AVATAR - A FILM REVIEW BY BILL GALBRAITH

3-D
I assume that the 3-D spectacles used polarization, rather than the more primitive red/blue or red/green coloured lenses. I was interested to see if the polars were one side vertical and the other horizontal, or the opposite diagonals. But even in the cinema I detected that they were much more subtle than that--they were circularly polarized in opposite directions, though I have not yet figured which is clockwise and which anticlockwise, or how they achieved circular polarization with thin lenses.
The actual 3-D was very effective, and though the actors did not continuously throw things at you, thing such as the delicate "jellyfish," water drops or bits of ash did occasionally drift right past one's face, and sometimes other things such as furniture came close to one.

STORY
The actual story is fairly banal -- "Advanced, evil, materialist civilization oppresses noble indigenous race but is defeated." But it is quite well acted, and the main characters had strong personalities, not cardboard as in many SF movies -- particularly the nasty Colonel, and the even worse chief civilian contractor.

IMAGINATION
Commendable -- it is clear that a great deal of thought went into the film - it is good to see an intelligent SF film, not just "space opera." Many of the alien scenes were extremely beautiful, particularly the "jellyfish," the spiral plants which contracted downward fast when touched (based on tube worms, scaled up), the glade of blue flowers, the hanging, glowing tendrils of the "holy place," the Trees, etc. The animals also were very well done - the hammer headed "rhinos," beaked "horses," shiny "wolves," hugh "hyenas," little spinning lizards, and of course the two sorts of flying "dragons," Also the human machines were convincing --the war machines, bulldozers, and the 3-D displays in the control room. The "Hanging Mountains" were spectacular, but they were the one thing which stood out as being against the laws of physics, as opposed in just being permissibly improbable.

COMPUTER GRAPHICS
Clearly there was a great deal of computer graphic work in the film, but how much? I assume that almost the whole thing was CG, except for the human beings, when they were not being avatars. I think the avatars and the humanoid aliens had to be done the same way as Gollum in Lord of the Rings -- real actors in blue suits with lights all over them to get the right motions, and then CG modeled aliens copying the motions. It is possible that the human machines were non-CG model work, and perhaps the more distant panoramas, and views of the Tree. Anyway, it was very seamlessly put together, which must have been difficult. It is interesting that the makers of earlier films that Shrek and Lord of the Rings were eager to tell us about their technical achievements - "Look how clever we are!" but James Cameron seems to be more sophisticated in wanting us to concentrate on the film, not the technique. He is almost shy about it.

LEGS
I think I am right in saying that all the animals listed in "Imagination" are hexapods - they have six legs. On our Earth, all the vertebrates that descended from the fish that came out of the sea and onto land -- the amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals -- are tetrapods, with four legs, sometimes greatly modified. Birds and bats have two legs and two wings which are modified legs. Whales have front flippers and a vestigial hip joint. Even snakes have a vestigial hip joint, though nothing is left of the shoulder. Humans and apes have two legs and two arms. Similarly, on the Avatar planet, the land animals have six legs and the two sorts of flying dragons have two pairs of wings and two legs. But the indigenous people are humanoid, with two legs and two arms -- they are quadrupeds, apparently the only ones on the planet. This is the second big impossibility, as severe as the "Hanging Mountains," but this time against the laws of biology and evolution.

AVATARS
How did the humans get the avatar bodies? Did they use bodies of real aliens and modify them, in which case were they abducted illegally? Or did they build them biologically from the ground up, a fearsome task? Since Jake's Avatar could only be used by himself, due to the death of his identical twin brother, who had identifical genetics, and for whim it was specially made, I assume it must have been the latter. The big weakness of the idea is that the human and his Avatar can never be awake simultaneously. And the Avatar body may at any moment suddenly become unwakeably unconscious if anyone tampers with the "pod" in which the human lies.

MARINES
The crippled hero Jake is an ex-marine, and early in the film says, "Once a Marine, always a Marine" - ie., their behaviour and way of thinking is burned into them. When he is first awakened in his Atavar body, the doctors and medical technicians tell him to take it slow so that he can adjust, and they can check him out. Instead, he ignores them, rips out the various sensors and tubes, crashes violently out of the place, breaking the atmospheric seal to the danger fo his colleagues, and runs into the forest, of which he knows nothing except that is very dangerous. Surely, this is totally un-Marine behaviour. Of course, to a crippled man, it would be an exceedly exhilarating experience to find oneself whole, and as a bonus to have a bigger, stronger, more agile body than the human one. Even so...

SUPPLIES
In the battle scenes, Jake in his Avatar body seems well supplied with human weapons - hand grenades and automatic rifle. Where did he get them, as he never, in his Avatar form, went back to the human base, nor to the small base set up by his friends and by himself in his human body. Did I miss something?


COMMENT BY JO TAVENER

Jo Tavener said...
I would like to make a few comments with regard to this interesting review of AVATAR. What is so wonderful about the 3-D here is that it works dramatically. Not only does it give the viewer a wonderful experience of exploring a new planet, but it gives us without words the experience that Jake has in his avatar body. The joy, the beauty, the sensuality of the world seen new and afresh provides the context in which Jake changes from a crippled, thwarted and angry marine into the planet's hero who saves the day and helps the aliens defeat the colonization of the occupiers. The fact that Jake is a Marine-- independent, tough and with a mission that gives him back his life (literally), makes him even more dangerous to his former culture.

What I especially liked with the representation of the "advanced, evil, materialistic, colonizing civilization." One doesn't have to look very far to find the perfect model for the enemy -- what many in the world still sees as the "ugly American." Consider the fact that we have our army in almost every country, that we spend more that the rest of the world put together for our military and our wars, that we leave countries devastated after we occupy them -- Vietman, Cambodia, Iraq, Afganistan... When the colonel gets in his machine body, his giant grotesque form saunters forth with all the arrogance I see in Blackwater mercinaries. I also like the civilian contractor -- Halliburton anyone?

I also accept the fact the Jack cannot be awake as a human when he is in his avatar body. Taking on the logic somewhat of films like Three Faces of Eve, the one can be aware of the other but the two are different personalities with different ego structures, and here even different bodily processes. The film seems to be saying you can't be in the two places at the same time. You can't be in two bodies at the same time.

What a wonderful experience to step out of yourself and be able to walk in the shoes of another -- to be able to see the world from an entirely different perspective. How wonderful it must be for a character like Jake to come alive again with a strong and agile body in a new and beautiful world. What a wonderful opportunity to have the ability to help preserve such a world.

Some criticism from the left takes the form of saying that this uses the old and tried frame of "white man's burden." Only a white hero -- or here advanced civilized man -- can save the poor naive natives. While that may seem correct, it does not fit the facts of the story. Jake choses to leave his body and his world behind. He choses to become an alien and live that life with all its beauties and fragilities. To start anew in a lovely world and warm people who understand that it takes a village -- who would not jump at such a chance. I know I would!

March 23, 2010 2:02 PM