Avatar

Theatrical Release: December 2009... In 3D!!

Genre: Sci-Fi Fantasy Adventure 

Sub-Genre: True Epic (suck it, Baz Luhrmann!)

Starring: 


- Sam Worthington as Jake Sully (Doesn't keep his Australian accent very well hidden)
- Zoe Saldana as Neytiri (Looks like Beyonce without thick thigh syndrome)
- Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine (Ripley is helping aliens now? WTF?!)
- Stephen Lang as Colonel Quaritch (Never served in the military, despite the fact that his voice constipates me, just like my drill sergeant's did)
- Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge (Best character in the movie; Manifest Destiny incarnate; He gets to utter this gem of a line: "Killing the indigenous looks bad, but there’s one thing shareholders hate more than bad press and that’s a bad quarterly statement.")
- Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy (Best rack in the movie)

Overview: Set in the year 2154, the Marines have become the Blackwater security detail for the Halliburton-esque RDA (Resources Development Administration) mining "unobtainium" on the moon planet, Pandora. For those of you just coming out of a coma, Pandora is populated by a race of tall, skinny, blue humanoid creatures called the "Na'vi" which literally means "giant Smurf." Jake Sully, a crippled Marine (which is an oxymoron if I've ever heard one) somehow gets tasked to inhabit his dead brother's biologically engineered Na'vi body. And here's a little something that pisses me off... "Avatar" is the term for the created alien body Jake inhabits. It is NOT the name of the race of indigenous people. Keep this in mind when we're engaged in conversation about how awesome this movie is. 
Proper usage: "In the beginning, when Jake inhabits the avatar and goes to the jungle..."
Improper usage: "My favorite part is when the Avatars regulate on the Marines coming in..."
Avatar means "embodiment", not "blue tiger-striped people." Anyway, Jake eventually lives with the Na'vi and learns their ways. He comes to "know" the hottest one of them, Neytiri, in the Biblical sense. Keep in mind, Jake is still in the avatar so, really, Neytiri had hot alien sex with a puppet. Love me, love my doll, I guess. (And yes, you need to check out that link...) As you can imagine, Jake sees the folly of his ways and fights to stop the RDA from destroying everything the Na'vi know and love... In 3D!!

Expectations: Hmmm... Despite James Cameron being a bit of a tool, he makes terrific movies. Aliens. The Abyss. Terminators 1 and 2. Friggin' Titanic. Expectations were through the roof on this one.

If you want controversy, look no further than Avatar. I've heard less critical dissection of the Bush administration. You only have to watch the movie one time to understand that it's a metaphor for the plight of any indigenous population stupid enough to exist anywhere white people wanna exploit. The whole movie is summed up in one line, spoken by the main character when he realizes the bulldozers are pressing forward, despite his best efforts...

"That’s how it’s done. When people are sitting on shit you want, you make them your enemy. Then you’re justified in taking it."

The pope took issue with the movie because it portrayed a worship of nature over the worship of God. But when has anything said by 82-year-old man been relevant?

"So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter,you'd say..."

You get my point. This is also the guy who told the African continent that condoms would, in fact, make the AIDS epidemic worse. 

"Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war...."

At 2 hours and 40 minutes, I went in expecting to have to pee 90 minutes in to the film. Before I knew what was happening, the movie was over. When people tell you "it doesn't feel like two and a half hours," they mean it. This movie grabbed me from the opening scene and never let go. James Cameron has invented an amazing futuristic world with plausible technologies like translucent computer screens and cryogenic space travel. As if that wasn't hard enough, he decided to create a bioluminescent alien world that was beautiful, believable, relevant, and fantastic. Realizing that he was James Cameron and could pretty much do whatever the hell he wants in Hollywood, he decided he also wanted to make this movie in digital 3D and casually ask for -- pause for effect, you're gonna shit -- $500 million. Read it out loud: "Half a billion dollars." To make a movie. That's more than the gross domestic product of some countries. Not important countries but you get where I'm going with this. Given Cameron's track record, it's no surprise the studios made their money back on this. In fact, as of Sunday, 17 Jan 2010, the movie has brought in $1.6 billion worldwide. Like the stimulus package, sometimes you gotta spend money to make money. In fact, from now on when the country is on the verge of economic collapse, Congress should appropriate a few billion dollars to give to James Cameron. He could make the best movie of all time: IMax, 3D, CGI battles, smell-o-vision, and in select theaters: "happy endings." America's next chief export could be James Cameron movies. Let Japan make our cars, let China make our toys, and let India take our customer service calls... We've got James Cameron movies. U-S-A!! U-S-A!!

But why is the movie so popular? As mentioned earlier, you don't have to be a rocket surgeon to see the similarities between the Na'vi and the American Indian. Or the Australian Aborigine. Or indigenous Peruvian tribes. Insert any other subjugated race of people. The only thing missing from the film is smallpox blankets. So it should be a huge downer, right? Not when you throw in a white guy! Borrowing the same technique Kevin Costner employed in Dances With Wolves (and the same story, for that matter), white viewers can go into the tribes as a spectator without feeling intrusive. "We're cool here. We've got a white guy on the inside. Right?" I think this is the only way a vanilla audience will stomach a story like this, is telling it through the eyes of a Caucasian. See also, Pocahontas. It diminishes our white guilt by lulling us into believing that if we knew then what we know now, we would do things differently. The only difference in this case is that Pandora exists a full 300 years after the oppression of the American Indian. So... I guess we can learn from our mistakes unless we're talking about mining unobtainium, then all bets are off. Sorry, Na'vi, that shit's $20 million a kilo and what do you expect T-Pain to make his Bentley's 22" rims out of? Platinum?! Na'vi, please! And how fucked up is it that the savior of the Na'vi people is the white guy? Ok... Rant finished.

**WARNING - SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT - WARNING**

So why is the movie popular? Because it's a do-over. Typically, the indigenous people fight the futile fight but history tells us you can't stop progress. It also tells us you can't stop gunships and daisy-cutters with bows and arrows and horse-lizards. While I was watching the movie, I found myself repeatedly choked up, knowing that these epic ground battles and amazing aerial shoot-outs were hopeless ventures. Because you know how it's going to end for the Na'vi: badly. I couldn't think of a single episode in history when the natives fought off the technologically superior invaders and won back control of their homeland. Except for Vietnam but the Na'vi weren't using punji sticks and the North Vietnamese weren't innocent bystanders, defending their way of life. We were fighting communism, dammit! Tomāto, tomӓto...

But then... You're treated to the most amazing ending ever. I would call it "unbelievable" but the movie takes place in 2154 on a moon planet inhabited by giant blue aliens who live in an enormous fucking tree and have sex using their tails... In 3D!!  Nothing is unbelievable in this movie. There really was no other way to end the movie than for Jake to be transformed into his Na'vi body, thanks to Mother Eywa. But watching the Na'vi march the developers into their retreating ships and run them off the island... Vindicating. I even ignored the cynic in me that screamed, "They'll just come back with bigger guns and more Marines!" In my mind, the Na'vi never had to worry again about outsiders destroying their planet. They were left alone and the RDA went somewhere else to find unobtainium. James Cameron created an endearing alien world that we were able to get completely lost in. The 3D only helps this process along. If you aren't fortunate enough to have seen the film in 3D, take a Saturday and go somewhere where you can. For two and a half hours, you'll be completely transported out of the theater and placed right in the thick of a visually mesmerizing world and an unbelievably well-told story. And that's why the movie is so damn popular. 

Overall: 10 out of 10. Amazing effects. Epic story. Watch for this movie to win the following Oscars: Best Visual Effects (that's a given); Best Director; Best Original Screenplay; Best Film (nominated, but will most likely lose to The Hurt Locker for some reason). Giovanni Ribisi and Stephen Lang should both be nominated for Supporting Actor roles but probably won't be...

Best Scene: Trying to pick out the Best Scene for this movie is like trying to pick the best coconut Hershey's Kiss out of the bag. It doesn't matter which one you choose, they're all good. Even the mundane scenes in Avatar are visually amazing. Here's a quick scene from early on, before Jake is "adopted" by the Na'vi. 

Pretty bad ass, right? Now imagine it... In 3D!!

What my wife said: My wife didn't see this one. She claims she will not see it, either, since it is a certified "downer." While talking about Avatar at work one day, a co-worker of mine mentioned that the movie was just Fern Gully repackaged. Initially, I dismissed her claim until I saw this...

 

Holy shit. Avatar is Fern Gully.

Who would enjoy this movie: I have yet to come across someone who disliked it. My father-in-law should see it but he won't. Rana has seen it more times than I saw Forrest Gump in the theater. 

Watch it if you like: Dances With Wolves. The Last Samurai (again, you're telling me the last samurai is a white guy?!) Somewhat sexy scenes of Na'vi side-boob.

Next in the Q: Whatever... I don't live play by The Man's rules! I'm a loner, Dottie... A rebel.


Seriously, I have no idea. I start college classes in two weeks, I have upgrade training at work,  I'm trying to watch Lost from the first episode because I heard it might possibly tie-in to Flash Forward which, if true, will blow my fucking mind. I'll keep posting, they'll just be a little farther in between... Thanks for your understanding...