An old story gets a facelift

Love it or hate it, everyone is talking about the movie that put James Cameron’s work back into the spotlight. That movie is “Avatar.”

Cameron’s resume already included big blockbusters like “Terminator,” “Aliens,” “Titanic” and “True Lies,” and in his newest film, viewers are thrown into a strange new planet called Pandora. Here, efforts are underway by a group of humans to gain the trust of the planet’s natives, the Na’vi. The human’s are primarily occupying the planet to harvest a resource called unobtainium, that, for an uncertain reason, is worth an unfathomable amount of money. The largest deposit of this rock is located under a large Na’vi settlement in a tree (Hometree), which appears to be the size of a large mountain here on earth. Thus, the conflict begins.

While a military operation to relocate the Na’vi has an itchy trigger finger, scientists were trying a diplomatic guise instead. The avatar program was designed to procure the unobtainium peacefully. Scientists take DNA from both a Na’vi and a human ’driver’ to create an ‘avatar.’ It can then be controlled in a Matrix-style command console, where the driver assumes the avatar body’s physical sensation, motor control, etc.

Enter main character, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), whose twin brother was an avatar driver, but died before his operation began. Sully, a paraplegic ex-Marine assumes his brother’s duty. This plot device seems relevant because the brothers would have the same DNA and he can be introduced as an outsider of both the Na’vi and the science lab, with a tendency to side with the Marines at first. This military authority wants to take Hometree by force. So Sully begins feeding them information as he learns from the natives. This continues until he falls in love with, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) a Na’vi hunter and learns all the ways of her people. His two worlds collide and he must choose to be loyal to his own race or save these people he has become a part of.

Now, this type of story has clearly been done before in movies like “Fern Gully,” Disney’s “Pocahontas” and “Dances with Wolves.” In fact, Cameron has been quoted saying he was inspired by “Lawrence of Arabia.” These tales all include an outsider coming into a land populated by beings they don’t understand. The hero also arrives with knowledge of a predetermined plan of eventually using some kind of destructive force. But after becoming a part of those people, they decide to save the group of people from the threat instead. So, maybe Avatar doesn’t get an A for originality in its story line, but it certainly gets an A-plus for innovative use of technology and expanding the book on movie magic forever.

WETA workshop of New Zealand, (partly owned by Peter Jackson) which worked on “Lord of the Rings,” among numerous other major flicks, created new technology for Cameron’s movie. It incorporated real-time body and facial motion-capture. This means everything you see the animated Na’vi doing on-screen actors actually did for the camera. OK, maybe they didn’t really fly on the backs of prehistoric looking banshees or a leonopteryx, but I’m sure they used something of-this-worldly to replace them. This technology also allows for a real-life feel of everything you see in Pandora. This is why the movie experience may seem so real to viewers. Using this technology, “Avatar” achieved something never done before in a movie of its magnitude, reach-out-and-touch photorealistic animation.

The 3D element of this film adds to this film’s visual jaw-droppingness. After you get over the initial vertigo, the 3D specs shatter the flat barrier of the movie screen and reveal a window to a new world. This is especially true if that window was a 72’ by 53’ plus Imax screen.

Actress Sigourney Weaver (Aliens) returns to Cameron’s side as Dr. Grace Augustine, the lead scientist in the avatar program. Augustine is primarily interested in studying the ecology of Pandora, not the unobtainium mining operation. She is also very anti-militaristic, which could be said for the entire film as well. Augustine has an avatar herself, which looks almost a little too much like her, possibly for more face time, but on the graphics front, it can be overlooked. Other than that, the world of Pandora is unlike anything “Ferngully” or “Pocahontas” could shake a magical tree limb at.

Every color is a bright and clearly defined shade, like an Easter egg married to incredible depth and lighting on every sinewy body and furry tail. As far as scenery, the floating “Halleluiah Mountains” are larger than life and is a lot like seeing an unbelievable hovering landscape in person. The creatures, story and ecology of Pandora is something Cameron has worked on for roughly 15 years and the thought and detail that went into how the world works together is evident.

To recap, “Avatar” is heavy on visual effects, making this movie the sweet, sweet eye candy it is. Almost every scene uses digital effects in some way. It has anti-militaristic and pro-nature tendencies and touches on topics of diversity and personal differences.

Although, the main story arc is nothing new to Hollywood, this movie is hardly something that can be passed up as, not only a visual, experience but spiritual one.

Chris Reynolds can be contacted at ae@keeneequinox.com.