Tag Archives: Avatar

Avatar: The Last Airbender

I guess one good thing to be said about the M. Night Shyamalan’s version of the story is that it got me and my wife watching the original series. The reviews for the film were uniformly horrible, so we had no desire to watch it. But its release prompted plenty of discussion about the cartoon series and more than a few QT3 posters wistfully reminisced about how great it was and how far short the film fell in comparison. As we had just finished watching Naruto Shippuden and were looking for something new to watch, she agreed to try a few episodes. We ended up watching all three seasons.

For the benefit of those who have no idea what it’s about, here’s a quick overview. The series is set in a fantasy world composed of four separate nations, each representing one of the four elements of Air, Water, Fire and Earth. Certain people from each of the nations are capable of bending their respective elements, manipulating them with a combination of concentration and martial arts moves. The four nations are supposed to co-exist in harmony but the Fire nation has become aggressive and has embarked on a war of conquest against the other nations.

Continue reading Avatar: The Last Airbender

Avatar fans upset that Pandora isn’t real

Avatar is currently well on its way to becoming the highest grossing film of all time, proving that James Cameron still has the magic touch. Part of it might be because of unusually high numbers of repeat viewers. Just as Titanic inspired legions of teenaged girls to sit through the ill fated romance again and again, Avatar is inspiring its own fans to do the same thing. As this CNN article explains, fans become so immersed in and enchanted by the idealistic planet of Pandora that they feel depressed when the movie ends and they need to come back to dreary, meaningless Earth. So they go back to watch the movie again. One even claimed to be contemplating suicide in the hopes of being reborn on Pandora. You can read the original forum thread where the fans share their woes here.

I think these people need to be reminded that Avatar is a commercial movie made for the purpose of earning money. This being so, buying into the whole thing would be contrary to the ideals of the simplistic, communitarian way of the life of the Na’vi. Not that the ideals made much sense or were even coherent anyway. Did anyone notice that for all the talk of hunting in the movie, you never actually see any of the Na’vi eat anything? I think Cameron knew very well that showing the Na’vi barbecuing the wildlife and chomping into them, animal juices flowing from their lips and chins, would not mesh with the overall pro-environmental message. These people just need to grow up and solve their own problems instead of thinking that running away would make the problems go away magically.

Anyway, while movies have preyed on the white man’s guilt before and made viewers wish they belonged to another ethnic group, such as the Native Americans in Dances with Wolves or the noble Japanese of The Last Samurai, I think Avatar is the first movie to make people wish to be a different species entirely!

Avatar

As usual when I write about films, spoilers abound so you might want to hold off on reading this until after you’ve watched it yourself. However, the plot is so cliche-ridden and so predictable that it’s pretty hard to spoil the film. It’s basically Dances with Wolves in space and all the pertinent plot points are clearly telegraphed from the first moment that you see the planet Pandora. Having only recently rewatched Aliens, I was also struck by how many themes and ideas were re-used. Over the top gung-ho soldier? Check. Greedy corporation exec who cares only about the bottom line? Check. Even the military vehicles and mechs look vaguely familiar.

The wonder of the film is that it all works, which says a lot about James Cameron’s directing skills. The film is genuinely breathtaking and spectacular, so much so that when you see it for the first time you simply know that this is something that you have never seen before. In that sense, it’s every bit as iconic and singular an experience as watching Star Wars or Jurassic Park for the very first time. It’s the same kind of once-in-a-lifetime experience that just blows you away.

It’s when you walk out of the cinema that all of the plot holes and flaws catch up with you. How do the human controllers connect with the avatar bodies? It must be magic because it seems to be unaffected by range or electromagnetic interference and the avatar bodies don’t seem to come with electronics. Why was the human ground force fooling around in the jungle for when the mission was to bomb the Tree of Souls? How ludicrous is it that no animals come to eat the avatar bodies when the human controllers are disconnected, especially after the film has established how hostile the jungle is? How come if the rocks float, the water still falls from it? And if they are made of the magical anti-gravity mineral, why don’t the humans just tow those away instead of trying to mine it from underground?

It’s common knowledge that Cameron wrote the original script for Avatar not long after he finished Titanic, so the script is still floating around the Internet. This website has a good comparison of the differences between the original scriptment and the film that ended up being made. It’s apparent that the original script was more subtle and less filled with cliches but a great deal more bloated. For example, in the original script the Na’vi that Jake falls in love with isn’t the first one that he meets, the research team is being helped by a Na’vi guide and Grace is secretly sleeping with him, there’s a previous human controller who fell in love with a Na’vi girl but she was killed by the military and he committed suicide etc. It all makes the Jake character less unique and less like a superhero who came out of nowhere to save the world.

For all these reasons, while watching Avatar once is practically mandatory, I doubt that the film stands up to repeated viewings. Even the technology will eventually look dated. But for now, it’s undoubtedly one of the most beautiful things ever put on film.