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tarheel91 on 22 December 2009
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heruamon said:
tarheel91 said:
Reasonable said:
Avatar manages to be the most impressive, beautiful use of CGI to create another world, coupled nicely with the lowest level of narrative ambition.

It's not bad, but in a way that almost seems worse it's simply bland. All that effort, all that expense, for something so familiar and obvious. Couldn't Cameron have actually married the ability to deliver a new world with something new to say or show?

What struck me was how much Avatar resembled the latest version of a AAA videogame. The plot's the same, the weaknesses are the same, but the graphics have been improved.

7/10 and the likely candidate for testing your new 3D TV and BR player, but not a great film nonetheless.

What particularly struck me, was how little it did with so much expense, while a film like Moon did so much with so little expense.

*facepalm* If you think ANY story is original, you simply haven't read/watched enough.  Every story has been done before.  What makes individual stories remarkable is the way they're told.  I thought this one was told wonderfully.

I somewhat agreed that there aren't many original stories anymore, but I do think Cameron could have don't a better job adding some original flair.  First off, all you have to do is look at the OP title to see what I thought of the movie, as I think Cameron derserves Oscars for not only sFx, but cinematography and quite a few others....hands  down.  With that said, the story was basically Pocahantas in Space...nothing wrong with that, but I think more original though could have bee applied to adding more variety than an American History class.

You are right in that it's colonialism-focused, but to call that Pocahontas in space isn't very accurate.  This type of story is practically its own genre (see: Things Fall Apart, Heart of Darkness, Pocahontas, Speaker for the Dead, etc.).  Original flair?  You mean besides creating an entire world?  Yeah, I TOTALLY see what you mean.  Let me copypasta what I said in another forum in my general impressions:

The story telling wasn't as good as the visual experience, but it'd have to be Hamlet for it to even come close. However, I felt the visuals added to the story, made it better than it would be on its own. That world was so real, so full of life, it's destruction becomes much more meaningful than it could ever be in concept alone.

It's funny, I was thinking about Heart of Darkness a couple of hours before the movie, and realizing what an advantage literature had to cinema in certain respects.  You've got a narrator that can be manipulated to change the way the reader interprets and pays attention to things.  You can take things much more slowly, and you've got a lot more to work with considering how much more can be included in a novel.  However, Avatar demonstrates the largest advantage cinema has in response to literature.  Imagery.  In a movie like this, a picture is worth far more than 1000 words.  Not even the most briliant prose could create such a rich and beautiful world.  In a genre such as this, where understanding the value in the native way of life and nature itself is critical, the living, breathing world Cameron brings to life is an invaluable tool.