Not Quite a Review: Avatar

I’m a bit giddy with the prospect of using more than one sentence to talk about a film, so excuse me if things are slightly fragmented.

It took an hour or so for me to get into the right frame of mind to enjoy Avatar. Once I stopped worrying about the narrative in any way, things really clicked for me. The cliché-a-minute plot and ham-handed politics receded into the background and I just let the pictures and noise wash over me. The best analogy to the experience that I can think of on short notice is The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. The story gets you from room to room, spectacle to spectacle and is otherwise disposable. There is no event in the plot that is not foreshadowed at least 30 minutes in advance; no matter how violent events may become they are never confusing and rarely even remotely surprising. I enjoyed Avatar much more as an amusement park ride than as a piece of cinema.

To that end, seeing it in 3D IMAX was certainly the way to go, as I imagine it upped the “constantly exploding in your face” factor a great deal. Like some folks, I had a bit of a headache after the show; maybe I’m not made for that brand of 3D, which had me seeing double every now and then. Maybe I’m not made to watch 3D for two and a half hours. Who knows?

Spoilery thoughts after the break.

Of course I wasn’t surprised when Michelle Rodriguez died. Michelle dies in everything eventually. The helicopter pilot dies in everything. Michellicopter never had a chance in hell, cute though she may have been in her Blazing Saddles war paint.

I found the ending of the film really depressing. So Earth is still a doomed and polluted world, all of these soldiers are going to head up to their big ship and just fly back to earth where… what? They’ll just hang out and mind their own business? Or they’ll pick up a few dozen fuel-air explosives, hop back in the big ship, and blast the big chunk of unobtainium out of the planet’s crust from orbit?

I know which path I would choose. Here’s a hint: it involves getting revenge while becoming incalculably wealthy.

In the mean time, what will Max and Norbert, the two humans left on Pandora, do when they run out of little packs for their oxygen masks? Hang out in the old base waiting for the air to get too stale to breathe? Throw themselves on the mercy of a 30-foot reptilian panther thing?

Finally, who carries around a giant K-Bar knife on the off chance that their giant robot will get into a giant knife fight?

-ssr