Mathilde Cork

James Cameron's science fiction epic Avatar (2009) is the most beautiful movie I have ever had the displeasure of watching. In its initial release Avatar garnered mass positive reviews and made 164 million dollars opening weekend and went on to make over 2 billion dollars total. Why did it do so well you might ask, well there are a few key reasons. First and foremost Avatar was one of the first ever films to be released in cinemas in 3D. The second is the names attached to the project. Notably James Cameron is an incredibly famous filmmaker who gave us amazing blockbusters like 1986’s Aliens, 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day and 1997’s Titanic. That matched with big actors such as Sigourney Weaver who has previously collaborated with the director, and Zoe Saldana who is now famous for the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. The third and final reason why the movie did so well (and also the only real positive feedback I have) is the visuals. The visual effects team on the movie outdid themselves. It is such a vibrant colorful movie when we are taken into Pandora. All the wildlife and natural flora and fauna (while being entirely animated which i'm not fond of) looks incredible. The colours jump off the screen and help to make the world feel as real and enjoyable as possible. Unfortunately the rest of the film lets the visual effects team down. Secondly the script is the biggest problem with the film. I will break it down into two parts, the story and the dialogue. The story is the larger of the two problems so I will benign there. Avatar follows a simple and derivative story which has been done many times over. It follows the protagonist Jake, a paralised veteran who is brought to the moon Pandora to serve in his brother's place. Here he goes into an avatar and mingles with the Na'vi in there natural environment and realises that they are being oppressed by a large corporation who is trying to steal their land and resources, there is than a grand final battle where the N’avi fight to win back their land from the evil corporation. Now firstly this story sounds enjoyable off the bat, but the closer you look at it the more you see the pieces stolen from better movies and combined into this dull derivative script. Concepts taken from films such as 1990’s Dances with Wolves, 2003’s The Last Samurai and 1995’s Pocahontas. Each of these films may not be perfect or the best version of this kind of story however they each had interesting themes and ideas which were rather original at the time, nowadays as we have seen the story before Avatar seems dull and slow and simply made me nostalgic for these better films. The second biggest problem with the story is the excessive use of cliques and ex machinas. Throughout the film the constant reliance on these elements drew me right out of the film and highlighted the extremely fictional nature of the movie. I'm fine with a fantasy being unrealistic but when the characters and actions are to it destroys the movie magic. The second worst part of the script is the dialogue. This is a smaller point but it also draws attention out of the movie. Through it the dialogue consists of random and extreme expositional rants and poor attempts at humour which are misplaced and not funny. Furthermore the expositional voice over is dull and adds nothing to the movie, it simply outlines that Cameron is not a good writer and couldn't figure out a way to naturally explain Jake and his backstory.