Fluff from the naval of my mind

Let me preface this review by saying that I enjoyed Avatar. It is a pleasant enough way to pass 162 minutes.

This film has everything. Natives presumed by the human invaders to be primitives. The arrogant humans exploiting a worlds natural resources, with careless disregard. Gung-ho marines. The dedicated marine who sees the light and joins the natives to fight of the humans. In summary, the story is trite, preachy and packed with cliche. Don’t get me wrong, this alone does not make Avatar a bad film and Cameron produces enough visual interest to distract from the lack of originality in the story. I cannot help but think that Cameron is tipping-the-wink to audience that the plot is weak by calling the material sought by the invading humans Unobtainium. (Unobtainium is term used by writers for a substance necessary to move along the plot, but serves no other purpose.)

If your taste in films is for eye-candy then Avatar does not disappoint. WETA Digital have produced another masterpiece. The visuals are stunning and nothing less than we have come to expect from big budget films. It is easy to forget that you are, for most of the film, watching an entirely digital world. The soundscape is similarly detailed and beautifully constructed.

I watched Avatar in 3D and true to his word Cameron resisted too many of the obvious ‘ooh look, it’s 3D’ moments. On the whole the 3D aspect of the film worked well. The problem with 3D films, and this one is no exception, is that the director controls the focus of the image. We accept this in normal 2D films, but in 3D films it tends to be distracting. In normal life we choose the object of focus. Objects in real life do not go in an out of focus on their own account. A 3D films attempts to present a 3D world, but the director then forces objects in this world in and out of focus. The dissonance this causes throws me out of the film and is migraine inducing when too vigorously applied.

The performances are excellent and, storyline aside, the script tight and, to be fair, largely character driven once you’re past the Unobtainium. Casting is spot on and each of the main characters is believable.

Is this film a revolution in the cinematic art as many are claiming? The technology used to produce Avatar will undoubtedly be used in future films. It is a natural progression from previous technology and the one thing we can depend on from Hollywood is that a novel cinematic technique will be flogged until dead (bullet time anyone?).

From an audience’s point of view it does not matter how clever the technology used to produce a film is, it is the product that is important. Cameron has invested a great deal of time and effort in creating Pandora. The Na’vi language invented for the film is interesting if you know it is a language created for the film and not just noises made to sound vaguely like a language. Similarly, it is rather obvious that everything in the film was constructed specifically for the film but the additional information that Cameron had experts review the flora and fauna to ensure it was feasible is interesting but hardly contributes to the film otherwise. The point is, all this background work may have helped in the making of the film, but it is hard to see how their omission would be a detriment to the final product. I just wish Cameron had invested some of the care lavished on the visuals on that pesky distraction called a story. This film is like a stunningly beautiful woman. With the IQ of a table lamp.