Update 12/31/09: Avatar crosses the 800 million dollar mark worldwide in 13 days!
Update 12/29/09: Avatar is breaking all box office records worldwide and at the 11 day mark has already taken in 617M. The number one film in 107 out of 108 countries.
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I saw Avatar today (a film that took several years to make and was delayed even more due to its advanced technology) and thought it was truly exceptional on many levels. I like to keep my mind pure of other people's reviews before seeing a new movie (or even an old one for that matter) so my first impressions are completely my own. That is not the same as living in a bubble. I DO do my research. Here are my impressions of Avatar. Landmark Film
Avatar is one of those movies that you must see - even if it's just to stay literate in the language of film. And you must see it on a big screen. The bigger the screen the better and preferably in 3D. Avatar has ridden the CG/live-action wave and developed new camera systems and software for motion capture (the cutting-edge process of filming actors and then mapping their images and movements onto 3D computer models). The technological achievement alone is a major accomplishment but is even more relevant to revenue because now more than ever a film has to have a compelling reason to be just to get theatrical release.
Visual Smorgasbord
The eye-popping visuals are state-of-the-art and telegraph the crucial story beats without dialogue. One has the sense that the screen is a giant, moving canvas. I felt that this was a very conscious decision. To my mind the natural world of Pandora seems a bit overdone with the FX of mocap. We get that everthing is "alive" there but less may have been more in some instances.
Nevertheless, as part of the storytelling process writer/Director James Cameron paints the two camps (military might versus stone age tribes) with two distinct palettes. He uses cool greens, blues and luminous light for Pandora's landscapes & creatures juxtaposing them with harsh metallics, barren sepia tones and hard or distored light for the machines. So much so the core conflict reads non-verbally from every angle.
The World of Pandora An immense amount of work went into bringing the logic and rules of the imaginary world of Pandora to life. To begin with, one cannot escape the fact that the moon itself is named after a Greek Goddess, the first woman on earth. The divine feminine is everywhere apparent on this Garden of Eden style moon but we do not feel the damnation of woman here. Quite the contrary. She is the fertile ground for all things and must not be violated.
While your eyes are feasting on the sheer beauty of the film, you may not notice or know that James Cameron hired botanist Jodie Holt to design the flora and fauna of the fictional biosphere. It is not a casual creation. Everything corresponds to an agreed upon science. They created a "zooplantae" (plant/animal hybrids) to populate the forest. A linguist (Paul Frommer) also came on-board to create a unique Na'vi language for the indigenous people there. Avatar fans can learn to speak Na'vi the same way Trekkies learned Klingon.
While all that is wonderful and will no doubt boost cross-marketing products like t-shirts, art books, dolls and games, to me the biggest takeaway was the emphasis placed on the wisdom of the Na'vi tribal culture and their relationship to the land. It borrows heavily from American Indian and Asian Pacific cultures and the concept of a collective consciousness that is managed by harmonious co-existence with the great spirit mother.
The great spirit is present on the molecular level in all living things. So the Na'vi live according to the respect for all life. When they slay an animal, like the American Indian, they speak to it and thank it for its life which gives life in ritual of death. We see this on the micro and macro levels. There are several scenes near the spirit tree where the roots seem to blend with the arms and legs of the Na'vi who have linked arms in a prayer chant. An unforgettable image.
Themes
This is an epic work of fiction set in a distant galaxy but very much based on human issues and understanding. A key theme is the polarization of eco-friendly, spirit-based culture and industrialized warmongering as a capitalist means to an end. There is an unmistakable female versus male flavor to it all (though it might be more accurate to refer to it as yin & yang) with the synthesis as the ultimate endpoint. We will not see that synthesis complete its cycle for two more sequels.
Central to the story is literally a tree of life, a symbolic image present in many cultures. The one on Pandora seems Celtic in origin to me. The interconnectedness of all things runs deep in the storyline. Even hero Jake Sully's conflict between causes draws on that theme. We can't help feeling that the loss of the use of his legs as a marine in action brought him to his destiny as Pandora's saviour. It is interesting to note that Avatar is a sanskrit word that signifies a deity in human form, the embodiment of a concept, an archetype.
The wasteland motif is inherent in the backstory but also shows up visually in the image of Sully wandering alone in the decimated Pandora landscape. His inner dialogue spells it out for you, in case you might miss it. The wasteland is a mythic image/concept that really goes hand-in-hand with the central humanity versus machine conflict. It is an inevitable result of the clash between the two.
Survival of the life force after death in the form of an individual spirit is also present and I suspect will become even more important to the plot as the franchise develops. In tandem with this is the idea of reincarnation, from a Hindu POV. That is (and I'm speculating here) a thread of karma runs through all the action which we will most likely see unfold in unexpected ways in the next film(s).
Critique/Conclusion
One feels well fed at the end of this movie as one should. It was designed by a master chef. There is a staying power to the story and a kind of longing to return to that Edenesque moon called Pandora. In some corner of my mind I wish to board Virgin Galactic's spaceship Enterprise and head into deep space.
But we already are in deep space. Sully's burning passion is easy to slip into and assume as our own because in some sense he is the ideal everyman ~ the soulful individual whose inner spark ignites with a cause worthy of devoting his life to. So in spite of the seemingly insurmountable obstacles it is a dilemma we welcome.
The only thing that kind of bugged me about the film was the blunt force feel of the character development. This is probably the result of the long and somewhat less than spontaneous process of mo-cap itself. Once the animation was laid down, changes were not an option. They most likely just had to go with some less than elegant transitions and sometimes clipped sound-byte style dialogue.
I also felt that the hired guns of the capitalist venture were a bit too highly stylized and stereotypical for their own good. This will play well in the video game version but I suspect that Cameron will find a way to soften the monstrous dark side that he has created or map out a believable fissure in the inhuman facade.
Additional Interviews & Information
For a little backstory on the making of the film, here's an interview with Cameron before the release of the film (click here) and another with film composer James Horner on his approach to scoring the film (click here).
The L.A. Times did an exclusive on James Horner's search to find the sound of Pandora last month. Here are the links to that two-part interview:
Part One of an exclusive interview with film composer James Horner on the sound of Pandora (the moon where the film takes place). Part Two of L.A. Times interview with film composer James Horner.
There will be at least one and possibly two sequels.
