Viewed in mid-February 2010
The stories about this movie precede it. Its reputation far outshines any other film this year, with the exception of Toy Story 3 and Iron Man 2. The decades-long production of this story is legendary, and it shows that alot of people took alot of time to make this movie look awesome.
I wanted to see this movie in theaters. I had heard that the 3-D effects were blow-your-mind awesome, and I like James Cameron well enough. I was ready for an epic full of aliens, action, and beautiful computer generated images working hand-in-hand with creative live action images. Boy, was my mind blown! This film is, in a word, stunning. It is a bit long for my taste, but I was never bored. The 3-D makes the characters literally come to life, and the lush world of Pandora seems just beyond the movie screen. It has been a long time since I saw a film that draws one in so completely. I felt as if I really had been on Pandora for nearly 3 hours. This film is an escapist's dream come true.
NEGATIVES:
>>I remember there being some profanity. As to the severity of it, I don't really recall. I do remember, however, that there was a liberal amount of profanity spread around. (PluggedIn counts over 48 obscene words.) The action of the movie so outshines the dialogue that I don't even remember half of what the characters are saying, so somehow the obscenities slipped in there and I didn't even notice (this spells out danger, I guess). Unless you have a TVGuardian or some other profanity-blocking device, I wouldn't let the little ones watch this.
>>There is actually a disappointing amount of sex and sex-related conversations in this movie. (In one scene, two of the alien characters, um, "go at it", and it's surprisingly alot like what humans do. This scene drags on far too long, but we are not shown the actual happening, just the lead-up to it. It's obvious what happened, and other characters make a point of talking about it.) Also, the aliens don't wear much clothing. Yeah, they're blue people and their physical construction is not exactly what we're used to seeing, but it's obvious that they are very similar to people and their "native garb" doesn't quiiiiiiiite cover them up.
>>Drugs aren't really here, but alcohol is used once and one character smokes cigarettes alot.
>>This movie is RELIGION OVERLOAD. There's alot of spiritual "awareness" about the Na'vi (the aliens), and they are pretty pantheistic (god in everything). There's alot of fuss made about holy and sacred places, the sanctity of life and loyalty, the seriousness of mating couples staying together, the local god Eywa, spirits being transferred from being to being, etc. It's alot like watching a movie about Native Americans--the Na'vi's spiritual culture is very similar to the old native tribes and their pantheistic beliefs. (Granted, the Na'vi perform a spiritual ritual that...winds up being pretty silly-looking.) There's also much ado about the "connection of spirits", between Na'vi, between Na'vi and humans, between Na'vi and local animals, between flora and fauna, between trees and spirits. This makes for a tiring yet interesting film. I was constantly having to pull myself away from it and think, "Ok, it's just a movie, it's just a movie." As cool as it is, the spiritual content is just too much.
All in all, this film is really great, with the exception of all the profanity, spiritualism, alien sex, and overdramatic dialogue. Many times it felt VERY James-Cameron-esque. Cameron (who also made the other all-time highest grossing film Titanic) is not exactly known for his delicate handling of dialogue. The characters say whatever is on their mind but Cameron often lets it come out in over-dramatized, over-serious, sometimes out-of-place dialogue. Honestly, this film (to me) is a beautiful and politicized version of Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves--there's a native race that is very connected with the spirits around them, and then a greedy human group comes along to snatch it away, but one of the humans becomes acclimated to the natives and becomes one of them in more than one way and turns into a champion of the natives which means he's a traitor to the humans but he knows he's doing what's right, and the natives fight back against the invading human race. Boom. Similarities? Coincidence? Looking at the history of Avatar it seems possible that its story has been around longer than Wolves, but Wolves was made first because it didn't require the painstaking computer-generated details that Avatar demands.
I give this movie 5 out of 6 stars.
So that everyone (including myself) may benefit from it, please feel free to leave your own personal opinion of this film.
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