Mithmeoi

And now for the first post of the new year!  Happy 2010 folks.  That has a catchy ring to it.  Anyways in my movie watching endeavors I have seen, viewed, brain-fully consumed Avatar.  I got like four other movies I plan on plopping on this site for review too but since Avatar is the hot topic for the moment it’ll go here now.

I first heard about it lat last year and was like oh Avatar is coming out, wait… this isn’t Avatar with that bald kid that plays with wind, this is… what… blue… people…WHAT?  I was rather confused so I googled it and found that a movie called Avatar, just like the tv series, was being directed by the famed James Cameron, who I also didn’t recognize till I googled him as well.

So I started watching it and so far it seemed pretty cool, as it moved along I was like oh they put his mind in a body through computers… ok.  That’s an interesting concept.  Keeps going hmm ok he’s meeting a blue person and… I have to admit the graphics were awesome.  The creatures in this movie are cool, well designed and animated.  I kinda got lost in the cgi, and I knew it was cgi and not real but it worked.  Unlike Beowulf and some of the other mostly cgi movies this one works.  I dunno how they did it but they did.  The weight of the creatures, the texture, everything is really just great.  You know it’s not real yet it still seems like it could be.

The story, however, is kinda predictable and a bit TOO preachy.  It’s blatant there is an agenda which that did bother me a bit but the eye candy kind of covers it up.  I did find it lame that the blue people, yes I forgot their “species” name, can tap into living creatures via some kind of organic lan.  The “mother tree” I dunno how they called it in the film now… anyways houses all the memories and such of the past generations.  They can even pass souls through the tree to new bodies, but I won’t say much more on this before I give a big spoiler.

So the humans go through and want to tear down their forests to get this extremely valuable mineral/rock or whatever it is and they don’t care about the locals.  Typical humans are the bad guy type thing.  The few that get avatar bodies start to fall in love with the people and such and they don’t want all of it to happen, and at this point it reminds me of Disney’s Pocahontas.  Only they didn’t pawn it off as historical.  haha

So the main guy, who is an invalid, sent in on the project gets his avatar body and is addicted to the fact he can walk again.  He is sent in to win the trust of the locals to see if he can get them to move out so they can move in and harvest the planet’s resources.  However, in the process, he falls in love with the chief’s daughter, *gasp*  now you see why I said it reminded me of that cartoon.  He then tries to stop the “war” and the destruction of their habitat and tree of life.  Hmm yea sounding REAL familiar still, minus the invalid part.  I won’t say what happens next just to keep away from spoilers a bit more.

I will add that most of the characters were pretty well built up, they were either like-able or hate-able.  You felt for them when something happened which is kind of rare these days in movies.  At least I find it is.

I have to say James Horner did a nice job on the score.   Though it did sound like a combination of “A Beautiful Mind”, “Patriot Games”, and another film I cannot think of at the moment.  Although most of the themes were kind of recycled it is still pleasant to listen to.  I always have enjoyed his music, but I think he’s lost his touch in coming up with new and strong themes.  Amazingly the “Heritage of the Wolf” theme was not in there.  On going joke that he always slips that into his scores somewhere.

Ok so I’ll wrap things up finally with, I DID enjoy this movie.  The graphics and animation were quite amazing and although the story was too preachy at times it was interesting at least, even if I could correctly predict what happened next.  The action and what all went on kept me entertained and it didn’t feel like a two and half hour film.  Unlike *cough* New Moon *cough* where it felt like two hours was an eternity.  Anyways, I would recommend it to see in the theaters and especially if it’s 3D.  It’s worth seeing just for the graphics alone, I find it a shame the story didn’t match up to them, but ah well.  I enjoyed it well enough and that’s all that counts I guess.  I was entertained and that was the point of the movie.