My Review of Avatar

Avatar tells a story that is very familiar to all of us because we've all seen it before. We've seen it many times. But we've never seen it this pretty, and we're supposed to be impressed. I suspect that most people will be. I saw it in IMAX 3D, which it was supposedly made for.

There's no doubt that it looks incredible. Strictly from a visual standpoint, this may be the most impressive film I've ever seen. It's in every other category that it falls a little short. First off, I won't be spoiling anything by saying that this is basically just a $300 million remake of Pocahontas. In that story (the fictional one, mind you) John Smith falls in love with Pocahontas. In Avatar, it's Jake Sully that falls in love with a native. Notice any similarities in the initials? It's the same tired old story that we've seen so many times. To be honest, I'm growing kind of sick of seeing a story about a "primitive" people forcefully relocated to fulfill the greedy demands of the white man. I mean, really. How many times have we seen this? It was painfully predictable and filled to the brim with flat acting, two-dimensional caricatures, er...characters; and cliches. My other problem with it is that the aliens look, dress, act and talk almost exactly like Native Americans. If this was supposed to be set on a completely different planet, I was hoping for a little more originality and creativity than that. Having a culture that is so much like one here on earth kind of takes me out of the escapism that this film could have been.

The only original aspect of the film is the idea of living by proxy through another body. That's a pretty cool idea. I just wish they would have done more with it. Oh yeah! And our planet is slowly becoming uninhabitable! What an exciting, new....wait...dang it, that's been done too!

This movie cost them somewhere around $300 million to make. It would have been nice if they had cared a little more about making a movie with a story worth telling, and maybe even one that hasn't been done before. In the end, I'm giving it three stars because it has some truly beautiful imagery in it. I got chills a few times just watching it. On a very basic level, it was fun to watch, and I'm actually glad that I saw it. But I came from the theater with a feeling similar to one that I would have after just having watched the most amazing laser light show I had ever seen. It's a feast for the senses, and not for the mind.

Apart from pushing the visual effects envelope forward a bit, this film does next to nothing for cinema or the art of storytelling.