Avatar (2009)

Having worn glasses since I was 13 years old, I am not always comfortable going to see movies in 3-D. Putting the 3-D glasses over my own glasses makes for a difficult viewing experience most of the time. However, when I went to see Avatar, a nominee for Best Picture of 2009, I decided to check out the 3-D version because most of my friends told me it was the best way to see the film. After the film enters the world of the Na'vi, I forgot that I was wearing two pairs of glasses and became completely entranced by the world created by director James Cameron and his crew. If the future of film making is truly represented by what they have achieved in Avatar with motion-capture technology and other forms of animation and special effects, I am ready for the future. Avatar is likely to be the pinnacle in the use of this kind of technology, at least for a while, but it bodes well for the movie-going experience.

The story involves a disabled Marine, Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington), taking his dead twin's place in a scientific experiment on the planet of Pandora. A huge team of people from Earth are there, but they have different purposes in mind for this strange world. The military is there to assist in the corporate efforts to mine for something called--unironically, it seems--unobtainium. The soldiers, essentially, try to keep the native people and animals away from the people trying to locate this precious mineral. A group of scientists, led by Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Grace Augustine, are trying to learn as much about life on Pandora as possible before the military destroys the ecosystem, and she and her team are particularly interested in the unusual link that the native people have with the natural world. Several of the film's key moments are about the inevitable conflicts that must come when scientific interests are at odds with those of the private sector and the military.

Yet the most intriguing part of the film, to me, is not the overarching story about whether science or business will win this struggle. It's about the process of learning about the native people called the Na'vi that Jake and Grace and another scientist, Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore), undergo. Really, though, it's Jake we follow for much of the film. He's ideal for the project, which involves having a link to an artificially created Na'vi-human hybrid. Through his link to this avatar, Jake is able to walk again, and the joy he feels in being out in the world and having adventures is really the key to we as viewers having the same sense of amazement at this strange place and its inhabitants.

On his second day as an avatar, Jake is separated from Grace and Norm, thanks to an attack by a hideous looking beast. He spends the night in the jungle fending off creatures, and he has to be saved by a Na'vi woman named Neytiri (voiced by Zoe Saldana) when a group of dog-like creatures surround him. She despises him for interfering with the natural order; she calls him a "baby," suggesting his level of naivete about Pandora and its environment. Nevertheless, thanks to an intervention by Eywa, the deity for the Na'vi, she decides to take him to her tribe. There, her father and mother (voiced, respectively, by Wes Study and CCH Pounder) tell her that she must teach Jake the ways of the Na'vi. What follows are a series of spectacular adventures and, perhaps unsurprisingly, a growing affection between Jake and Neytiri.

The film is very eco-focused. There are many scenes where Neytiri tries to explain to Jake the connection between the Na'vi and their surroundings. The Hometree, for example, serves as a base for almost all activity, and the Na'vi seem to have almost a biochemical relationship with it and the other plants. It's this link that Grace is attempting to discern. However, the Na'vi are also capable of creating a connection between themselves and other animals, such as the horse-like creatures many of them ride. The long ponytails of the Na'vi somehow intertwine with appendages on these animals' heads, and suddenly Na'vi and creature are psychically linked. It's pretty intriguing stuff to watch, especially when Jake takes a few tries to perfect his talents at making the connection.

I suppose in a science fiction or fantasy film like this one, you don't expect the acting to be spectacular, but I was delighted to see Weaver in this film, reunited with her Aliens director after all these years. Even when she's in her avatar form, she retains a sense of the spunk that her character needs in order to confront the military and corporate types when they threaten the extinction of the Na'vi people's world. Giovanni Ribisi is a bit over-the-top as the executive in charge of the project; he seems so single-minded about getting the unobtainium that no reasonable explanation can penetrate into his consciousness. He's fun to watch, but the real scenery chewer, and the one you can't help but find fascinating, is Stephen Lang as Col. Miles Quaritch. He's there to play the gung-ho military officer who'd rather use firepower than negotiations to get what he wants. Everything about his character, from his speeches to the scars on his head, is designed to make him seem almost like a cartoon villain, which, in a way, he is.

Worthington is a relative newcomer to American film, and he is the focus of a great deal of the movie, both as Sully the Marine and as an avatar. We have to believe that he is capable of tremendous growth as he learns more about the Na'vi, that he isn't just another disillusioned Marine who's here to serve his commanders in order to "get his legs back." Worthington keeps a mostly blank expression when he is among the humans, but his avatar gets numerous chances to express joy at the life he's allowed to live. Perhaps it's the stark contrast between a world that sees him only as a guy in a wheelchair versus a world where he can still prove himself, where he can still be what he considers himself: "a warrior." I tend to prefer the avatar version myself, but Worthington acquits himself well here in both worlds.

If I have any complaint with the film, it's the dialogue. I wasn't at all surprised that the script was not included among the screenplay nominees. The overall story itself is certainly an interesting one, and we get to behave almost like anthropologists as we follow Jake's learning about the ways of Na'vi. But when Michelle Rodriguez's Trudy has to say, "I didn't sign up for this shit" in the middle of a battle between the humans and the Na'vi, you know you're going to be subjected to several more cliches. I thought the dialogue for Titanic was its weakest component, too, so it's obviously a consistent problem with a Cameron film. He even gets to recycle one of the more annoying lines from that earlier film--"What's happening?"--in a scene where it should be quite obvious to the speaker what's happening. It's a shame that the dialogue isn't up to the same level as the visuals for Avatar.

The planet, of course, is named Pandora as an homage to the mythical woman who opened a box filled with woes and problems for the world. I suppose we're supposed to make the parallel to having people from Earth try to overtake another planet; we'll just create more problems for ourselves, perhaps, in doing so. And the name of the precious metal, unobtainium, is a bit too literal when you think of all of the agony that the humans go through in order to locate more of it. Maybe that, too, is meant to suggest that we should leave alone that which seems unobtainable. If so, that's a bit like hitting someone in the face with a 2x4 in order to get their attention. And you really didn't need to have this much firepower involved to know that the military sometimes can get out of hand in its attempts to reach its goals. Likewise, you probably won't be too surprised to learn that most of the humans treat the Na'vi as if they are merely savages, little more than another set of animals standing in the way of getting the unobtainium. The ethnocentrism, if that's the right word for this, is pretty blatant.

Still, I don't think those kinds of small details detract too much from the overall experience of watching this movie. I won't soon forget the sequence where Jake meets and tames his iklan, a sort of flying dragon. He and Neytiri have some remarkable flights side by side, and they exchange glances that suggest how much excitement they feel in being able to share these moments. There's tremendous beauty in some of the night sequences, when the plants themselves light up, or when the Tree of Sorrow is shimmering above Jake and Neyriti on the night that they make love for the first time--yeah, we get to watch some animated creature sex. I also won't forget the sight of those floating mountains, suspected far above the ground and linked only by a series of vines. It's a remarkable world that Cameron and his collaborators have fashioned, and that makes Avatar a worthy nominee for Best Picture.

Oscar Wins: Art Direction, Cinematography, and Visual Effects

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, Film Editing, Original Score, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing