Avatar in Review

"Life changing?" No. Good? Quite. It's visually stunning. The 3D works well, though I'm not sure I can say I feel that's necessary in some way for movies. I didn't feel the story was especially original or special, but it was told well. It's a sci-fi movie I'd freely recommend to just about everyone, and that's pretty cool in and of itself.


Just about everything I'd read about the movie is true, or at least I can see where the comments come from. Fern Gully comparisons seem a little stretched to me, though there's definitely a "nature good, technology bad" thing going on. The comparisons to Dances with Wolves seem a lot more accurate to me (in terms of length, too).

"Unobtainium?" Really? I read this in reviews and thought the reviewers were being witty. That's really the name of the stuff the humans want? Really? Ugh.

Pandora is pretty. Too universally pretty. The amount of bioluminescent stuff is... distracting. I expected the floating mountains to have some connection to the poorly-named element people were after, but no... they're just floating islands. Everything is so insanely picturesque and perfect that I would expect any sequel to explain how Pandora is actually an artificially-created world intended as a resort for super-advanced aliens, or something.

Everything is also big. The natives are massive compared to humans, and still there are bigger, badder predators around every corner. It's like the ecosystem skips several size categories entirely.

I sort of liked the global interface idea, actually. It's even more interesting to me in that the whole Avatar project is basically humankind stumbling across "how things work" on this alien world without even realizing it. Of course, the implications are sort of odd and go completely unexplored, going back to the possibility of an artifically-created biosphere. No, they're happy to stick with the mystical explanation.

Does it always have to be the princess? Really? I don't think the story actually would have lost anything if it wasn't...

As someone else pointed out, the Na'vi are a little too much of an ideal. They, and all of Pandora, are painted broadly, given all sorts of colorful interactions... but you don't see any depth to it all. In contrast, for what relatively little we see of the human base, it feels more lived in and the humans feel more like people (down to putting into a cup in the command center) while the Na'vi all seem to be some sort of clone army. Oh, they may look individual, but they may as well be a literal hive mind for all the individuality they actually show. Some like Jake, a few don't... whee. When they retreat to their holy ground, are they gathering supplies, looking to link up with other tribes, or setting up new shelters? All we see is them sitting around and singing together, basically. It's... shallow. I feel like if we knew the Na'vi more deeply as a people, they'd be less the heroic ideals they play in the story.

I give the movie points for having Jake and Neytiri meet face to (real) face. I then take these points away for giving Jake his permanent Na'vi body at the end. Oh, yay, happy ending, I know. But I'm almost as annoyed with that as the ending of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Is it impossible to live happily ever after in a body that isn't "perfect?"

So... I don't know. I have lots of little gripes about the worldbuilding and story. That doesn't make it not a good movie, though. At least it made me think.