MOVIE REVIEW: Avatar
So has anyone else seen Avatar? Did anyone else experience the absolute awesomeness of it yet? No? Then you should do it as soon as possible. Yes? Wasn't it amazing?
I had originally planned on seeing it on Sunday with my mom (who has been dying to see it since seeing a preview for it months ago). I really try not to go to really big movies like this on opening day because of the crowds, because you always have to sit up front and being so close to the screen makes me absolutely nauseous. But my cousin Liz and I were spending the day together, shopping, and at 10:30 last night we thought "let's go to a movie". Now at first we were going to go to The Princess and the Frog, which I still really want to see, but since there were no showings of it after 9 we couldn't. She then suggested Avatar, but only because she knew that I wanted to see it, she doesn't have television so she knew nothing about it and didn't have an opinion on watching either way. So we decided to go to the last showing and bought tickets... I'm so glad we did.
So we sat near the front, not the exact front, but close enough to make my nauseous, anyway. We were nervous about sitting so close and she has a claustrophobia thing that makes her hate crowds like this but we sucked up and stay anyway. The thing I really liked about where we were sitting was that we were surrounded by teenagers, and while teenagers annoy the fuck out of me and I as a rule I hate being in the same theater with them, they provide a certain aspect to my film viewing that you just can't get when surrounded by other adults. They don't bitch you out when you talk. Now don't get me wrong, I can sit silently through a movie if I have to, but when it comes to movie watching with Liz it's nearly impossible (I almost got kicked out of 300 and the third Pirates film because we comment on everything), and when it's all adults around you they freak out if you talk. So there was, I don't know, 15minutes of previews in which I talked and commented the way I always do. Clash of the Titans will be out soon and I am now almost as excited for that as I was for Avatar and we saw the Alice In Wonderland trailer in 3D, so I'm stoked for that too. But then it gets to the movie and I'm feeling sick to my stomach because of the closeness to the screen. All that changes though when the movie really gets going, you forget to be nauseous from being so close because you're so focused on the story.
To begin with James Cameron has employed Sigorney Weaver for this, and I'm excited because you don't see her in enough badass roles lately. She's not beating the shit out of aliens in this, but close enough. She's a scientist and a pretty effing cool one at that. The guy from Terminator, the one that wasn't Christian Bale, is the main character and it goes without saying that he is effing hot and an awesome actor (He'll be in Clash of the Titans too, in Aaron Echolls's old role). Zoe Saldana is in it (who I've loved ever since Center Stage and the Britney Spears movie) and it's obvious that this is totally her year, first with Star Trek and now with Avatar, but you don't see her because she's the alien chick, but you kind of see her because the aliens kind of look like their acting counterparts. But the best of all was Sunshine. Has anyone out there been watching Bones? Does anyone remember Fisher? He's very depressed (and depressing, but in a funny way) and Liz and I have taken to calling him 'Sunshine' (as in a little ray of), when he appeared on the screen in the movie we both said "It's Sunshine!". I thought it was particularly funny because in the ninth episode of the season he and Hodgins and Sweets are going to the release of Avatar I didn't realize he was actually in the movie though.
So the movie starts out, well, kind of slow. This guys twin brother died and he was supposed to be a 'driver' for one of these human/alien hybrids, run them like an avatar in order to gain the trust of the indigenous people. They have the same genome and nervous system and these things are expensive so why not? They go to this planet called Pandora where they're strip mining the place for this particular rock. At first Mr Marine is all about helping the military and corporate sponsors (who is Giovani Ribisi btw, who I also love and I can't remember his name in the movie, I just referred to him as Frank Jr thoughout the whole thing though) get the rock and move the people. Especially when Jake gets lost in the wilderness and the girl finds him. The girl, who my cousin and I realized has a lot in common with Pocahontas. At this point I started thinking that it was a lot like Pocahontas with aliens. I was kind of right, and that makes Jake Sully John Smith.
He gets accepted into their culture, taught their languages and their ways and all the while Grace (Sigorney Weaver) and Sunshine (who's name in the movie is Norm, but we just referred to him as Sunshine) are helping. He get accepted into their culture and they make him one of them. Then he mates with Pocahontas in front of Eywa, their deity. He has become attached to this culture and this world, saying that it has become reality for him and this reality, where he's a human, isn't what is real to him. But the problem is, he started as a military man and they thing (as the military often does) that they have any and all rights to him and his video diary now. They destroy the 'sacred' place now and even though he tries to make them see what they'd be destroying the military destroys the people's homes and everything. Burns it to the ground. Michelle Rodriguez, who plays a military helicopter pilot helps them out, breaks them out of the brig, and helps them go rogue. Moves the portable research facility deeper into the mountains and they try to take a stand. We were also shocked she gave Sunshine a gun. Grace get shot, dies, even though the people try to channel her spirit into her avatar body.
This is where Jake helps them take a stand against the 'Sky People'. Helps them unite all the clans and attack the humans in the air and on land. As wars go, it was bloody and a lot of natives died. But more humans died than natives. The natives knew how to work the land and the sky where the humans didn't. On top of that, everything on this planet is connected through the network of the planet, it's all tied together and when the planet feels that the balance of life is being threatened, she fights back. They fight off the people, but with major casualties. The new clan chief is killed, only a day or two after the old one. The Pocahontas chick is almost killed too, several times, but she comes back with a vengeance, kills the bad military guy but he's already broken the windows on the research facility where Jake is. Humans can't survive in this atmosphere, there isn't enough oxygen, they said at the beginning that you're unconscious in 20 seconds, dead in 4 minutes. So Jake's body is dying and Naturi (Pocahontas chick) finds him and saves him, only just getting his mask on him in time). Sunshine gets shot, but in his avatar body so it dies but he lives. Michelle Rodriguez dies, but takes out a bunch of helicopters before hers finally goes down. She's pretty effing badass (as usual) in this movie.
Jake survives, and they push the sky people out, especially since there's no longer any military there to keep them safe. Jake stays, as does Matt (another scientist who stayed behind on the base even as an inside man, even though he helped them escape with Michelle) and Sunshine, even though neither has an avatar. Matt never had one and Sunshine's is dead (although I like to imagine that they eventually grew new avatars, the way they said they did in the beginning). Jake stays, and in the end he goes to the ritual where the people sit and try to channel his spirit into the avatar, killing his human self but his spirit goes into the avatar and there he stays instead of having to split himself between his human self and his avatar self. The movie ends with him opening his eyes. I like to believe that Matt and Sunshine regrew their avatar bodies and eventually became their avatar selves, even though they probably didn't have the equipment to do it anymore (left with Giovani) and the reason Sunshine and Grace weren't chosen to become part of The People was because they already thought they knew what the culture was about. Jake didn't know anything about them. They probably stayed there and lived out their lives with them, because they couldn't go back to Earth, they helped drive the humans/sky-people out, 'betrayed' their own race as military jackass said (let me tell you, I've never been so happy for people to die... it was weird).
Throughout the whole movie I couldn't help comparing it with the white man's take over of America, them taking the land from the natives. Liz and I discussed how this is probably how our people wish that it would've gone down, but the thing is that John Smith never returned like Jake Sully did. I don't know, I drew parallels to it and so did Liz and that's what it meant to us. Just like when we watched Australia last year we saw how they would try to breed the black out of the kids and the half-breeds were taken away from their parents. That happened in America, with the Native Americans. My grandma and her sisters were taken away from their parents for a while, the white men tried to take the Indian out of them by forcing their culture on them. My grandmother looked a lot more Native American than her older sister so she got treated worse by everyone, including her sister who looked more like a white girl. My great aunt was horrible to my grandma because of this. Of course we sat next to a girl at that movie who didn't get it and said that it was a horrible movie. We sat next to a girl in this movie who didn't get it either, she stood up and said it was the stupidest movie she'd ever seen. I guess some people aren't that deep, they can't see past their own crap to see the underlying points in the plot.
Anyway, it was an awesome movie, I really suggest going to it.
I had originally planned on seeing it on Sunday with my mom (who has been dying to see it since seeing a preview for it months ago). I really try not to go to really big movies like this on opening day because of the crowds, because you always have to sit up front and being so close to the screen makes me absolutely nauseous. But my cousin Liz and I were spending the day together, shopping, and at 10:30 last night we thought "let's go to a movie". Now at first we were going to go to The Princess and the Frog, which I still really want to see, but since there were no showings of it after 9 we couldn't. She then suggested Avatar, but only because she knew that I wanted to see it, she doesn't have television so she knew nothing about it and didn't have an opinion on watching either way. So we decided to go to the last showing and bought tickets... I'm so glad we did.
So we sat near the front, not the exact front, but close enough to make my nauseous, anyway. We were nervous about sitting so close and she has a claustrophobia thing that makes her hate crowds like this but we sucked up and stay anyway. The thing I really liked about where we were sitting was that we were surrounded by teenagers, and while teenagers annoy the fuck out of me and I as a rule I hate being in the same theater with them, they provide a certain aspect to my film viewing that you just can't get when surrounded by other adults. They don't bitch you out when you talk. Now don't get me wrong, I can sit silently through a movie if I have to, but when it comes to movie watching with Liz it's nearly impossible (I almost got kicked out of 300 and the third Pirates film because we comment on everything), and when it's all adults around you they freak out if you talk. So there was, I don't know, 15minutes of previews in which I talked and commented the way I always do. Clash of the Titans will be out soon and I am now almost as excited for that as I was for Avatar and we saw the Alice In Wonderland trailer in 3D, so I'm stoked for that too. But then it gets to the movie and I'm feeling sick to my stomach because of the closeness to the screen. All that changes though when the movie really gets going, you forget to be nauseous from being so close because you're so focused on the story.
To begin with James Cameron has employed Sigorney Weaver for this, and I'm excited because you don't see her in enough badass roles lately. She's not beating the shit out of aliens in this, but close enough. She's a scientist and a pretty effing cool one at that. The guy from Terminator, the one that wasn't Christian Bale, is the main character and it goes without saying that he is effing hot and an awesome actor (He'll be in Clash of the Titans too, in Aaron Echolls's old role). Zoe Saldana is in it (who I've loved ever since Center Stage and the Britney Spears movie) and it's obvious that this is totally her year, first with Star Trek and now with Avatar, but you don't see her because she's the alien chick, but you kind of see her because the aliens kind of look like their acting counterparts. But the best of all was Sunshine. Has anyone out there been watching Bones? Does anyone remember Fisher? He's very depressed (and depressing, but in a funny way) and Liz and I have taken to calling him 'Sunshine' (as in a little ray of), when he appeared on the screen in the movie we both said "It's Sunshine!". I thought it was particularly funny because in the ninth episode of the season he and Hodgins and Sweets are going to the release of Avatar I didn't realize he was actually in the movie though.
So the movie starts out, well, kind of slow. This guys twin brother died and he was supposed to be a 'driver' for one of these human/alien hybrids, run them like an avatar in order to gain the trust of the indigenous people. They have the same genome and nervous system and these things are expensive so why not? They go to this planet called Pandora where they're strip mining the place for this particular rock. At first Mr Marine is all about helping the military and corporate sponsors (who is Giovani Ribisi btw, who I also love and I can't remember his name in the movie, I just referred to him as Frank Jr thoughout the whole thing though) get the rock and move the people. Especially when Jake gets lost in the wilderness and the girl finds him. The girl, who my cousin and I realized has a lot in common with Pocahontas. At this point I started thinking that it was a lot like Pocahontas with aliens. I was kind of right, and that makes Jake Sully John Smith.
He gets accepted into their culture, taught their languages and their ways and all the while Grace (Sigorney Weaver) and Sunshine (who's name in the movie is Norm, but we just referred to him as Sunshine) are helping. He get accepted into their culture and they make him one of them. Then he mates with Pocahontas in front of Eywa, their deity. He has become attached to this culture and this world, saying that it has become reality for him and this reality, where he's a human, isn't what is real to him. But the problem is, he started as a military man and they thing (as the military often does) that they have any and all rights to him and his video diary now. They destroy the 'sacred' place now and even though he tries to make them see what they'd be destroying the military destroys the people's homes and everything. Burns it to the ground. Michelle Rodriguez, who plays a military helicopter pilot helps them out, breaks them out of the brig, and helps them go rogue. Moves the portable research facility deeper into the mountains and they try to take a stand. We were also shocked she gave Sunshine a gun. Grace get shot, dies, even though the people try to channel her spirit into her avatar body.
This is where Jake helps them take a stand against the 'Sky People'. Helps them unite all the clans and attack the humans in the air and on land. As wars go, it was bloody and a lot of natives died. But more humans died than natives. The natives knew how to work the land and the sky where the humans didn't. On top of that, everything on this planet is connected through the network of the planet, it's all tied together and when the planet feels that the balance of life is being threatened, she fights back. They fight off the people, but with major casualties. The new clan chief is killed, only a day or two after the old one. The Pocahontas chick is almost killed too, several times, but she comes back with a vengeance, kills the bad military guy but he's already broken the windows on the research facility where Jake is. Humans can't survive in this atmosphere, there isn't enough oxygen, they said at the beginning that you're unconscious in 20 seconds, dead in 4 minutes. So Jake's body is dying and Naturi (Pocahontas chick) finds him and saves him, only just getting his mask on him in time). Sunshine gets shot, but in his avatar body so it dies but he lives. Michelle Rodriguez dies, but takes out a bunch of helicopters before hers finally goes down. She's pretty effing badass (as usual) in this movie.
Jake survives, and they push the sky people out, especially since there's no longer any military there to keep them safe. Jake stays, as does Matt (another scientist who stayed behind on the base even as an inside man, even though he helped them escape with Michelle) and Sunshine, even though neither has an avatar. Matt never had one and Sunshine's is dead (although I like to imagine that they eventually grew new avatars, the way they said they did in the beginning). Jake stays, and in the end he goes to the ritual where the people sit and try to channel his spirit into the avatar, killing his human self but his spirit goes into the avatar and there he stays instead of having to split himself between his human self and his avatar self. The movie ends with him opening his eyes. I like to believe that Matt and Sunshine regrew their avatar bodies and eventually became their avatar selves, even though they probably didn't have the equipment to do it anymore (left with Giovani) and the reason Sunshine and Grace weren't chosen to become part of The People was because they already thought they knew what the culture was about. Jake didn't know anything about them. They probably stayed there and lived out their lives with them, because they couldn't go back to Earth, they helped drive the humans/sky-people out, 'betrayed' their own race as military jackass said (let me tell you, I've never been so happy for people to die... it was weird).
Throughout the whole movie I couldn't help comparing it with the white man's take over of America, them taking the land from the natives. Liz and I discussed how this is probably how our people wish that it would've gone down, but the thing is that John Smith never returned like Jake Sully did. I don't know, I drew parallels to it and so did Liz and that's what it meant to us. Just like when we watched Australia last year we saw how they would try to breed the black out of the kids and the half-breeds were taken away from their parents. That happened in America, with the Native Americans. My grandma and her sisters were taken away from their parents for a while, the white men tried to take the Indian out of them by forcing their culture on them. My grandmother looked a lot more Native American than her older sister so she got treated worse by everyone, including her sister who looked more like a white girl. My great aunt was horrible to my grandma because of this. Of course we sat next to a girl at that movie who didn't get it and said that it was a horrible movie. We sat next to a girl in this movie who didn't get it either, she stood up and said it was the stupidest movie she'd ever seen. I guess some people aren't that deep, they can't see past their own crap to see the underlying points in the plot.
Anyway, it was an awesome movie, I really suggest going to it.