Avatar: The SunBreak's Tag-Team Review

No, that is not Jar-Jar Binks.

[ED: Audrey and Seth took in one of the first showings of Avatar last night. (Don't worry, the "six inches and a Bible rule" was followed). Audrey's review is below, with Seth's comments in italics.]

Shall we talk about the em-effing Avatar? (Yes, let's.) As you may recall from yesterday, I was feeling negative and schadenfreudey about the film until the 11th hour, when positive reviews convinced me it might actually be awesome.  Having seen it last night (with me! and first-night weirdos!), I can say Avatar is indeed fairly awesome—but it's not the Best Thing Ever.  And liking a film for what it is, when it took $350M to make, just ain't enough.  At that pricetag, every man, woman, and child in the theater deserves a religious experience. (Wait, I still pay $10, right? So who gives a shit how much it cost James Cameron to make?)

Ok, but first off, I have to laud the technical achievements and the level of time and work that went into creating the photorealistic future found in this film.  James Cameron has done some movie-making that is beautiful and transcendent and the best damn CGI you've ever seen. (Eh, don't care.)  It is enjoyable to merely gaze upon the flora and fauna of Cameron's world.  Every inch of the screen is chockful of beauty and rich colors and strangeness and luscious detail. (This is moved and seconded.)

And of course, there are big-time action sequences in which you can actually tell what's going on—because it is very important to know who is fighting whom on the banshee pterodactyl dragon things.  Avatar is all about the WOW factor, and in that regard, it is often fucking stunning. (I wouldn't say "stunning," that implies you'd be staring in disbelief. I found myself drawn into the world Cameron created, my eyes darting all over the screen to try to take everything in.)  It's a groundbreaking blend of digital and live-action, and you walk away thinking that you've never seen anything like that in a movie before. (Except the forest fight scenes, which gave me Endor flashbacks.)

But we don’t have to talk about the plot, do we? (No. It's serviceable at best). Quickly: Ex-Marine Jake Sully—Sam Worthington and his broke-ass legs—controls a big blue avatar to infiltrate the moon Pandora's Na'vi natives in order to win over their hearts and minds and/or blow them up, because they are living in a big tree on a huge amount of the MacGuffin energy source Unobtainium.  Phew.  So science is good, but corporations and military contractors are bad, mmmkay?  Although to be fair, Stephen Lang plays the caricature of gruff Colonel Miles Quaritch well. (Meh.) Of course, complications ensue and war between the humans and the Na'vi is a'brewin', when Sully fully assimilates and becomes one of the Na'vi…and falls in LURVE. (Yay! Sorry, I guess I'm just a romantic sap.)

About that war:  the overt political tones—yes, the phrases "shock and awe," "fight terror with terror," and "preemptive war" are all actually used in the movie—are cringeworthy. Being an occupying force, dealing with a scrappy insurgency, efforts to win over hearts and minds, these are things I don't need to see James Cameron tackle in a one-dimensional fashion.  Less talky, more beauty, please. (Agreed. Leave that shit to Bill Moyers.)

If that sounds like faint praise, that's because it is. (Booooo.) I have nothing but good things to say about the film, and yet I am increasingly tepid.  Ultimately, what it comes down to is that James Cameron thinks he's a Mythmaker, when he's just a decent storyteller—and really, he's a rich man's Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer.  His plot moved along with an assured fluidity, though the dialogue is often clunky, but who really cares when the images do most of the talking anyways?  Of course, I was invested in what was going on onscreen, but not as invested as I should have been.  Sure, I got teary-eyed when that blue cat-person died.  But a day later, Avatar left me a little empty-feeling.  Look, it's profoundly lovely to look at, but where's my religious experience?

Seth going out of italics for readability here: Religious experience? You paid $10! You invested two-and-a-half hours! Do you know how long Buddha sat under that tree? I don't, but I'll bet it was longer than that. Look, Avatar won't change your life. This is an epic, with all the good (sumptuous scenery) and bad (well-worn plots) that go with that genre. Did the epic poem The Iliad change anyone's life? Did the epic book Gone With the Wind? Did the epic movie Spartacus? Of course not. But what they do, and what Avatar does, is transport you away from your stupid, boring life in the dull, demeaning present into a thrilling, meaningful event that grips you from the (literally eye-opening) first scene to the (literally eye-opening) last one. I wouldn't pick Avatar to represent the apex in human cultural achievement, but I would happily pay $10 see it again. I suspect I'll get that chance, because people are going to be rushing to see the thing.

• Avatar is currently showing at Pacific Science Center, Cinerama, Pacific Place, the Neptune, Columbia City Cinema, Thornton Place, Lincoln Square, Kirkland Parkplace, and the Factoria 8.