Avatar 3D

[claidheamhmor]

We went to see Avatar last night, and saw it in 3D at Cresta (since they have a newly upgraded theatre).

I thought the special effects and 3D were absolutely outstanding; totally seamless, and it felt entirely believable. I simply couldn't tell where reality became special effects. The 3D animations, textures, etc. of creatures, aircraft, space ships, and the environment seemed to me to be flawless.

The sound effects were impressive, very impressive indeed. Our theatre's speakers were really good; when ships were landing, or vehicles moving, I could feel the vibration right through my body; it felt really convincing.

The scenery was fabulous; much was filmed in New Zealand (what a surprise), but it was hard to tell what was real and what wasn't. The night-time ultraviolet was done beautifully, and I loved that; the night-time animal and plant life was lovely.

However, I thought the story was rather predictable and dull - essentially, Dances with Wolves on an alien planet, which was rather a pity given the interesting concept of the avatar. The characters were rather distant, and I found it hard to empathise with them in any way; sadly, they also seemed to largely be stereotyped caricatures, where you could predict exactly which role each would play. Acting was good, within the limited ambit of the characters, though I did think Zoe Saldana was especially good.

James Horner's score was a veritable pastiche of copy & paste from his other scores - Titanic, Enemy at the Gates, Star Trek, and others. Very derivative, and not particularly interesting.

There were a bunch of things that did irk me:

• The aliens weren't alien, they were big, blue-skinned Native Americans. That was a big disappointment for me; they felt like they were pulled straight out of Pocahontas, characteristics, features, body paint, demeanour, gestures and all, and just painted blue. The whole "noble savages" storyline...


• Some creatures were quite "alien", like the winged creatures, and the smaller creatures, but many seemed too Earth-like: hammerhead-triceratops; dogs; and horses (complete with very horse-like hind-quarters and musculature).


• The aliens themselves were too human. The other creatures of Pandora had 6+ limbs, spiracles/gills for breathing, 4+ eyes, and suchlike; the aliens, however, looked like blue humans, even down to the same type of lips, and human-like breasts and belly-buttons.


• The military was 20th century American, down to uniforms, ranks, services, hair styles, and even pretty much weapons. That seemed weird, for 150 years in the future.


• Talking about military equipment: some of the space ships had really nice glass display screens - and then we see the cockpit of a military chopper, and its 1980s interior, including instruments, fittings, etc. Weapons were 20th century - how credible is that? (About as credible as the US invading Iraq with an American Civil War army, methinks). No stand-off weapons, just current-day line-of-sight missiles, machine-guns, and targeting systems, used incompetently. The helicopters were not quite Huey Cobras, but very close - they had dual ducted-fan rotors as their major difference. The powered armour was straight out of Aliens or Robocop, and for 150 years in the future, looked remarkably unsophisticated (not to mention inadequate - combat armour without bulletproof/arrow-proof glass?). Frankly, I was really disappointed with this whole aspect: given the groundbreaking technology of the movie and animation, you'd think that James Cameron would have spent more than two minutes visualising the future.

The film could have been so much better, but between hiring Weta and ILM, I guess there wasn't enough money left over for an innovative script.

Edit for score.