“You are not in Kansas anymore. You are on Pandora, ladies and gentleman.”
What’s it all about? A paraplegic marine named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is dispatched to the planet Pandora on a mission to integrate himself with the natives, the Na’vi. Through the course of his three-month mission, he becomes attached to the alien word — torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.
I tried not to get swept up in all the hype for this movie. Yeah, I read film blogs and listened to podcasts. Inevitably, I have suffered through fanboys glorifying James Cameron and counting down the days until his space opera was released. Trying to avoid the buzz, I waited before seeing the film in theatres. (Okay, I only waited three days.) I was shocked at how appealing Sam Worthington was in this film. I’ve only seen him in “Terminator Salvation” previously, and I hated every scene that he was in — not especially because of him — but because I paid my admission to see Christian Bale be a badass. Who the fuck is this Marcus Wright? Where’s John Connor? But I digress.
Worthington is an able leading man throughout “Avatar”. His integration into the Na’vi community is the most engaging aspect of the film. His character’s half-Na’vi, half-human dichotomy is the heart of the film, with many laughs — and a noteworthy nickname from love-interest Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña). I’ll admit it: the 3D hurt my eyes. But not always. It was usually just during close-up shots in human environments: the lab, control room, helicopters, etc. The scenes on Pandora with the Na’vi were fine, thank god. The amount of work that went into those scenes must have been enormous because every minute detail was spectacular. The humans looked so much like their Na’vi counterparts, especially Sigourney Weaver. It was actually really creepy watching the Na’vi Sigourney Weaver.
I’m not going to say that the 3D-induced headache was a universal experience. Unfortunately, I have prescription glasses that are all scratched up, and I don’t think that helped the 3D technology all that much. I really wish that Cameron was as inventive with the story-line as he was with the world he created. The whole humans-as-evil vs. alien-natives-as-perfect is somewhat over-used — but it was a solid narrative to build upon, I guess.
Favourite Scene: I was especially fond of Cameron’s use of video logs to convey narrative quickly, summarizing the three months that Jake moonlighted as a native. It was a great way to have Jake express his impressions of the Na’vi and his experiences without having a hokey voice-over (unfortunately, the hokey voice-over does appear later in the movie).
Notes: Directed by James Cameron; Produced by James Cameron, Jon Landau; Written by James Cameron; Starring Sam Worthington, Zoë Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Sigourney Weaver; Music by James Horner; Cinematography by Mauro Fiore; Editing by James Cameron, John Refoua, Stephen E. Rivkin.
