Review of Avatar (2009) by Zombiehampster — 28 Oct 2010

There's a certain something to be said about the power of a visually strong movie like Avatar. It's kinda like a sleazy, but charismatic sales person. You like the person while your in his office, cause he just reeks of charm (or cigarettes) and you buy in to his pitch, cause he's good at what he does, but when you leave the store, you find that you really didn't like the product that much after all.

That's kinda how I feel about Avatar. The movie's visuals are amazing and I would say that nothing will be defeating it anytime soon as far as that goes. But when you brush away all that, what you're left with isn't necessarily a bad movie, but an average to ok one.

I say this because most of the time I spent watching it was marveling at the amazing visuals that Cameron's team presented us. That part I can't heap enough praise on, but other than that, the story of the movie pretty much comes across as a straight up black and white morality play.

I can understand the "it's just a movie" that people may say to that kind of suggestion, but where it doesn't hold up is when you try to pass the movie off as a political/social statement about our society.

Nothing in reality is ever black and white, and to do so discredits a lot of what makes us a very complicated, arrogant, and interesting species. Aside from it's horrid attempts to justify why our material world is wrong, the story presents the humans as evil, greedy, and violent; but the Na'vi are peaceful, harmonious, and coexist with nature.

Of course the main character ends up going native, finds he likes the tribe more, and then sides with them in the upcoming inevitable bloodbath, and the usual sequence of most big budget movies plays out with no originality whatsoever.

Still the movie does entertain, even though it provides a mixed message, and there are some very interesting moments. The real credit to Avatar is the level of thought put into the actual world itself, and here the production/design team did a remarkable job in making Pandora a reality.

To me it's a shame that they went for a more simplified story of good and evil as opposed to something more complex and real, but I guess that was never their intention in the first place. It probably wouldn't have been as successful in the theatres if it was.

A simple message doesn't mean a bad one, but in this case it was more of a typical one.