Photo titled "Grenfeld Mission" by George Silk from the LIFE magazine collection, August 8th, 1949
As it turns out, all of the things I dislike about Avatar are the things I already disliked about it before even seeing it. And now, having seen Avatar, I realize that there are as many things to like about the movie, so I'm not really a hater when I point out the strikes Avatar had against it from the start. First, pretty much every word that comes out of James Cameron's mouth about this movie makes me wish that both he and it didn't exist. I know I shouldn't have read so much of his press, but his comments have just been incredibly douchey. Second, the gigantic and crass marketing campaign ramping up to Avatar's release left a really bad taste in my mouth - I can't help but want something to fail when it is being shoved down the public's throat with such forcefulness. Third, the script is pretty awful. And, yes, I knew that the script was crap before seeing the movie - you don't have to read much of the script posted here (I think it's the official real deal) to get a feel for it.
But I went and saw the thing anyway. In 3D (not IMAX, though). And I liked it. As I kind of suspected, Avatar is a lot like my favorite Cameron movie, The Abyss. But with a worse script and a less capable cast as its weak points, and with an amazingly detailed and vivid CGI world as compensation. People have compared Avatar to Dances With Wolves, Pocohontas, or Fern Gully, but I think that it is surprisingly similar to The Abyss in its premise, plot arc, and overall tone. The exposition-heavy first act of Avatar is embarrassingly bad compared to The Abyss's more clean-cut setup - it's as if Cameron has forgotten how to introduce concepts and characters without having straw-man characters (Giovanni Ribisi and Joel David Moore get this thankless task in most of their scenes) do it by rote recitation.
The first half-hour of Avatar also features some distracting "blatant 3D" shots of the Captain EO kind, which were aggravating on top of the boring exposition and terrible dialogue. But all these problems receded into the background when our hero Sam Worthington moves his CGI avatar from the awkward world of humans into the fully CGI movie-within-a-movie known as Pandora.
I would say that I enjoy the Pandora-centric section of Avatar more than the average viewer because I am a sci-fi/fantasy nerd who loves the phenomenon of "world-builder's disease", except that I think that this is what most people love about this movie as well. I don't think they're loving the amazing performances or innovative plot twists (there are none either in Avatar). But the Hiyao-Miyazaki-meets-Roger-Dean world of Pandora is an immersive experience, even for a real skeptic, and the alien flora and fauna were really well designed (they were so impressive that I forgot how irritating it had been to hear James Cameron go on at length about designing them). I also thought the 3D technology was used very well in this section of the movie, incorporated seamlessly without drawing a lot of attention to itself.
The poor first act and excellent second act are capped off with a finale that has good and bad points. Comments about the big battle at the end of Avatar seem to be either, "Well choreographed and easy to follow" or "Too much like a video game." I think that both of these comments are valid, and the movie's ending is predictable and satisfying in equal measure. Overall, I think Avatar is a deeply flawed success that would have been better if Cameron had followed the template of his earlier work more closely. However, I worry about the trends that it may be creating with its huge success, as it would be as hard to recreate its good points in other movies as it would be easy to emulate its faults (especially the terrible cross-marketing and emphasis on gimmicks).
"Alien Being" by the Magnetic Fields
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