Avatar

After 11 years, Avatar remains to be nothing more than a three hour screensaver. My eyes were open the entire time watching, but I never felt like I was awake. The spectacle grows stale after the first hour, leaving the flat writing and poor dialogue to sit with you awkwardly for the rest of the exhaustive runtime.

James Cameron is not known for subtlety, but this script is the most egregious in holding the audience’s hand through the entire story. It is Pocahontas in space; a white marine sees the beauty in an indigenous “savage” culture because he falls in love with the chieftain's daughter. Copy and paste. What is pulled out from Disney’s animated classic and expanded upon in the worst way, though, is how greedy and ignorant humans are to the environment. There does not need to be so many caricatures and one-liners punching the audience in the face over how we destroy our planet for capitalism. It treats the audience as if everyone watching is eight years old with its pandering message, but when I first watched this film in 2009 I did not care about what it was trying to say. Why would I? Look at all the pretty colors! I do not get why the writing thinks it needs to be this life changing manifesto for a supposed young crowd when in reality it knows that the only winning card in its hand is the CGI.

There are two minds behind the creation of this film, but the problem is they both stem from one man and are constantly butting heads in every scene. Sometimes, the music and scenery flows, and the culture of this fake alien race feels alive and three-dimensional—yet five minutes later we are stuck in a control room with a bunch of humans with script lines ripped out of Birdemic or any of J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts sequels. The alien world is supposed to be… alien, with a real language and wildlife. But the horses look like horses, and they sound like velociraptors, and the lions look like lions, and they sound like a T-rex. Even the title screen borrows from someone else, writing the words AVATAR in papyrus font. So much work was put into this film outside the actual production, and then was scrapped when it came to shooting in order to connect to a wider audience. James Cameron spent so many years creating his own world, then scrapped it because he thought the theater going public would be too stupid to see how smart he is. This conflicting mindset is shown best with the humans on screen. The worst character by far is Parker, the human who wants to get the Unobtanium (I think he is supposed to be the guy in charge?). Giovanni Ribisi has nothing to work with in his performance, but I do give him credit for saying the worst lines in the movie without flinching. Every scene with his character simply checks off the list of “How was Colonial America racist towards the Native Americans?” Mention that they are savages; mention that they are living on land you want; mention that they do not want your education or medicine; mention that they are lesser because they do not want to work with you; etc. It is conflict at its most mediocre.

The human characters have nothing to offer in this film. Sigourney Weaver tries her best to keep her scenes engaging, and I do think she does a great job at creating some depth. The scientist sidekick, the terribly developed helicopter pilot, and even Jake Sully himself fail to create enticing characters. The film tries to be so serious with the cheesy dialogue. In reality, though, it is the Colonel, played by Stephen Lang, that is just the right amount of camp and craziness that brings life into the conflict. From the claw marks across his face, to the cold, calculated delivery of each line as if he is commanding the invasion of Normandy, Stephen Lang makes this over-the-top attempt to create an epic what it actually feels like: a comedy. He sips coffee when he is committing genocide. He lifts weights in the middle of an amory-runway. He busts open doors to the poisonous atmosphere just so he can shoot bullets at a helicopter that is already taking off. He makes the experience more like a Saturday-morning cartoon than a chore. To add on to the performance, he even has a fully developed arc that drives the conflict. He is the only character I remembered from my first watch, and he will remain as the only one I remember after the sequels.

The only real performance in this film is Zoe Saldana as Neytiri. 2009 was her big start with central roles in both Avatar and Star Trek, and she absolutely kills it in this film. Oddly enough, her 10-foot-tall, blue-monkey character feels like the only thing real in this film. The humans look fake compared to the amazing CGI, and how she commits to the artificial language and characteristics of the species brings out the actual quality this film wanted. The best scenes have her at the centerpoint as she guides Jake Sully—i.e. the audience, since Jake Sully is a mindless puppet for us to project ourselves onto—through the wonders of Pandora. She is the gateway to the magic of Avatar and its spectacle. If the sequels truly try to build off of what this film shows, then Neytiri is the only understandable way to reveal what lies beyond the horizon.

Overall, this film has mainly been forgotten after so many years of it being “that movie with the blue monkeys?” The CGI world of Pandora is still breathtaking, even though the awe burns out after the first hour. The human characters clog the runtime and trample over any energy building up with the Navi, but some sparse characters keep the story moving scene by scene. To be honest, the first half of this film is not that bad. It is when the story demands that I care about the stakes and wants an emotional reaction from me that I check out. The action is not enticing, nor are the sad moments passionate. The film is just too long with too little to offer. It is the technical achievements of this product that outweigh the shortcomings of its message, yet it is hard to understand that in today’s oversaturated market of modern blockbusters perfecting what this film pioneered. Will the sequels be worth the wait? I doubt it. I watched this film in theaters four times back in 2009 because everyone’s birthday party was seeing it on the big screen in 3D. I hope kids in 2021 will want to do the same, and have a theater experience like the premiere night at Avengers: Endgame or Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows Part 2, because theaters need some magic, now more than ever, and Avatar is really where all that began.

Like I said above, the first half of the film is not that bad, but right at scene 71, where the Hometree is burned down in a 10-minute long sequence that desperately wants you to feel sad. It falls flat within the first missile strike, but for some reason it keeps. going. until. you. reach.. for.. the... remote....

The grand average score calculated from the 130 scenes:

5.8/10