Drew Wilson
September 6th, 2010, 12:04 AM
Well, I recently got dragged in to seeing another movie. This time, it was suppose to be the best of the best movies - Avatar. I'm well aware of its record breaking profits at the box office, so this time, I somewhat reluctantly decided to watch the movie.
Before I go any further, if you think Avatar was the most amazing movie ever created, you probably don't want to continue reading this review because I'm pretty good at wrecking the magic of certain movies partially thanks partly to my fiction writing background. So please, no really, hit the back button or click a link that will get you elsewhere. Still with me? OK, don't hate me for not being able to unread this. :tongue:
There's often been the criticism that Hollywood is creatively bankrupt. After seeing Avatar be considered the biggest movie since Gone With the Wind, I have to say that the criticism reaffirmed. Perhaps after seeing all the garbage Hollywood has dispensed out in to the public for the last few years, perhaps we have become so numb to how much garbage is being pumped through the silver screen, once we, as an audience, see something with an ounce of averageness, we immediately classify this as amazing and a "must see" - either that or my standards are too high when it comes to movies.
I'll start with the plot because that is an area my expertise are quite strong. Let's go back in time... way back to the year 1992. Remember when you may or may not have seen that animated movie where that guy was shrunk and now he has to save the rain forest from the evil loggers for the fairies? Well, if you are nice and foggy at first, I'll let you in on wheat movie I'm thinking of: FernGully: The Last Rainforest (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104254/plotsummary) (go ahead, read the plot yourself and see if it sounds familiar - oh and, don't worry, they even have a scene with a bulldozer and a giant tree being knocked down). I swear, the plot was directly lifted off of that movie, tweaked, and spiced up with guns, bombs and violence (credit for at least ripping out the musical elements though, I find musicals annoying personally and it was FernGully that helped enforce that). No wonder the plot wasn't, the whole thing was stolen from another movie. The only credit I can give is the credit that the "writers" stole a more unique plot. An argument that copyright terms are too long? Probably, but let's stick with the movie.
I could also tell the different parts of the movie where the writers had a hard time keeping the plot held together. The biggest part that I noticed was more of a band-aid for the plot was the pilot that decides to break allegiance with the antagonist force. They could have done a better job at developing that character so it didn't seem like her place in the plot was to keep the whole story from falling apart. Only, she is subtly inserted in to the plot, helped the good guys part way through by breaking them out of their jail cell, then conveniently killed of later in the movie when her usefulness to the plot ends. It felt like a last minute addition when the writers realized, "Oh crap! How does the good guys take their pod thing from the bad guys anyway? Insert this character, patch up the plot wherever and hope it flies!" Obviously, pre-planning the writing process wasn't exactly smooth sailing. If you are going to insert a character like that, better integrate the character in to the plot towards the beginning.
OK, so lets dial it down to actual scenes. I'll give credit to those that did what they could to make it less like the Matrix even though the concept is similar. They did away with the wires that is seen throughout the ship in the Matrix, but it's sad when they couldn't get strip it out even more when the characters could "plug" in to the various creatures. That was a little disappointing. So, not completely successful, but the effort was there at least. Then, of course, there are the slow motion scenes in mid-action that they had to put in. It didn't bother me so much until they had the Hollywood cliche "NNNNNnoooooooooooooo!!!" in one of them. Please, when you make a movie, don't put in something like that. This has been done, re-done, made fun of, done again, made fun of again and now it's being done again. I know it's probably tempting to stick that type of scene in, but please, STOP it already!
With the plot being almost completely unoriginal, let's look at the graphics. For me, graphics and special effects do not carry a movie alone. Still, that doesn't make it unimportant. I get that. Unsurprisingly, the 3D animation was top of the line. Animators probably spent hours and hours making everything as realistic as possible. I've seen single people create 3D art that is similarly realistic on their own and for free, but it's always either stills or short loops. So, I will credit the graphics and special effects because single characters is one thing, but entire environments is entirely another.
So, mindless action scenes, I'll give the movie credit for making a few decent action sequences as well as a couple of suspenseful moments, but that's pretty much it.
The music in the movie was pretty much standard Hollywood stuff. It wasn't bad, but it probably could have been a bit better on non-action scenes personally (the only exception to this was the love scene and the hero trying his Avatar for the first time, but that was two scenes out of how many?)
Other thoughts, I thought the whole relationship between the hero and his Avatars legs was well done. A tad on the brief side, but it was well done nevertheless. I can tell they tried to set a few things in motion with the burning of the casket, but I think the effort to put some foreshadowing into the movie would have been lost on a lot of audiences because the theme wasn't well carried through between the beginning and the midpoint where the theme was picked up again. That gap was a little wide. The whole "chosen one" thing could have been a bit more subtle (i.e. it might have been better left with the symbolism that was already there instead of outright saying it.)
Overall, the movie had a lot of hype to it both statistically and via word-of-mouth. For that, I was expecting better when I finally saw this movie personally. I preferred the movie "I, Robot" over this even though the story had nothing to do with the actual novels and I don't recall it having as much hype. So my disappointment is a factor. It was stronger on the less important factors (effects, graphics, animation) and weaker on the more important factors (story, originality, mood, etc.)
So my rating overall:
6.5/10
A good way to waste a few hours, but not entirely sure it'll be that memorable. Seriously? Is this the best of the best??? As someone once said, "Is that all you got?"
(btw, I think my rating of "I,Robot" was something like an 8/10. Another movie I liked way better was "Final Cut" which I think is about a 9.5/10 and "Enemy of the State" which was a 10/10)
Before I go any further, if you think Avatar was the most amazing movie ever created, you probably don't want to continue reading this review because I'm pretty good at wrecking the magic of certain movies partially thanks partly to my fiction writing background. So please, no really, hit the back button or click a link that will get you elsewhere. Still with me? OK, don't hate me for not being able to unread this. :tongue:
There's often been the criticism that Hollywood is creatively bankrupt. After seeing Avatar be considered the biggest movie since Gone With the Wind, I have to say that the criticism reaffirmed. Perhaps after seeing all the garbage Hollywood has dispensed out in to the public for the last few years, perhaps we have become so numb to how much garbage is being pumped through the silver screen, once we, as an audience, see something with an ounce of averageness, we immediately classify this as amazing and a "must see" - either that or my standards are too high when it comes to movies.
I'll start with the plot because that is an area my expertise are quite strong. Let's go back in time... way back to the year 1992. Remember when you may or may not have seen that animated movie where that guy was shrunk and now he has to save the rain forest from the evil loggers for the fairies? Well, if you are nice and foggy at first, I'll let you in on wheat movie I'm thinking of: FernGully: The Last Rainforest (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104254/plotsummary) (go ahead, read the plot yourself and see if it sounds familiar - oh and, don't worry, they even have a scene with a bulldozer and a giant tree being knocked down). I swear, the plot was directly lifted off of that movie, tweaked, and spiced up with guns, bombs and violence (credit for at least ripping out the musical elements though, I find musicals annoying personally and it was FernGully that helped enforce that). No wonder the plot wasn't, the whole thing was stolen from another movie. The only credit I can give is the credit that the "writers" stole a more unique plot. An argument that copyright terms are too long? Probably, but let's stick with the movie.
I could also tell the different parts of the movie where the writers had a hard time keeping the plot held together. The biggest part that I noticed was more of a band-aid for the plot was the pilot that decides to break allegiance with the antagonist force. They could have done a better job at developing that character so it didn't seem like her place in the plot was to keep the whole story from falling apart. Only, she is subtly inserted in to the plot, helped the good guys part way through by breaking them out of their jail cell, then conveniently killed of later in the movie when her usefulness to the plot ends. It felt like a last minute addition when the writers realized, "Oh crap! How does the good guys take their pod thing from the bad guys anyway? Insert this character, patch up the plot wherever and hope it flies!" Obviously, pre-planning the writing process wasn't exactly smooth sailing. If you are going to insert a character like that, better integrate the character in to the plot towards the beginning.
OK, so lets dial it down to actual scenes. I'll give credit to those that did what they could to make it less like the Matrix even though the concept is similar. They did away with the wires that is seen throughout the ship in the Matrix, but it's sad when they couldn't get strip it out even more when the characters could "plug" in to the various creatures. That was a little disappointing. So, not completely successful, but the effort was there at least. Then, of course, there are the slow motion scenes in mid-action that they had to put in. It didn't bother me so much until they had the Hollywood cliche "NNNNNnoooooooooooooo!!!" in one of them. Please, when you make a movie, don't put in something like that. This has been done, re-done, made fun of, done again, made fun of again and now it's being done again. I know it's probably tempting to stick that type of scene in, but please, STOP it already!
With the plot being almost completely unoriginal, let's look at the graphics. For me, graphics and special effects do not carry a movie alone. Still, that doesn't make it unimportant. I get that. Unsurprisingly, the 3D animation was top of the line. Animators probably spent hours and hours making everything as realistic as possible. I've seen single people create 3D art that is similarly realistic on their own and for free, but it's always either stills or short loops. So, I will credit the graphics and special effects because single characters is one thing, but entire environments is entirely another.
So, mindless action scenes, I'll give the movie credit for making a few decent action sequences as well as a couple of suspenseful moments, but that's pretty much it.
The music in the movie was pretty much standard Hollywood stuff. It wasn't bad, but it probably could have been a bit better on non-action scenes personally (the only exception to this was the love scene and the hero trying his Avatar for the first time, but that was two scenes out of how many?)
Other thoughts, I thought the whole relationship between the hero and his Avatars legs was well done. A tad on the brief side, but it was well done nevertheless. I can tell they tried to set a few things in motion with the burning of the casket, but I think the effort to put some foreshadowing into the movie would have been lost on a lot of audiences because the theme wasn't well carried through between the beginning and the midpoint where the theme was picked up again. That gap was a little wide. The whole "chosen one" thing could have been a bit more subtle (i.e. it might have been better left with the symbolism that was already there instead of outright saying it.)
Overall, the movie had a lot of hype to it both statistically and via word-of-mouth. For that, I was expecting better when I finally saw this movie personally. I preferred the movie "I, Robot" over this even though the story had nothing to do with the actual novels and I don't recall it having as much hype. So my disappointment is a factor. It was stronger on the less important factors (effects, graphics, animation) and weaker on the more important factors (story, originality, mood, etc.)
So my rating overall:
6.5/10
A good way to waste a few hours, but not entirely sure it'll be that memorable. Seriously? Is this the best of the best??? As someone once said, "Is that all you got?"
(btw, I think my rating of "I,Robot" was something like an 8/10. Another movie I liked way better was "Final Cut" which I think is about a 9.5/10 and "Enemy of the State" which was a 10/10)