What makes Avatar so great is not it's story, or it's action, but it's technical achievements. James Cameron pushed the envelope in terms of what 3-D can truly do, as well as special-effects. In the three years since Avatars released nothing has come close to matching what Cameron was able to pull off. It's breathtaking how a majority of the film does not even exist in the real world and never will. It is pure zeros and ones. The special-effects the Cameron uses are not to entirely used to render items like in the Transformers trilogy. Here, his special effects are designed to immerse you into the film. If one did not know about Avatar and you asked what parts are real and which aren't, I guarantee they could not tell the difference. To be honest, I cannot even tell myself.
Cameron is a great writer. His knowledge and execution of the classical Hollywood narrative is nearly unmatched by most film directors who still implement the formula. James of course, received criticism for his "copy paste" job of previous formulatic films such as Dances With Wolves and Pocahontas. However as Francis Ford Coppola says "Everyone steals from other people. It is in our nature. You just have to make it your own. Then someone will steal from you what you stole from someone else who stole from someone else et cetera et cetera". James made Avatar his own creation.
Avatar follows Jake Sully(Sam Worthington), a paraplegic Marine, who has been selected to replace his brother in the Avatar program. His brother died and since Jake has the same genetic makeup, Jake can use his Avatar. The Avatar is a 12 foot Na'vi. The Na'vi are a humanoid population that inhabit Pandora, a moon of the planet Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri star system. The Avatar program's purpose is to initiate contact with the natives of Pandora and to interact and study them. Scientists run the Avatar program, or so they think. However the true reason is so the RDA Corporation can mine for unobtanium, a mineral worth it's weight in gold. The largest deposit just so happens to be under the homeland of the natives. While on Pandora Jake is contacted by Colonel Quaritch, the commanding officer on Pandora. He appeals to him as both a fellow Marine and someone with power to restore Jake's ability to walk. Initially Jake doesn't want to be on Pandora and accepts the Colonel's appeal to use the Avatar program in order to gain the Na'vi's favor in order to better manipulate them. Overtime his feelings change as he interacts with the Na'vi Chief's daughter, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). James Cameron truly knows how to make villains, and make the audience root against them. The original Terminator, T-1000, Cal from Titanic , Burke from Aliens, and now Colonel Quaritch.
The extended release adds 16 minutes of footage including an alternate opening on Earth. Other than that, a hunting scene and a few shots of creatures I didn't notice much of a difference between this and the theatrical version. The new opening immediately establishes Jake's character. Despite being disabled he still believes in helping those in need and who are abused. He also clearly has no respect for authority. To be fair, Earth itself was more interesting than the events that took place in the new opening. I can see why James cut this from the film as we are able to find out who Jake is as the film progresses instead of knowing from the first few minutes. The new hunting scene was nice. Not only did we see more of Pandora, it better established even further how much Jake has improve his use of the Avatar body. To be honest the scene doesn't feel missed but I can't find a legitimate reason why it was cut other than time or budget. According to James Cameron each new minute cost approximately $1 million to render out.
James Cameron wanted to film Avatar before Titanic, but he felt special-effects we're not quite caught up to his expectations. He made Titanic as he waited. Titanic became the most successful film of all time and so Fox wanted his next film as soon as possible. The special effects were still not ready and the world continued to wait. Cameron went and did a slew of documentaries and further developed new technology and finally in 2007, production of Avatar began.
I still remember when I watched this movie on opening day in IMAX 3-D. It was one of the greatest experiences in my cinematic life. I remember being transported to Pandora. I felt as though I was there, I felt the air flowing from the screen, the green bushes around me. I thought as though I could reach out and touch them all. Watching this film again on my HDTV, I did not have the same effect. This proves the fact that with our new age heading towards streaming devices like Netflix and iTunes on your phone, the theater experience is still essential to the movie watching process. It will be a sad day when we are forced to watch our films on handheld devices. I hope that I never live to see that day.
4/4 Muffins
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