other than:
LOOK, I TOLD YOU, GIOVANNI, WE CAN'T AFFORD A FAKE MUSTACHE FOR YOU TO TWIRL MENACINGLY OR SOMEBODY TO TRAIN A CAT TO SIT IN YOUR LAP AND PURR WHILE YOU DO SO! ALL RIGHT...WE'LL HAVE YOU PLAYING GOLF IN YOUR FIRST SCENE, HOW DOES THAT SOUND? I MEAN, THAT'S WHAT THOSE HEARTLESS CORPORATE DOUCHEBAGS DO ALL DAY, RIGHT? OKAY, TIME FOR ANOTHER REWRITE. *SIGH* GUESS I SHOULDN'T HAVE BLOWN OUR ENTIRE BUDGET ON ALL THESE ELABORATE COMPUTERS AND THAT FANCY MOTION-CAPTURE STUDIO...OH, WELL!
It's pretty clear from his work on this movie that Cameron is dangerously close to falling into the Michael Bay trap of placing jaw-dropping visual effects squarely before story and character development. Rather surprising, considering that this is the guy who gave us the first two Terminator films. Unfortunately, visuals alone do not a movie make. If you lack a compelling and unique story and characters that are dynamic and complex, then your work shall be destined to fade into obscurity. You may make all the money in the world, but as they say: you can roll a giant turd around in all the flour you want, but that don't make it a jelly doughnut.
And on that savory note, I conclude this review with the following: You will like Avatar if you are looking for the following three things in your movie-going experience: lights, colour and noise. It is, at the very least, an entertaining (if predictable) movie-going experience that puts its money where its mouth is in terms of what it boasts. It's also a piece of environmentalist propaganda that's about as subtle and as delicate as an elephant tusk up the ass. Nice try, James old chap, but next time, could you leave your preachy New Age bullshit out of my escapist fantasy blockbusters, please? Or if you have to insert some kind of social message into your films, then please do it in a way that doesn't feel like I'm being sodomized repeatedly with your beliefs. If that's the effect you'd like to have on people, then I strongly recommend you consider joining the Catholic Church.
Thanks for reading, and have a happy New Year.
--Vishesh
