Just got back from Avatar. I gotta admit, after months of trolling and hating...it's not a bad movie. As expected it's essentially Pocahontas in Space but it managed to entertain and even drop my jaw a couple times. Some of the more blatant cliches made me cringe yet for the most part I wound up transfixed by the world.
First it's a very beautiful movie. Most of my early gripes about the ugly art design went out the window pretty fast; everything looked great in motion. The 3D didn't blow me away - instead it really transports you to Pandora. The bugs flying around, beads of water on plants etc (and the ambient sound) works wonders, and 3D really excelled there. Honestly the visuals bring the world alive better than Cameron does. Creatively there just isn't much there, perhaps because of the reliance on overused devices (ride a horse, learn about our people!).
There isn't much worth saying about the plot, or most of the characters honestly. Sully isn't interesting, and the various doctors/"good guys" seem either cliche (Weaver's character) or so blank they're forgettable. On the other hand, Quaritch was pretty badass and always made things interesting. On the Na'vi side I really liked Neytiri. Pretty good performance from Zoe Saldana, although I wonder how much of it has to do with the effects being so striking they made her emotional performance look note worthy.
I thought it started off pretty bad, and for 40min or more I was sure it would end up being bad. Nothing about the beginning made an impression on me, and the lack of interesting characters (outside of Quaritch) especially hurt here. Not much development there, at all. Things don't pick up until Sully enters the Na'vi world; I was kinda expecting a song to break out as Sully chased after Neytiri.
Many have gone over the negatives. First, the slow motion was annoying, and I didn't like how some of the bad attempts to "wow" the audience with location shots like the "Hallelujah Mountains" which were totally underwhelming. Second, some of the dialogue was just atrocious; I guess they were going for an Aliens feel but it just came off boring, or like a reel of cliches. As previously mentioned the lack of development for characters made it impossible to give a shit about them, and slow mo/emotional music scenes only served to make me role my eyes.
Overall though I was entertained. The final battle is very well done, even though we've seen it before in some other similar flicks. That's really the jist of things throughout the movie: you've seen it done before, and done better, but it still manages to entertain and even hit some emotional buttons successfully, like the Braveheart-esque speech for instance; maybe I'm just a sucker for that shit.
So I have to throw in my troll hat. It's a good popcorn flick.
3.5/5
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