Avatar (James Cameron, 2009)

For anyone who hasn’t seen it:

On the distant moon of Pandora, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a new recruit to the Avatar programme, in which human beings are cybernetically transferred into bodies created from a combination of their DNA and that of the indigenous population, the Na’vi.

In his new body, Jake stumbles into a bond with local Na’vi Neytiri (Zoë Saldana).

As he learns more from the Na’vi, and his new body, Jake finds himself increasingly at odds with his human side, and their goals for the moon… 

Looks like they got rid of the papyrus...

I cannot remember the last time I watched Avatar. Beyond this one, I haven’t watched a James Cameron movie in awhile.

He was one of my favourite filmmakers when I was growing up but I probably have not thought about him since Avatar came out.

More than a decade after its release, watching Avatar on the big screen, it still works.

I have not watched it in years - I think I only watched it once at home - but on the big screen its virtues are in full bloom.

Its contradictions and limitations are rendered more vividly, although that is part of what makes it fascinating.

Is it a white saviour narrative? A warning of capitalism’s parasitic impact on the environment? A radical rejection of colonialism? 

The answer seems to fall somewhere in the middle. 

Watching Avatar in 2009, it felt like an overt allegory for America, both in terms of its history and the current context of its wars in the Middle East.

I could not believe that a movie from a major studio could sneak that in. Filmmakers have been sneaking subversive messages into mainstream entertainment since the beginning of the medium, but I could not believe that a movie so big and broad, so crowd pleasing, so action-heavy, so corporate, was ultimately about rejecting corporate greed and military machismo.

It is more complicated than that - but on a purely gut, in-the-moment snapshot, that was what I felt leaving the theatre.

Avatar was originally written in 1995 - that’s the date on James Cameron’s original treatment, which I first read sometime in 2003.

Back then, Avatar was one of the great unmade scripts - a movie so ambitious in scope that it could never be made.

And Cameron was in the wind - apart from a couple of documentaries, he was gone.

The first two Terminators were the movies which made me want to get into filmmaking, and Cameron’s scripts were among the first I read.

When I read it, Avatar felt like classic Cameron - and almost complete. 

I cannot remember the details but I do know that the treatment I read was very close to the final film we got. 

People make lazy comparisons, but Avatar feels enmeshed in the themes of the nineties, especially the focus on environmentalism and an indigenous culture being revealed through a white man’s eyes.

The most outdated thing in the movie is the end credits theme song by Leona Lewis, which feels like a bland attempt at a nineties popbuster.

It even comes down to smaller details, such as Parker being introduced with a golf club in the control room - a prime signifier of corporate assholes from eighties and nineties action movies.

 

Cameron is too straightforward a dramatist to fault in terms of construction, but that spine of Jake Sully is simultaneously solid - he learns, fails and finally emerges triumphant - and anchored to a history of white saviour narratives, where indigenous characters are not the subjects of their own stories. 

Jake Sully is both a familiar Everyman-turned-action hero and a white guy who learns through failing to save his new indigenous community.

These strands are intertwined together - it is impossible to separate them.

It is both the site of the film’s sturdiness as an action movie for the masses and a locus of the biggest critique against it. 

For me, Avatar is more interesting and frustrating for its contradictions, and I want to unpick them more once I have had a chance to watch the sequel.

As an action movie, at the time I thought it was considerably better than most of its direct competition. 

James Cameron laid down the template for contemporary blockbusters with Terminator 2 and True Lies, but in 2009 it was ironic how the films which followed Cameron’s lead seemed wanting (Transformers 2, Terminator Salvation, and GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra) by his return to blockbuster-dom.

My theory about Avatar’s success was that 2009 was such an unmemorable year for blockbusters that Avatar felt like an oasis in its familiar story and solid execution - it felt like a blockbuster done well.

The 3D gave it a boost, and frankly that is the only way I can see myself watching it again.

Overall, the acting is functional rather than spectacular.

In the lead, Sam Worthington is a non-entity - he is not awful, but he seems stuck in one mode.

He does not ruin the movie - he fits the idea of a follower who is used to taking orders, but there is something limited about his performance. I have a feeling if they had let him use his own accent he would be more at ease. 

Cameron’s work is pretty po-faced but he usually casts actors who can bring more personality and wit. Worthington seems a bit limited by the role.

Stephen Lang’s Quaritch is a cartoon, but I am a fan of his single-minded, Terminator-like tenacity.

 

As Selfridge, the corporate in charge of the mining operation, Giovanni Ribisi is wonderfully mediocre. He is a spiritual cousin to Aliens’ Burke (Paul Reiser), with no pretence of charm.

The one exception is Zoë Saldana as Neytiri. She popped the first time I watched it, and she did the same on the last viewing. She feels more alive and fully-realised than any of the other performers. I do not know how much of her expressiveness is down to the visual effects team, but there are more nuances to her physicality and facial expressions that feels more immediate and real than the other characters.

Saldana is the heart of the movie.

One thing I noticed this time was how the Na’vi design affects the character’s expressiveness. I kept wishing the Na’vi had more defined eyebrows - there is a frozen quality to the upper part of a lot of the Na’vi faces that makes it harder to track emotions.

I am agnostic on 3D in general - I am shortsighted in one eye and it means it takes awhile to adjust to the effect.

Avatar is one of the few movies where it feels necessary.

On this viewing, I paid particular attention to Cameron’s use of virtual camera-work. I cannot think of another filmmaker with a similar background in visual effects who knows how to use a virtual camera effectively.

His approach is so simple - he just makes sure the camera - its positioning and movement - maintains the same rules as a real camera. There is none of the free-floating camerawork we usually see in blockbusters with a lot of visual effects.

When Jake is learning how to fly the camera is crouched beside him like the camera-man is going handheld. When he is flying, the camera is either on the creature with him or shooting down or up in a stationary manner reminiscent of a crane or a helicopter. Because the camera’s perspective seems to be anchored to our understanding of how a camera is supposed to move in live action, it gives the scenes more weight. 

While there is a lot to talk about in terms of Avatar’s technological attributes and Cameron’s direction, before this viewing I was wondering if there was going to be any meat, any subtext, to chew on.

The biggest theme I picked out this time was the idea of how the human characters are in their own ways locked into only following orders. The characters who utilise avatars, who are presented as effectively robots for human control, but it is characters like Quaritch and Selfridge who are stuck as drones.

There is also Cameron’s fascination with technology and weaponry, and its potential to destroy and corrupt. 

All those elements are laudable, but Cameron is a filmmaker who does not want to hide anything. His movie is about whatever it is about.

Avatar is a movie about a human man who discovers his humanity/empathy when he becomes (literally and figuratively) an alien.

On its original release, I remember the unoriginality of the plot stuck in my mind. The movie seemed so straightforward I found myself wishing the movie had a slightly more cynical dimension to its story - particularly the concept of a white saviour. What would the Paul Verhoeven version of Avatar look like?   

This time I feel like I was meeting the movie on its own terms. There is nothing hidden or camouflaged in the text. 

Avatar is a big crowd-pleasing movie that executes its objectives. 

On its own terms, Avatar is a great movie - not without its flaws, but more than the sum of its parts.

My hope for the sequel is that Cameron is able to evolve the story as much as the technology of the story-telling.