Avatar (2009)

Avatar

Written and Directed by James Cameron

 

            Well, here’s an interesting movie.  It’s the phenomenon that has captured the imagination of the world.  I know you have many questions.  Is it all it’s cracked up to be?  Is it even good?  What cereal is the best?  Well I have answers for all of those questions, and many more.  Read on, young journeymen, read on.

            There is one thing I really liked about Avatar and one thing that I really didn’t like.  What I didn’t like was the story.  What I did like was the visuals.  Here’s what the story was: A paralyzed marine named Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington, or the good robot, and only good part, from Terminator: Salvation) is forced to infiltrate the natives (known as the Na’vi on the distant moon-planet known as Pandora with missions to destroy their race.  Jake does this by using an Avatar.  Basically, his brain gets plugged into the body of a creature whose DNA has been combined with his to create his own unique Avatar.  Of course, Jake is the only person that the natives will let join their family.  Upon becoming a part of the Na’vi, Jake falls in love with them.  Soon, he is forced to take a side – the humans or the Na’vi.  Which one do you think he chooses?  That’s right, he chooses the Na’vi.  He then helps them to fight off the humans, eventually winning the war, and he becomes the king of the Na’vi and sends the humans back home.  Does any of this sound familiar?  It should, because you’ve seen it in EVERY MOVIE YOU’VE EVER SEEN!!!  So the one thing I didn’t like about this movie was probably the most important thing you’d want to keep somebody watching it.  Fortunately, there was a lot to like about this.

            I guess the first thing that I should talk about is the special FX, because that seems to be what everybody is talking about with this flick.  Yes, James Cameron did create new technology for this movie.  No, you did not see the effect of this technology.  Let me take a moment to explain.  When movies and video games involving a lot of computer generated creatures are made, they’re usually done using motion capture technologies.  Motion capture is when the actor or actress wears a black leotard with dozens of tiny little green ping pong balls on it (it looks like this).  The actor then performs however he or she wants and then the movements of the little balls are converted into computer code.  Then they use the computer to create a CGI creature, and use the actors movements as a template.  They used this technology for Gollum in Lord of the Rings and King Kong in….King Kong, as well as in countless other movies.  What James Cameron did for Avatar, is he created a camera that converted the ping pong ball movements directly into the image that we see on the screen.  Previously, when people used Motion Capture technology, it would take several months of computer work to convert the MoCap into a believable character, and the actor, director and crew would often have to go back several times to create new data.  With Cameron’s new camera, they can do it on the set, and it only has to be done once.

            When it comes to the special effects, Cameron really took his time with this.  It took him 10 years to complete the visuals of this.  The entire movie takes place on a distant planet, and believe me, you will buy every second of it.  You will be upset that this magical planet doesn’t exist, because it is completely beautiful.  I’ve never seen any thing like this, and I really hope I get to see more of it.  Cameron and the FX company (Weta, which is owned by Peter Jackson, who did the Lord of the Rings movies) put thought and time into each individual blade of grass, and it really showed.  The digital characters were done very well.  The first scene was a little awkward, but I think it was meant to be that way.   After about 15 minutes of seeing the Avatars and the Na’vi, you never once think of them as digital creations.  These are living, breathing people, and you genuinely care about them.  The action sequences were spectacular as well.  Each one had me on the edge of my seat.  Last, the 3D was superb.  Most movies use 3D as a gimmick.  Lots of shots of things coming towards the camera, things like that.  Avatar used it differently.  Everything was in 3D, but it was all pretty natural.  Sure, there were some shots down long hallways, but for the most part, it was all just a regular movie in 3 dimensions.

Next, the casting.  Sam Worthington did a pretty good job (just like he did in T:S, an otherwise pretty mediocre movie). Here as the main character.  I was totally with him on his entire journey.  He never became unbelievable.  His emotion was always real.  He did a good job, and I see a lot of good things ahead for this kid.  Zoe Saldana performed just as well.  Even though her character was done digitally and you never see the actual actress, her facial ticks and physical expressions definitely show through.  She did a really great job at making us believe in her as a character with real thoughts and feelings.  The rest of the cast, however, were just a bunch of stereotypes.  Giovanni Ribisi, who is usually pretty awesome, is simply the uncaring bad guy.  He plays the same character as Bill Paxton in Aliens.  He’s just completely evil.  Sigourney Weaver plays the environmentalist scientist.  She’s just on Pandora to observe the natives and the wildlife.  She doesn’t want anybody to get hurt.  There was one interesting line where Jake said “Dr. Augustine knew what I was doing, but she let it happen so that she could get closer to the Na’vi.”  I found this line incredibly interesting, but they never said anything else about it.  Stage actor Stephen Lang played Colonel Miles Quaritch.  If Giovanni Ribisi’s character was evil, then Colonel Quaritch was Satan.  He says all the things that you expect a bad guy to say, like “Shut your pie hole” and “It seems diplomacy has failed.”  The bad thing about this movie, as I said before, is that for the most part, it’s incredibly predictable, right down to the characters and the dialogue.  And boy is the dialogue atrocious is some parts of this movie.  Just plain terrible.  Cheesy dialogue is fine in a movie with good actors that embrace the cheese (like Inglorious Basterds).  Cheesy dialogue is not acceptable in a movie that tries to be an epic adventure (like Avatar). There were many parts where the cheesy dialogue took me completely out of the experience.

Did I like Avatar?  Hell yes.  The experience was extraordinary.  Was it a good movie?  Kind of.  The story and characters were nothing new.  The dialogue was downright bad.  But it looked beautiful.  And even though I’ve seen the story at least 3 million times, I still enjoyed myself.  I truly believe that it’s a game changer, at least when it comes to filmmaking.  Does it deserve awards for Best film? Hell no.  Best director, definitely, but this is not the best film I’ve seen this year, not by a long shot.  I can still recommend it though.  I’m gonna give it a 7.5/10.

Daybreakers (2009)

Daybreakers (2009)

Written and Directed by The Spierig Brothers

            Daybreakers is the movie that Twilight wishes it was.  Well, that’s not entirely true. Let the Right One In is the movie that Twilight wishes it was, but I’ll save that for another review.  Daybreakers is about what would really happen to Edward if he wasn’t nibbling at Bella’s neck every chance he got.

            Daybreakers is set in 2019, and vampires have taken over the world.  They tried to make a deal with the remaining humans, but the humans said no, and thus, they were hunted.  Actually, they were farmed, except for the ones who went into hiding.  Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, a vampire hematologist (that’s a blood doctor) in charge of making a blood substitute, as the human supply is beginning to run low.  As expected, he hate his job, because he “feels bad” for the humans.  Sam Neill (Jurassic Park in the heezy!) plays Charles Bromley, the head of some corporation that controls the world’s blood supply.  Naturally, he is the film’s villian. On the other side of the fence, Claudia Karvan (Who I’ve never heard of.  Rightfully so, as IMDB tells me that she’s never been in anything that I’ve seen, which is a symptom of one of my main problems with this flick.) plays the female leader of the human resistance.  Willem Dafoe plays her friend, and he is the most memorable part of the flick.  Ethan Hawke soon leaves the corporate world for the chance to make a cure for vampirism with Dafoe and Nipples McGee, er Claudia Karvan.

            There was a lot that was simply just mediocre about this flick.  The acting was eh.  The story was lackluster.  But there was some good, so we’ll start with that.  The FX were great.  It appears that the production lacked a budget, and what budget it did have clearly went to making shit look cool, and it worked for the most part.  The bad vampires looked awesome, especially that one that attacked Ethan Hawke and his “Out-in-the-military” brother in Hawke’s apartment/condo/awesome freaking home.  We didn’t really see any transformations, but Michael Bay didn’t direct this, so that was fine.  Also awesome, as usual and as mentioned above, was Willem Dafoe.  I’ve known of the superb greatness of Dafoe for many years now, and most people probably recognize him from Spiderman, but if you haven’t seen Boondock Saints, then you’re missing out big-time.  He was on the ball here, delivering one-liner after one-liner, and he kicked some ass to boot, unlike his much younger co-star Ethan Hawke.  I’m not saying Ethan Hawke was bad, because I like the Hawke, and he truly wasn’t bad here.  He made us care for him, and that was his job, so I’d say he was good.  But he wasn’t the action star that he should have been.  Sam Neill chewed up scenery like he was a fat kid in the Entenmann’ store.  It makes me wonder why he hasn’t been doing more recently.  I don’t think I’ve seen him since the disaster that was Jurassic Park 3.  Another great thing about this flick was the use of vampire mythology.  No sparkling, metrosexual, brooding, vampires here.  Only badassery all around.  The gore was there, and I had a blast with it.  People exploded, heads were removed, eyes were gouged out, and it was all great.  I also loved that awesome car chase with the cars with blacked out windows.  Really cool.

            Now, on to the bad.  The story was ok, at best.  Everybody was a cliché.  Willem Dafoe was a former vampire, turned human, set out to destroy the vampires.  Ethan Hawke was a vampire hematologist that DIDN’T DRINK HUMAN BLOOD.  His brother was an arrogant, pushy, military type.  The lead chick had had something happen to her family.  Sam Neill’s rebellious daughter (played particularly well by the lovely Isabel Lucas, who you saw as the Decepticon in disguise this summer in Transformers 2: The Worst Movie I’ve Ever Seen) didn’t want to be a vampire, and when she became one, she caused trouble.  All I’m saying is, the characters could have and should have been a little more fleshed out (no pun intended).  Also, the whole middle of the flick seemed to be missing an action sequence, as I kind of zoned out during it.  This is a by-product of having a very small budget, and this just means that the Brothers Spierig should have spent their money a little more wisely, which brings me to my next point – this movie should have gone straight to DVD, and the only reason it didn’t was the fact that Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe were in it.  Did you notice any other real stars here? Nope.  I think that they should have used a little more money and cast a known actress instead of Claudia Karvan.  The flick could have used a credible female lead instead of some unknown with zero acting abilities.

            Overall, I’d say Daybreakers was okay.  And the people I saw it with seemed to agree.  Mythology wise – it was great.  The idea was great as well.  The execution, on the other hand, was just ok.  If you already saw Avatar, then go see this.  If you haven’t, then there is at least one other movie out there that is much better than this.  It’s worth a rental at least, though.  I’ll give it a 6 out of 10.