Avatar: 3D - Movie Review
Sexy Blue “Jazz Hands” Across Pandora!
by Theresa Bane
Where to begin with my movie review of “Avatar?” I suggest that if you have not already read my previous blog, “Avatar: Blue has never been so Sexy” that you start there. In that bit of literature that will be hailed by future generations as “A Brilliant Masterpiece” I give my pre-assessment of the movie as well as what I suspect the plot/storyline will be in whole based on nothing else but having seen the movie previews and several commercials. So, if you have not, stop reading right now and go read it. If you already have, then by all means, do proceed.
Now, before you see the movie know this: it is a staggering three hours long. Also, a quick note on the computer animation that made Sigourney Weaver look good - don’t buy into the hype, it was just good. And by “good” I mean just that, “good,” not “great” or “wonderful” or “substandard,” just regular, plain old white bread “good.”
But I digress.
Everything on the planet of Pandora, where the movie takes place, is overcast in blue and highlighted with annoying Day-Glo colors, but is still somehow beautiful-the plants, the animals and the indigenous blue skinned, cat-faced people. Every single one of the sexy blue people is perfectly formed and beautiful. (There is not even the token Fat Blue Person or Nerdy Looking Person. Talk about racism). The aliens are living in perfect harmony with everything else on the planet with the added benefit of having a tail that can literally plug into the flora and fauna and allow the life forms to interact with one another on a higher Matrix like level. For instance, the Sexy Blue People do not have to learn to ride a six legged horse-like animal, all they have to do is let the stringy squid-like appendage on the end of their tail interweave with the stringy squid-like appendage on the horse-like creature.
There were a great many little things wrong with the film that cumulatively began to bother me. For instance, I know that the viewing of “Avatar” I saw was in 3D. I knew that when I was given the ticket. I was reminded again when the ticket girl handed me a pair of 3 D glasses and asked me if I knew how to use them (no kidding).I knew it when the movie preview began and the words on the screen told me to put the glasses on (without additional instructions, mind you). I knew it when the commercials were in 3D and I knew it when the movie itself finally started and I actually saw it in 3D. What really made my brain hurt was when Jake Skully made it to the planet and began to walk in the jungle in his Avatar body. Leaves were everywhere. Pollen and bugs filled the air. There was ALWAYS- A-L-W-A-Y-S-ALWAYS something in the foreground falling or fluttering or zipping by. I get it, the move is in 3D and they are showing depth of space. So what? All that is really, really annoying. Not as annoying as the nearly endless chase scenes that are fast and blurry and contributing to my headache, but still, fairly annoying.
Another bit of kack that bothered me is “kissing.” Why would these Sexy Blue People kiss when they have these highly sensitive stringy squid-like tails that can interface with everything? Kissing, I would think, would be no more stimulating to the SBP than “Rocky Horror Picture Show” elbow sex. I would have bet real money that they would have let their stringy squid-like tails get it on.
Another thing that really bothered me was how utterly predictably the dialogue in the movie was. Not only were I and my movie going companions saying the next line ahead of the characters on screen, but so were several other folks in the theater. Was it ever as obvious as “I want the truth…You can’t handle the truth!” Yea, it kind of was. Add to that the soundtrack itself was lifted from “Back Draft,” “Conan” and “Star Wars,” nothing was original music, I don’t care what the credits say. Of particular note was the “Imperial March” you know it, the music that Darth Vader always makes an entrance to and walks down hallways by. They over used it, a lot.
There were a couple of scenes where the SPB get together and do what looks like a Disney choreographed dance with a lot of synchronized swaying and use of jazz hands to channel their collective feelings and transfer a soul from a human body into that of their avatar. Those were the “hands across Pandora” scenes that I mention in the subtitle of this review.
I will say this for the film, the director, or writer, or editor or whoever really did a good job of making me, a hard sell, feel social empathy for the Sexy Blue People. The name of the element that the Evil Corporation wants so badly that they were willing to kill for is (I kid you not) unobtainium. Was that meant to be a joke? Probably not but it produced a few eye rolls in the audience. We are told the biggest deposit of the stuff is sitting under the tree where these 10 foot tall aboriginals are living. What the corporation wants is for the SBP to move, but they won’t because the Tree is not just a tree, it is home to their ancestors and is connected to everything on the planet. The Space Marines who are under the command of a “blow them up and ask questions later” type commander, blew the hell up out of their most sacred and holy tree, Hometree. As I watched the aliens run around screaming and yelling and panicking and crying as their Hometree fell in the background it was very reminiscent of 9/11 and the Towers falling. In fact as it was their spiritual home as well as their physical home it was as if you added blowing up the Vatican and the Western Wall and the Ka’aba to the Twin Towers at the same time.
The commander delivers a speech that is, to my memory, almost word for word the brief one the President gave after the Towers fell, up to and including using the words “shock and awe.” Not cool. Not at all. It doesn’t matter what your political opinion is, how you feel about the war our country is currently involved in, I paid my $10 bucks to see a sci-fi movie not to watch anyone get on a soap box and preach at me. Here’s something to think about - the movie never bothered to tell you why unobtainium was so important to have other than that it was rare. In the very beginning of the movie there was a single fast line delivered that the home world of the humans was dying. It was quick and if your ears blinked you missed it. By the end of the movie the humans are very willing, itching in fact to commit genocide to have the unobtainium that lies under the Hometree. Well, what if the unobtainium was not a fuel used to power cars, heat homes and make pantyhose out of but rather the only element in the entire universe that could save the home world of the humans. Now it seems incredibly selfish that the Sexy Blue People will not let them have it or sell it to them at over inflated prices, thereby forcing the humans into drastic measures.
Everything I guessed in my pre-view was 100% correct.
But you have to admit, if you have seen the movie, the title of the blog is absolutely perfect! We were doing the wave in the theater and dancing in the seats with the Sexy Blue People, you know, how like they get seniors to do in place of actual exercise.
QtR - Theresa Bane, Vampirologist, waver of Jazz Hands and caller of “dibs” on reviewing “Clash of the Titans” when it comes out in 2010
