Avatar Movie Review Essay

Question

Avatar Movie Review Essay

The current essay is a deep analysis of Avatar, a successful science fiction film written by a high-profile director James Cameron. Having been observed in multiple reviews and critical reports, Avatar is a perfect topic for discussion and evaluation of different film areas. Cameron created an extraordinary movie for at least $300 million, percolating it in the head for over fourteen years before he finally started shootings (Keegan). The film is not only a sensational source of entertainment but also a technological breakthrough, which represents Cameron’s new invention that contributed to the creation of a first-class movie. Being the first movie to collect $2 billion worldwide, it is worth the attention of everyone (Keegan).

This paper presents the key plotlines of the film, analysis of the reviews, and personal critique. The paper investigates the movie as a reflection of the events that take place in the world and the influence of Cameron’s masterpiece on people and culture. The problem of acting and technical editing of the image, as well as the symbolism of the film, will also be considered. Moreover, short prehistory and peculiarities of the film shooting will be discussed. Generally speaking, Avatar is just an action-adventure story, while in fact, it uncovers a lot of important issues, starting with gender and ending with the global environmental problems, thus, it is important to discuss all the issues discussed in the movie.

Avatar Movie Review

The movie contains a story of a paraplegic marine Jake Sully who enrolls in the Avatar program on the planet called Pandora. As humans have depleted the natural resources of the Earth by the middle of the XXII century, they face an energy crisis. The RDA Corporation goes to Pandora in search of unobtanium. But the planet is inhabited by the Na’vis, three meters tall, blue-skinned humanoids who will not let their motherland become a human laboratory number two.

Pandora’s atmosphere is destructive for humans, thus, to explore the planet’s biosphere, the scientists use artificial Navi bodies or hybrids, called “avatars” that are operated using human consciousness. Colonel Miles promises Jake to restore his legs in case he agrees to gather information about the dwellers and their habitat Hometree, which is located in the unobtanium reserves. When he meets a woman Neytiri, his life completely changes. Neytiri tells him about the wonders of the planet: the language, connection of local people with nature, respect for living beings, and patriotism. He falls in love not only with the girl, but also with the whole planet, its dwellers, traditions, and beliefs. He realizes that by destroying the Hometree, they would destroy Eywa, mother goodness, and the nation on the whole. Thus, he tries to persuade Miles and others to give up the idea of mining energy resources and insists on avoiding the war.

However, the war is coming, while Jake is considered to be a traitor and only the minority of people support him. At the same time, he becomes a spy and betrayer in the Na’vi’s opinion, and has nowhere to come back. To deserve the respect for Neytiri and the Navi, he makes friends with Toruk, a predator honored and feared by everyone, and leads them to victory. Still, his avatar is disconnected from consciousness by Colonel, turning him back to the disabled body and leaving him almost breathless. Neytiri rescues him and together with Pandora’s dwellers, they pray to Eywa to put his soul into the avatar body and the goddess helps him.

The plot itself is quite capturing: it stands out from other apocalyptic movies by its abundance of uncovered issues, such as religion and mythology, races and civilizations, environment and human property, militarism, and imperialism. Despite the long duration of the film, it does not seem overextended and boring. Moreover, the time just glides, leaving a pleasant feeling of incompleteness at the end of the film. The author of Titanic and Terminator proved one more time that the miracles of cinematography will keep on developing. Creating his “Pandora”, he worked out all the details, including the flora and fauna of the planet, the language of Navi, and, of course, technological advances.

Due to the interview, the inspiration for this story evolved from Edgar Rice Burroughs and Rider Haggard books, who were mainly jungle adventure writers (Warren). In addition, Sully and Neytiri's pairing is very similar to Jack and Rose in “Titanic”: both couples come from different societies/cultures and consequently have to make a life choice. In general, the plot of the movie is not complicated. Certainly, it does not belong to the category of one-time movies, but all the themes of the film are very familiar to the audience and do not require profound thinking and understanding from them. In such a way, the greatness of Cameron’s work is reflected in how artfully he refined such common problems as love, war, and cultural diversities to make up a gripping movie.

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Filming Peculiarities

Design Features. James Cameron wanted to start his work on Avatar after he finished Titanic. It was his cherished dream to create a masterpiece but he felt that the technology would not catch up with his story, thus, he postponed the work till better times. Starting in 2006, the director began the script development (French). The artificial language, created by his team of workers, comprises nearly 1000 words (Anders). Trying to make everything perfect, Cameron resorted to the help of Barlowe, the illustrator of “Final Fantasy”, “The Weta Digital” team, and other studios and individuals who desired to accept the challenge. Furthermore, he created Fusion 3D technology to integrate animated heroes with real actors. Cameron and his team describe Avatar as an adventure trip of self-discovery in the context of ecology and imperialism. However, both admirers and severe critics see much more than he tried to enclose in his work.

When watching Avatar, a person feels something completely new with many differences from his previous creations. The success of the film is attributed to its designers and filming system. It is known that the movie was designed by two different production designers: one of them concentrated on the flora and fauna of the planet, while another one focused on human machines and other factors. To create Pandora’s floating mountains, designer Steve Messing visited China. As a result, the team worked on the karst limestone formations. Jungle scenes were shot in Kuranda Skyrail in Australia. The designers found a perfect balance between vegetation and rocks. A good sense of atmosphere, clouds between the mountains and the ground, and 360° panorama of the mountain region created with Cameron’s visual effects surely deserve admiration.

Talking about the vehicle design, Samson helicopters seem to resemble Hueys from the Vietnam War. It may not be seized upon if it were not for Cameron’s multiple persuasions of the original idea. However, “Vietnam helicopters” looked effective and were evenly balanced with contrary images of the birds of prey. The AMP machines used in Avatar for combat, work, and research of the Pandora resemble Armored Personnel Units from The Matrix Revolutions and the power loaders from the Aliens, which implies that all great things are made up on the background of already existing ones. Heavy research was conducted to create Grace’s bio-laboratory. The art director of the movie even visited “Amgen” to get acquainted with the laboratory environment, and such a method appeared to be helpful, making the lab look as real as it is possible (Anders). Taking into account all the mentioned information, it should be concluded that the team of designers deserves credit for the executed work.

Color Management, Language and Music. A significant advantage of the movie is color management. It is kind of striking that almost all the vegetation of Pandora is green in comparison with a variety of weird bright colors of other objects. Still, it is only for the time being, before the night comes and lights up everything with bioluminescent. Along with a tendency to cyan tints, it was the right choice to use green colors in vegetation design, as the first one is very similar to the colors used to show depth and atmosphere. In case the team decided to use cyan, they would have turned their unusual and bright picture into the monochromic and cold one. Still, it should be underlined that diluting the cyan plants with yellow items would both solve the problem of monochromatic image and also completely match the style of the movie. On the other hand, the green color is psychologically associated with the Earth's environment; the theme that will be discussed further.

Speaking about artificial languages that were specially created for the movie or book, the first artwork that comes to one’s mind is Tolkien’s The Lord of Rings. Still, Cameron decided to go even further. Thus, the USC linguist Paul Frommer developed the language for Na’vis that was not brand new but a fantastic idea (Hiscock). The work on the language was hard enough as the main goal was to create a language that had to be relatively memorable and pronounceable for the movie actors. At the same time, it ought not to be close to any human language. James Horner, the composer who cooperated with Cameron during the filming of Titanic and Aliens, also worked hard during the shooting (Bryant). He used the chorus singing in the Navi languages. Furthermore, he worked with ethnomusicologists to make a music culture for the aliens. In this way, he not only facilitated film sensibilities but also introduced a new musical culture that only contributes to the movie rate.

Acting and Technology

Cameron’s film is a hybrid with a full live-action shoot in combination with computer characters and live environments. A bit disappointing is the fact that live-action takes only 40% of the whole movie, while 60% is covered by computer elements (Corliss). At the same time, it is the merit Cameron that despite computerized imaging, the work is not perceived as a cartoon. Cameron’s virtual camera system can show the virtual counterparts of the actors, making it easy to direct and adjust the scenes similar to the live-action environment. This astonishing method of filmmaking is described as a “big powerful game engine”. There is no need to interrupt scenes repeatedly as there is no need to carry out repeated lighting and camera setups, make-up, and costume fittings. This saves the time required for shooting, though it also requires dedicated work from the actors. Supporting Spielberg, who described the method as a digital make-up rather than a kind of animation, it should be emphasized that the new technology has exceeded the expectations of the audience (Hewitt).

Cameron states that apart from the technology used in the movie, Avatar is not only the future of movie-making but also the future of the art of acting (Harris). Cameron’s technology and blue-skinned images do not replace the actors; instead, they “cover” and empower them. Still, it is far from being the truth as never mind how strong the computer effects are, the actor’s play, including body movements, mimics, and looks cannot be replaced completely. In such a way, when somebody tries to convince one of the high-level acting techniques and Oscar considerations, it can raise a laugh of true experts in actors’ evaluation. Take, for example, Zo? Saldana (Neytiri), who is considered to be a talented actress, we cannot see how she is blushing in her scenes with Sully or how she expresses conflicting emotions. It can be noticed by the naked eye that a lot of human manners are profoundly edited and corrected using special applications, thus, perceiving the Navi as the particular actors would be unfair towards the others. The actors had to work hard to make their “hybrids” look real, but still, it was not enough to impress the Screen Actors Guild: they were not even nominated.

No matter how loud the resentments of the actors are, they prove that computer-rendered Na’vi forms are created in the background of their acting art each second of the movie so that they will be not appreciated as high as the naturally occurring ones and it is no wonder why. Generally speaking, “blue alien” is a flat and cartoon-like image that does not bear any resemblance to human emotions. However, alleging that the actors did not face any challenges would be incorrect as they spent much time passing professional training procedures, including archery, firearm use, horse riding, combats, etc. In addition, they learned the Navi languages. Thus, it can be said for sure that acting is a weak point of the movie, though, in this half-animated type of work, it is not as significant as in Titanic.

Militarism, Imperialism, Gender and Race Themes

Avatar is surely a product of post-colonialism, describing the Navi as the indigenous population with a deep respect for the environment and their goodness. Humans are described as a corporate military, which left dying Earth for Pandora's resources. The movie presents an anti-militarism narrative, describing the soldiers as violent and cruel beasts. All of them are men, except for the woman helicopter pilot, who takes the good side in the end. Another problem that should be singled out is imperialism which implies the struggle of modern humans against indigenous people as a result of the difference in the level of military potential. Many reviewers compare the war between people and the Navi to the modern tribe struggles, aggressors of Irak, Israel, and Palestine relations, etc. (Monbiot). To be honest, the idea of confrontation is not a brand new one, thus, digging deeper, a lot of new analogs could be found.

The problem of gender is not mentioned in the critiques, but still, it should be paid attention to. Unlike the fact that Sully is at the center of the story, he is not portrayed as a strictly positive hero. He is described as a naive and sometimes unreasonable person who lacks profound understanding. Grace, the major scientist of the bio-lab, is interested in the destiny of the planet and its samples; she interacts with natives and carries out the pedagogical activity, while Sully treats everything playfully without considering the implications. Navi female becomes his guide and teaches him to be a part of their nation. The females participate in the battles and become the heads of labs and security forces, furthermore, they play the role of spiritual leaders. In the movie, there is no remark concerning the female place, making it obvious that by 2154 the human world would have not been a sexist place anymore.

Sully is not only included in the Navi tribes but also becomes the hero among them, which makes the narrative very similar to Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai. The “white savior”, described as a dominant race member, rejected by his kind, appears to be the best subaltern. In this way, racial themes in Avatar are rather hard to ignore. Is it an accident that almost all the people from Earth are white, while the Navi under the CGI suits is played by the actors of color?

According to the interview, the facial features of the Navi were inspired by beautiful ethnic females. Cameron admitted that they were blue because he wanted to underline the cultural importance of skin color in our society (Harrop). This racial subtext seems to be quite cheap and flat-footed, though pretty decorated. The primitive stereotype of Afro-Americans who have a tribe culture and less intellectual development is too old-fashioned and this underlying theme spoils the artwork. Still, speaking about the appearance of the Navi, their image is more than just incredible as already mentioned.

Environmental and Religious Themes in the Avatar

Among the major strengths of the movie is its environment protection context. Avatar is considered to be one of the most epic pieces of environmental advocacy in the world. Pandora and its dwellers are described as integral organisms. In this way, “killing” the forest, the Navi also approaches the verge of death. As for all the environment-related points, such as cruel exploitation of the natural recourses, indigenous people who can teach our developed society in many respects, destroying corporate interests and a planet as a collective creature, the movie shows how humans treat nature in the real world.

Pandora can be viewed as the same Earth that suffers from irrational consumption of its resources, which leads to the loss of biodiversity and other terrible consequences. The moment of the epic battle when the Navi are riding legged and winged creatures, arrows, and bows are opposed to the automated weapons and helicopters is one of the most astonishing moments in the film. Furthermore, nature itself uses self-defense: it sends wild creatures to help the Navi in the battle against the colonizers which symbolizes its struggle with the industrialized world and emphasizes that the notion of the ideal world means life without any technologies.

Many critical reports consider that the film uncovers the issues of religion and spirituality. This is a good point as James Cameron personally stated that he tried to make a movie that could touch the broad spectrum of human spirituality, presenting the Navi as the aspirational part of people who want to change themselves for the better, while people are described as selfish and cruel part of nature, creating a kind of dichotomy (Harrop). The marine seems to be the key to the director’s work. He symbolizes all the people in the world who are to some extent disabled: earthbound, broken, inadequate, and lonely. Transporting Sully’s mind to the avatar body makes him feel like a beautiful, sexual and athletic creature. Thus, we can conclude that Pandora is something like heaven where people revive and are “connected” instead of being lonely and disconnected in reality.

In addition, the movie draws up a lot of existing mythological and religious motifs. Cameron raised an important question of faith: should the living being be controlled hierarchically from above or ecologically using interdependence? This issue is rather relevant to modern society. The movie concepts are very similar to other religions. For example, the Hometree can be compared with the axis Mundi from the North stories. Moreover, a lot of life principles of the Navi resemble Tibetian beliefs. The goddess Eywa is often compared with Pachamama of Andes. Some critics compare Pandora with the Garden of Eden. In this way, it should be mentioned that Avatar is a cradle of the most refined stories that together make up a completely new masterpiece, different from other beliefs, stories, and works. In general terms, the Navi is the most splendid humanoid ever presented to the audience, which is one of the major merits of the film director.

Conclusion

Avatar is considered to be one of the most successful movies of contemporaneity. The movie with a $2 billion gross has drawn the attention of many critics who express their ideas concerning the profound subtexts of the movie (Keegan). For many years, it was Cameron’s cherished dream to dedicate his work to the world. Still, there used to be no technological advances that could help him to make this dream come true.

The movie captivates the audience with pleasantly unusual filming and design method that is called 3D Fusion. Still, the lack of real acting performance is rather notable, which considerably lowers the importance of actors in comparison with special effects. However, the work of actors must not be neglected as they have undergone serious preparation, including both physical training and language learning.

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Among the strengths of Avatar, the presence of multiple subtexts must be taken into account. The film bears anti-militarism and anti-imperialism motifs, describing the cruelty and greed of people who take delight in conquering the weaker. The interesting issue presented to the audience is gender. Speaking about the race problem, this primitive stereotype of distinction does not contribute to the film rate. One of the major problems described in the film is an environmental issue. Pandora becomes a personification of the Earth that suffers from irrational use of natural resources and cruel attitudes to living beings. Cameron integrates the planet and its dwellers into a single entity, which means that by destroying nature, people kill themselves.

Another gripping theme in the movie is a spiritual-religious one. Cameron lets us see two sides of the human entity, creating a kind of dichotomy in his work. In addition, the film focuses on a lot of existing religious and mythological motifs, raising the issue of faith and the question of hierarchy and interdependence.

At first sight, Avatar is only a striking action-adventure movie. But by digging deeper, a lot of profound themes, including gender, race, militarism, and other issues are uncovered. The combination of the most spectacular filming with the simplicity and accessibility of the issue presentation makes this film not only stand out owing to its special effects and the fame of the director but also avoid being called a one-time movie. Avatar proves that art and progress are infinite, thus despite the seeming end of cinematography development, there is much left to achieve.

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