Or at least we were. We finally went to see it yesterday, the day before the frikkin' Oscars, because after I wrote a 2,000-word treatise on my awards predictions, I was overcome with Catholic guilt or something. Like, who does that? Who picks Academy awards winners without actually seeing them?
(Answer: Probably more people than you think.)
We went to an 11:00 AM, non-3D showing at the googleplex near my parents'. Since the movie's been out for a little while, and since it was before lunch on a Saturday, I figured it wouldn't be too crowded, and I was right (but just in case, we did order our tickets via Fandango beforehand). Still, there were at least two dozen or so in our theater. Just enough people for me to feel like I was offending someone when I opened the backs of snacks I snuck in via my mom-bag. (Chex Mix and some Target-brand licorice bites, if you're keeping score at home.)
Are you sensing that I am sort of stalling here? Beating around the bush a bit? Trying to build suspense via exposition, when maybe good storytelling would suffice? Concerned that I am including stuff that I don't necessarily need to, just because I can? Yeah, "Avatar" was kind of like that, too.
Here is the good news: I didn't hate this movie. Certainly it was better than "Showgirls," and not nearly as boring as "Castaway." It's probably not even fair to say I disliked it, although I will be honest and tell you that I will probably never see it again, because parts of it kind of infuriated me to the point where it ruined the rest of it. And those parts? Were mostly the talking.
Peter Travers once said that James Cameron, the mastermind behind "Avatar," had "a poet's eyes and tin ears," and that is so evident here. The world of Pandora is the stuff that dreams are made of, breathtakingly beautiful, all lush and colorful and bioluminescent, so vivid even in 2-D that it is practically tactile, the CGI so perfectly rendered that you can almost hear the forest sighing. I could write all day about what you see on the screen, and that still would not be sufficient. About the pretty pictures, you can believe the hype.
But if only that attention to detail had been spent on the story and the dialogue -- this is a $300 million movie with a $30 script. People just don't talk and act like that, not even on alien planets with harsh and toxic atmospheres. And the absolute wretchedness of the storytelling is worse because the stories have already been told, and told better, in "Pocahontas" and "Dances with Wolves" and "Braveheart" and "FernGully."
I feel bad for some of the actors in this movie -- it must be hard to have to compete for attention with giant hippie Smurfs in space, some of whom look kind of like you, as well as invisible pterodactyls, futuristic Rock-Em-Sock-Em robots, and what is possibly the world's clunkiest dialogue. The repeated tagline is "I see you," which is supposed to mean not just "I see that you are standing there," or "I see you looking at my mostly-naked blue plastic boobs," but also "I see inside of you, deep down into your soul, into your deepest darkest thoughts, which are about touching my mostly-naked blue plastic boobs and also 'making the bond' if you know what I am saying."
And everybody does, because the long lingering glances and caressing shots of the female alien's behind are not exactly subtle, Mr. Best Director Nominee.
Sigourney Weaver is mostly her usual bad-ass self as a scientist who takes no shit from humans but still deals gently and peacefully with the natives. She owes some of her career to James Cameron -- she got her first Oscar nomination for "Aliens," which he directed -- but she deserves better than this. Wes Studi and CCH Pounder are excellent as the elders of the Na'vi, even though they are completely unrecognizable when rendered in CGI. No one else particularly impressed me, and Sam Worthington's mysteriously disappearing-and-reappearing Australian accent was downright distracting.
I wouldn't say this was a waste of my time, not completely: I am still trying to wrap my head around all the awesomeness that I saw in the theater. My mind boggles at what this might have looked like in 3-D (although I don't want to test the limits of my motion sickness tolerance). Some of the scenes entered into "uncanny valley" territory for me, although I think that is kind of a good thing -- the more realistic the better, right? Rumor has it that there are already sequels in the works, and I'm sure they'll make truckloads of money, too. Props are definitely due for the look of Pandora.
Just please hope for a story editor before the next one, okay?
