mmoa_writes

Went to see Avatar on Sunday evening and found it rather underwhelming. I wasn't going in expecting a cracking storyline or an amazing script but there are certain staples to the modern sci-fi film that even the least experienced director has some nous considering.

First off, I actually thought the script was alright and certainly the actors all did an amazing job with their roles, including those (such as the bean counting project manager) who others found fairly irksome and cliched. I really liked the fact that Cameron is a generous director to have given space for the actors to flesh out their roles, the manager being a key example. In his dialogue, he was often extremely (too?) rude and over confident, but I loved how in the moments he didn't speak, you could see some indication of an internal struggle, no matter how slight, taking place as the film progressed. The Colonol was much more of a stereotype, but there was a conviction to the actor's performance and an intensity that meant I didn't spend the film rolling my eyes every time he appeared. Sam Worthington was just awesome as Jake. How easily the character could have become a really obnoxious Gary Stu! He saved Jake from the Stu, is all I can say.

Now I want to mention what I found disappointing. I'm not talking about the script, or the treatment of various 'issues'. I'm talking about the things that other critics have either said were done well, or are generally taken to have been done well.

The first real problem was the music. There were moments when the music actually seemed to work against the action of the film, cancelling out the effect of the direction and thus diminishing the emotional impact. It was tres bizarre - I was at least expecting the usual stirring score that you can easily dream magnificent dreams to but in a film like Avatar, to not even get what the average superhero movie makes sure to get right was very odd. Maybe Hans Zimmer was too busy working on Sherlock Holmes or something.

Next, the special effects. *sighs* Alright so it was probably my fault, but I went in expecting something truly spectacular, especially considering I saw it in 3D. Maybe I should have known better as the spectacle I was expecting would probably require another technological innovation or two, or because critics are as much victims of groupthink as anyone: don't believe the hype, they say. Well, I got burned.

One thing to say for the special effects was that it has the best integration of live action and blue screen that I have ever seen. At their worst, the effects were always solidly good and I will give credit for the Na'vi: they actually looked like they had skeletons!

The only problem was, the effects themselves weren't particularly amazing, or at least, unless you have'nt seen a PIXAR film (where they consistently manage to pay attention to both script, storyline and CGI, but that's another matter... ).The forest was so much like something from planet Earth that the guys behind the effects had no excuse for not creating a believable environment and really, as I said... well I've watched 'Ratatouille' and 'Finding Nemo'. I've seen consistently awesome 2D effects from Studio Ghibli and [even] Disney. Perhaps Cameron just hadn't been out that much in the decade or so he was working on Avatar? What I watched did not seem like anything he must have had in mind given how he described it in the press. If 'Avatar' had been made a few years earlier, then yes, maybe but for 2010... the only way I can describe how I feel is by comparing the situation to that of 'The Phantom Menace' and 'The Matrix'. The former film was as technologically adavnced as they could make it and yet, as sci-fi, 'The Matrix' won hands down. We've seen pretty stuff - there's only so pretty you can make it and that often bears little relation to the quality of the film.

I can remember watching all three Spiderman films in the cinema when they were released and I can still remember the feeling of my stomach lurching as he zipped through New York (the funny thing is, this happened in just about every film and I never got bored of it), for all I was comfortably sitting on a chair in Wandsworth Cineworld. There were moments in Avatar when I should have got that same feeling and indeed, at some points Cameron succeeded (for example, the scene where Jake was chased by a Thanator) but far too often, the direction just fell flat. It was a shame because it would have made the film that bit more engaging.

Now my next criticisms are just going to be me and the physics/futurist/sci-fi neek nitpicking like hell. I enjoyed watching the film. If someone were to pay for my ticket, I'd happily go again. I didn't feel the 3 hours at all - a miracle to be sure - the acting was excellent and the effects weren't half bad (if rather perfunctory at times).

I find some of the 'sci-fi' elements disturbing, however.

What the hell is unobtanium? I was dumb enough to think that it was a mineral with weird EM properties that could make it float (and either explain what a moon the size of Pandora was doing remaining in such amazing condition being so close to a gas giant with other moons or explain the Hallelujah mountains) and then spent much of the film wondering why the Na'vi hadn't exploited it themselves - the Aztecs used their gold before Cortes found it you know (I should think it was one of the first clues to the presence of gold in the area) and the Northern American tribes their potatoes and maize. But I was wrong. Unobtanium seems to be Pandora's equivalent of aluminium: a fantastic resource, once you've found a use for it.

So how'd the humans find it? If it isn't native to Earth - an as of yet undiscovered element, perhaps - then how did the humans find out it's unique properties? Was Pandora a scientific mission first or secondly - that might explain it if it were a scientific research base before it got taken over by the corporation.

Seeing as unobtanium doesn't seem to have any weird EM properties you really have to explain what the deal is with Pandora. Na'vi should be the least of one's problem with intense radiation fields, frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions on a moon unnervingly close to a gas giant. Humans, at least, shouldn't be let out without completely covering their bodies (it doesn't have to be with a bulky space suit either) and I would be expecting the whole moon to be made up of Hallelujah mountains, ripped apart as it should be by the planet's gravitational pull.

Whilst we're on it, it's not just Pandora that needs explaining. I was saying to my sister who I went to see the movie with, that perhaps the real problem is I watch too much Discovery Channel. There used to a show where they would get a bunch of scientists on their off day and get them to create a planet with it's own biosphere etc etc. One series was called 'Alien Planet', the other 'Alien Worlds' or something. You can probably tell what I'm going to say next.

There were planets with forests of walking trees (ok, mangrove tree style, but still) or strange fleshy tree-animal hybrid-like things with primitive hearts to pump nutrients more efficiently; dominant species' that looked more akin to floating squid (they could hunt too!) or moa or bird-like insectoids (hive intelligence could be a way to go after all). I could go on. It was just incredible to see these bizarro worlds as envisioned with nothing else but speculation and a combined knowledge of the sciences, the intimate workings of the biospheres dreamed up and thoroughly explained by an inquisitive scientist in the 15 minutes they might have to spare.

Pandora - for what I felt we were being promised - was a bit of a let down.

Now leaving the sci-fi bit aside, I really have to delve into something that bugs me every time I watch a movie with some sort of military presence.

Tactics.

Or more honestly, the lack thereof.

My main beef was with the final confrontation between the Na'vi and mercenary forces. Now I get not everyone has studied battle tactics at school but I feel the way the fight was written did a great disservice to both Jake and Trudy, the former Marines, not to mention the scientists and the apparently experienced plains warrior Na'vi. The thing that really irritated me was the forest battle as the casualties were so horrific, it was idiotic.

Firstly, I know it makes the scene so much more emotional, but I almost screamed when I saw the Na'vi horse warriors charging through the river. That river should have been the focus of the battle. Why? Because if you drive an enemy into a river, it is much easier to pick them off as they get stuck in the mud and entangled in the riverside foliage. Instead these so-called experienced warriors slow themselves down by charging through it, only to get mown down because they stupidly decided for a head on charge. Idiotic. The next thing that annoyed me was the stampeding Titanotheres. Instead of being herded and encouraged to stampede into the mercenary forces, thus scattering them and making it easier to round them into the river, it is the magic of Eywa that saves the day.

Bollocks.

It was a tactic shared by Northern American tribal warriors, African savannah hunters and pretty much warriors/hunters of any stripe anywhere in the world. You have a herd animal nearby and an enemy with far greater weaponry? Well how about some disarray! Be they bison, wildebeast, wild ponies, you name it. If you have 'em, you use 'em. The titanotheres have ludricrously thick armor - that no Na'vi would have thought of using them is beyond belief, not to talk of the humans. How the forest battle should have gone is relatively straightforward. The Na'vi make the titanotheres stampede towards the humans and follow close behind. At the river, the Na'vi force splits up and goes around the mercernary forces to make a sort of heart shape, herding them towards the river and/or picking stragglers off. Once at the river, it should be pretty easy to annihilate the enemy force.

The air battle was much less stupid, but had its fair share. For greater success, the assault should have been twofold, one coming up beneath the aircraft from the forest roof as the one coming from above would distract the enemy and waste their bullets. Sorry, Kokoum-- I mean, Tsu'tey. At least Eywa means you can warn future generations about not going over one's tactics before the attack.

It's a silly thing, I know. I'm just tired of CGI corpses, even if they are CGI. Just because the director doesn't care about them, doesn't mean they wouldn't if they were real. I'm also plain tired of battle tactics a five year old playing soliders would be ashamed of. Damn you Ridley Scott, you seem to be my only hope (the initial battle scene in Gladiator? *mwah. Got it just right. You can still have your corpses if you want, Mr. Director, and have them using proper tactics too).

Other things got me too, but they were really a case of continuity and such which if Cameron had paid more attention to (or paid someone to pay more attention to) as opposed to all teh pretty, might not have been such a problem. Jakes' brother*, for example. What did he do? Considering all the fuss that was made, you'd think someone would occasionally mention how bad it was he wasn't there to help them with a particular problem that he had expertise with. In fact, I could say that about all the scientists. They were just scientists^TM. It wouldn't have been so hard to hear physicists arguing in the background with programmers about modelling techniques, or biophysicists with genetic biologists about some quirk in Pandorran DNA/RNA base orientation. Competing projects, perhaps? All it would take was Grace to mention the headache of dealing with rival research teams.

Not that it really matters but... THINK OF THE SCIENTISTS! Please! That alone would have made 'Avatar' revolutionary.

Speaking of Grace... How can such a tough, genius woman be so naive? I haven't taken one foot into the scientific industry proper yet, but even I know if you want to convince the people paying for your research or anything, you have to sell them what they're interested in first. Gve them an angle they'll want to hook onto. I can't tell if it was flaws in characterisation or world building but really, why would Parker give a damn about neurotypical connections between trees unless it meant that attacking the Home Tree would mean (and this is what I first thought) it would trigger a defense mechanism that would unleash the fury of all Pandorran treekind upon the humans! Irritating. Very petty and yet, so irritating. In fact, that no one could tell a good lie, except for Max, clearly, or the Colonel would have had him shot, was grating.

Even smaller things... why do the Na'vi laugh [at the same things, in the same way]? Why do they cry? How come they get what kissing is? How come the Avatars have exactly the same voices as their human counterparts considering the (admittedly slight) differences in anatomy? Why do they have a tail? Why do they have such huge eyes? OK, so I know the real answer to these questions, but to this sci-fi fan's perspective, they are never answered in the film. Funny thing is, this wouldn't have mattered, but I was promised something special with 'Avatar', and I still don't think I got it.

As I said before, I'm not going to deal with 'Avatar's issues. It failed in that regard. Completely and utterly. The film was racially and culturally problematic to say the very very least.


*And by the end of the film, I was not the only person wondering how cool it would have been to have the movie done where Jake's brother is still alive and you have a scientist at the heart of the story.


One film that was a very very pleasant surprise was 'Sherlock Holmes'. I went in expecting another 'Dorian Gray' and came out, well, a bit embarrassed actually. Whilst I'm not quite at that 'Come back Guy Ritchie, all is forgiven!' stage, I will happily admit I was really please with the direction of the film. The music was amazing - but no surprise considering the Zimmerman was on it - the costumes fantastic. The look of the film was... convincing. Like how 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' should have looked but failed.

I honestly thought they had truly miscast Robert Downey Jr as Holmes but what do you know, he gave one of his best performances - that I've seen - here. Jude Law was perfection. Usually I find him a terribly superfluous actor who in almost every role he's done I can only find myself thinking of who else should have got it but not this time. Oh I love his Watson, I really do.

The script was surprisingly sparkling and relentless - at some points there was a steady ripple of chuckles amongst the audience as joke after joke was played out and bandied about by the characters. When I first read the synopsis about them solving some grand occultic plan, I was prepared for the worst. For me, the genius of Holmes lies in trying to solve seemingly ordinary crimes that escalate as he discovers more clues and uncovers more of the truth. But they somehow got it right here and even better, just when it almost didn't matter, they cap it all with Holmes completely unravelling just how it all happened in that perfectly rational and modernist way Conan Doyle... may not have actually appreciated but would have liked for the character to say.

There were obviously things I didn't like: too many goddamn fight scenes, all going on for far too long. Again, Ridley Scott needs to start giving some lessons in action directing or something because it's getting very tiring sitting through endless choreography that you already know how it's going to end.

The one bit I shook my head at was a short exchange between a policeman and Holmes where Holmes describes just how hw came to be found handcuffed naked in a bed.

"My wife is a chambermaid," the policeman says and Holmes is surprised, if not abashed, and makes to apologise. "Only joking," he reveals at the end of the scene to Holmes' relief. Ah, I thought, the real Holmes would have known that, however, because a married woman would not be working as a chambermaid to begin with. They left service to get married.

As personal problems with films go, however, I reckon that's not bad going.