December 2009
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Avatar (12a)
Posted 15th November 2009

To describe James Cameron’s Avatar as unique and one-of-a-kind is to do it a disservice. This is a game-change, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since realistic-looking dinosaurs roamed a Jurassic Park*. This is a life-changer, a generation of kids set to be inspired to become moviemakers off the back of witnessing it. This is the future of movies... now.

Easily the most discussed film of 2009 after years of anticipation, Titanic-loads of hype, sneak peeks, geek tweets, full trailers and an entire day dedicated to it, Avatar finally arrives to collectively knock our 3D specs off. And you thought The Dark Knight lived up to its promise.

The classic tale at the centre of this spectacle is best summed up as Dances with Aliens. Paraplegic Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) travels light years across space to the alien world of Pandora, where a corporate consortium is mining a rare mineral that will solve the energy crisis on Earth. Naturally the indigenous Na’vi people take a disliking to their planet being pillaged in this way so in an attempt to communicate and cohabitate the Earth invaders create the Avatar Program where human “drivers” link their consciousness to remotely-controlled biological bodies that have been purpose genetically-engineered as a cross-hybrid of specific human and Na’vi DNA.

Reborn in avatar form, Jake can walk again and uses his new-found blue body to infiltrate the Na’vi and learn their ways in an attempt to act as a mediator. Given three months to find a diplomatic solution before the military rolls in, Jake gradually finds himself identifying with the Na’vi more-and-more and growing ever-closer to his female teacher Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), even as the suits and the soldiers patience simultaneously starts to fray. As the time for a full invasion draws near, Jake faces the ultimate decision: who to fight for? His arrogant species or the alien race he has been ingrained into?

A truly amazing and immersive experience, this is what all the fuss around 3D and motion-capture has been about and building-up to. Everyone else has just been testing the water, waiting for the new-tech master to show them The Way. Well The Way is: “The Volume”, the giant virtual soundstage purpose-built for the production so much more than ever could be performance-captured; The Way is the innovative head-rig camera system that captures even the smallest facial nuance; The Way is the Fusion camera system invented by Cameron and Vince Pace to capture true stereoscopic 3D; The Way is WETA Workshop and their continued leaps forward in seamlessly integrating photorealistic characters into both live-action and computer-generated environments. These Ways and more are how we get Avatar.

Nice examples, but this doesn't do the actual look justice

Set in a world like no other seen before, Avatar’s alien planet Pandora is a living, breathing, total ecosystem that, once you become accustomed to after a brief period of sensory adjustment, surrounds you and sucks you into its existence. The level of detail here is amazing from large (giant floating islands / skyscraper-sized trees / massive six-legged beasties) to small (the swish of a Na’vi tail / the flattening of their ears / the neon native flora and fauna that reacts to even the slightest touch). Every single tiny little pixel is intricately-designed and perfectly-placed in order to put the real in photo-real. It succeeds in astonishing and transporting you in equal measure. Never do you feel as if you are watching or experiencing anything artificial. This. Is. Real.

Of course for all the immersive, envelope-pushing effects that stimulate and startle the senses, if you don’t have a spellbinding story or character to support the spectacle you’re lost in video game territory. Not that Cameron needs reminding: Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2, True Lies and Titanic are all structured around someone(s) appealing and a gripping central concept. His course doesn’t change here: Cameron’s favoured subject matters of tech-fear, war-analogies, what it means to be human, the evilness of corporations, the might of future-tech meeting its match in what should be an inferior (in terms of hardware anyway) foe are all present-and correct (plus a less-than-subtle environmental message); whilst you will care for the plight of the Na’vi and especially our identifiable lead Jake Sully. To this end you will also start to understand what all the fuss around Sam Worthington is about after perhaps being left somewhat confused, as I was, by the evidence in Terminator Salvation.

A charismatic leading man, Worthington is gruff and fallible and cheekily arrogant and real (and prone to endearing sudden sweary exclamations). In-and-out of his avatar body (more on which in minute). It’s this sense of the everyman that a good central hero makes and Worthington more than makes for a good central everyman hero in a John McClane-meets-Maximus Decimus Meridius sort of way. If you can imagine such a thing? His casting as the new Perseus in next year’s Clash of the Titans update looks inspired now on this evidence and there’s surely plenty more idealised-but-identifiable male protagonist parts just crying out for his casting.

He is more-than-matched is the acting stakes by a wonderfully feral performance near-devoid of any obvious human characteris(tics) entirely by Zoe Saldana however. Graceful, athletic and feline in her movements, Saldana’s Neytiri is something recognizably humanoid because of her two-legged, straight-standing appearance but altogether alien at the same time. She’s also slinky and sexy (is that wrong?), Sully’s almost immediate attraction to her and their subsequent Cameron-esque (but not Lucas-esque you’ll be pleased to learn) love connection fully understandable. So complete is her transformation and so good is she in the role that once again it has to be called into question whether you are eligible to win acting awards if your performance has been animated over? Andy Serkis didn’t get the recognition (outside of his peers) he deserved for Gollum and it remains to be seen whether Saldana will too for as equally impressive a performance (and that’s some compliment in my book). But in a(nother) year of slim, strong female performances this is undoubtedly one of the best.

Spot the difference?

Of course none of this would have been possible were it not for the groundbreaking techniques employed to bring the Na’vi to actuality. Looking like a cross between Mohawk warriors and Mystique from the X-Men, these synthetic characters so closely resemble the actors underneath facially and in their particular movements that, arguably, for the first time ever, CG characters actually have soul, an emotional reality and an absolute authenticity of performance to them that they never have before (outside of Middle Earth). Recently Where The Wild Things Are has been championed for bringing back puppetry and the weight and physicality that it provides for creature-creations that has been found wanting by contemporary CGI (and rightly so). It seems that problem has now been solved though, for those that can afford to follow and utilize Cameron’s Way.

Avatar’s Na’vi also makes a mockery of the mo-cap stylistics favoured and championed by Robert Zemeckis by comparison. None of the boss-eyed, creepy-faced, jerkily-moving problems that blight his productions (The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol) are evident here. In fact, quite the opposite: whereas his films fall into some pseudo-real cartoon/live-action nether-realm, Cameron’s is purely-and-simple photo-real. Albeit fantastical.

For many though, none of this matters. What about the bangs for your bucks? This is a James Cameron movie after all. Even Titanic had action scenes, so how are the battle set-pieces? Well... staggering-in-scale and epic in every which way is the only means of which to describe them. Squeezed into the film’s bursting-at-the-seams action-tacular final third and making a mockery of any of the multi-focused end battles from Star Wars, Avatar’s Na’vi versus those nasty, greedy, amoral human beings is quite simply an exhilarating and kinetic showstopper to end all exhilarating and kinetic showstoppers. Taking in aliens riding dragon-thingees fighting men in future helicopters shooting heavy-duty machine guns and aliens riding horse-thingees armed only with bows-and-arrows charging at men in Matrix-like armoured Ampsuits and a mano-a-mano end fight between avatar-Jake and moustache-twirling bad guy Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang – The Men Who Stare At Goats) it is relentless in pace but, crucially, doesn’t outstay its welcome by going on too long. Friends and foes fall, even if you always know which way it’s going to go.

For all my waffle though (and this has to be my most indulgent, excessive review ever), the actual experience of viewing Avatar is nigh-on indescribable because it truly has to be seen to be believed. Most preferably in IMAX RealD 3D as Cameron intends for it to be seen (take my word for it, it’s worth the extra moolah). So do yourself a favour and make sure you experience in this way if you can, the effect is as close to travelling to another world as you currently can get.

*****

* with acknowledgement to mainstreammatt for the comparison.