I just came back from James Cameron’s Avatar.
This movie was possibly one of the craziest feature films I have ever watched. It turns out that my buddy wrote a review that dead-on sums up all my opinions on it and is incredibly witty and great. So here it is for your reading enjoyment.
Avatar: Holy Crap!
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WARNING!! CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!
SERIOUSLY. DON’T READ THIS IS YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE!!!
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The owner of this lovely written spell.
Avatar is a movie about interspecies romance, wherein blue people with no clothes have USB Compatible genitals in their ponytails. This is the planet that Mystique came from, and a lot of people here look like her. Everything on their planet glows, flashes, strobes or luminesces in some way because that is fucking awesome. At night when the sun goes down, someone turns on the black lights and they have badass jungle raves until the Terrans from Star Craft show up with Master Chief’s air force and start bulldozing their trees.
The terrans are looking for the mystic metal of Unobtainium. They obviously want to make an alloy of it with Wonderflownium so that they can make a SUPER doomsday device to counteract Dr. Horrible.
The movie is about Avatars, which are basically unholy bastardizations of the indigenous people of Beautopia, or whatever they called indiglo planet. Someone working for Cameron must have watched Evangelion, because they are basically super-human war machines who are controlled by possessing their minds through a computer interface. They are blue, in prime physical hominid physique, and have tails, which makes them fucking awesome. As I mentioned before the planet Beautopia is totally rigged for USB networking, and you can plug your hair tentacle into pretty much anything with some degree of comparability. Chances are really good you’ll end up mind melded to something that glows int he dark, has more teeth than a running chainsaw, and totally puts out on the first date.
I wonder what Bluetopian tastes like?
In the movie, Sigourney Weaver plays Jane Fonda Dr. Grace Augustine, a science-chick-cum-cultural
-anthropologist. She obviously spent a great deal of time in the missionary position in the pre-story development cycle. Which is to say, teaching natives to speak English and building
churches schools. She has a secret hide-away with some really comfortable beds way up in the flying mountains where none of the standard electronic surveillance works, which is way way better than a van down by the river. She also has this really cool ability to take over an Avatar, which basically makes her look like one of the indigenous people, hilariously dressed in Shaquille O’Neill’s clothing. And despite the fact that the movie is chock fucking full of exo-suits, at no point does she enter into, operate, confront or assault one of these, which left me very disappointed.
Her jarhead, stereotypical jock soldier boy counterpart is popular Southpark character Timmy Jake Sully, played by a dude named Sam Worthington, who was in nothing I really know a damn thing about except one episode of JAG back in 2000, and a Terminator movie I haven’t seen yet. After the never-mentioned-again death of his twin brother who got a bankers box funeral, he went on to be the most productive paraplegic space marine in the entire corps. Wheeling around in his chair and obviously hating life, he casually mentions something about gambling debts keeping him from getting that spinal surgery for christmas or something. When the russian mafiaUNSC russian mafia tells him they’ll fix his ruined spine if he agrees to operate the Evangelion, he agrees unhesitatingly to bring the first shipment of smallpox blankets to the blue man group. On his first day out however, he fucks with some gnarly mushrooms and gets himself chased off of a giant waterfall by Mecha Bagheera. it’s pretty awesome actually. Finding himself lost in the woods with nothing but a conveniently placed kerosene tree and some saber toothed dachshunds, he manages a last minute escape from being cornholed by being rescued by Pocahontas.
Pocahontas Neytiri is played by a seriously gorgeous Zoe Saldana, who became 2 feet taller and a totally different ethnic colour for the role, which is pretty forward thinking for an actress. The fact that she has a tail is freakin awesome too. I think she also has retractable nipples, because while she’s not wearing any real CLOTHES, the necklace that serves as a vanity guard is pretty ambiguous about whether they exist or don’t exist for sure. The mystery is actually one of the better things in the movie. She’s totally hot for Timmy, but doesn’t know why. At first she’s pissed off because the intensely spiritual uh… people… are seriously unhappy any time one of their USB peripherals is ejected improperly native lifeforms is not thanked for its sacrifice of life. She’s totally serious about killing him for a minute too, until he gets attacked by these pollenesque jellyfish things, which are, surprise surprise, glow in the dark. By attacked, I of course mean, really tentatively fondled and daintily alighted upon. I don’t know really but they really liked him, must have sensed his DEEP DOWN PURE SPIRIT past all the military reconnaissance he was doing to help them make a tactical superior force strike on the Life Tree. Anyways, she brings him home to meet mom, dad, and the obviously hateful xenophobic betrothed who can sense how much she love-at-first-sight’s Timmy.
Tsu’tey suffers from a lot of things, I think. the first being an apostrophised name. I don’t really know what to do with that shit. The second being a bad case of the Tokens. His actor is a brother named Laz Alonso, who has had a lot of samey minor roles as the Token Black Guy from what I can tell. Although I can say I remembered him immediately when I read his cast listing, from all the places I’d seen him, he was in such bit parts it was not really a career dynamic thing. That being said, this role really panned out for him. Which I dunno if anyone will ever get because he’s way blacker and shorter in person. And to the best of my knowledge he doesn’t speak Bluetopian for real, but I could be wrong. In the beginning, Apostrophe was totally a douche. He was reading cue cards out of stereotypes and was basically the jilted tribal betrothed. I believe in the appropriate psudo-american native terminology, a douchecanoe. Over the course of the movie he doesn’t really undergo much actual character development, but that’s cause no one wrote it for him. He did provide for a pretty good main line feed though. In the end however when Timmy realizes that he’s secretly as much of a cultural anthroplologist as his crispyfried brother, Apostrophe proves that the death of your father, the destruction of your homeland and the looming extinction of your people can really mellow a fucker out, and when confronted with a parapalegic puppeteer riding a god damned DRAGON, seriously owns up to the role of badass hunter. Even though his woman is totally tail-tied to him. That whole character vacuum really just… was.
Retarded amounts of awesome were casually splayed over my face.
There’s a whole mess of tertiary characters like Apostrophe in the movie. There’s Kumar the Science Guy who obviously suffered from Editing Room Floor syndrome, and there’s uhhh, Norm Spellman. Who was… Norm. He had a lot of potential to be a character driven kinda guy but he got glazed over as a contributor. I think it’s because despite all the shit they OBIOUSLY cut out, this movie was still three amazing hours long. Ma and Pa Blueskin were pretty generic, I only really knew who they were because of their trappings which I think was intended. I think that the movie had such a vast, vast untapped potential that it might actually make some author very very very fucking rich to novelize.
Now, on to the humans.
A lot of people out there could look at this movie, make some derogatory comments about tree hugging hippies and heavy handed messages. There are some pretty clear allusions to real life issues we struggle with today. There are some GROSS over-representations of these problems but that’s the joy of story telling. You’re SUPPOSED to use hyperbole. You are supposed to exaggerate issues and demonize things. Like in 300 with the fanged ninjas that was fuckin sweet. So yes, the air cadets, whoever they were for, were pretty much your stereotypical representation of douchebag invading money grubbing oil hungry bush era cheny toading asswipes. Timmy introduced himself as being from Clan Jarhead.
The guy running the op is an interesting sort though, he’s like a weird psudo-ethical suit. He’s obviously not happy with the decisions he has to make even though he plays the cocksucker like he was born with kneepads. He’s vaguely reminiscent of one of the ORIGINAL aliens characters, as played by Paul Reiser, except he’s a little bit less stone cold about it. He at least didn’t giggle during his acts of genocide. Which isn’t to say he showed any protest at all when they were using flamethrowers (coughgenevaconventioncoughwhat) and ordering the forcible relocation of indigenous ‘savages’. He talked the talk and walked the walk but he did it with a sweaty palmed, blood pressure pills in the coffee sort of demeanor that suggested he slept poorly at night. I liked it. Now, I seriously wish I could say I made up all the words in this little blitz, but Unobtanium is actually the name they went with for the shit they want to mine off of this planet. UNOBTAINIUM. He has a cell phone sized chunk of UNOBTAINIUM floating on his desk over a hover ball or something. He gives the orders and calls the shots, mostly, and at a point or two he acts as an enabler for the hero squad to get their shit done with a modicum of ethics, which is pretty nice of him. He blames shareholders. Throughout the whole movie I was like fuck fuck fuck this guy looks so familiar fuck fuck why can’t I place him. He looks seriously familiar. And his fucking name is GIOVANNI. Which is badass. Giovanni Ribisi. Fuggedaboudit. So this whole god damn time I’m like why do I keep seeing this guy as a punk kid? WHY? And it hits me. He was the retarded younger brother to a really bad actor Nicholas Cage in Gone in Sixty Seconds. I lol’d IRL.
The only other important human dude was Sarge. Now, I dunno if this is just an aspect of the military, but Good Sarge is always a black guy with a bad attitude and a deep caring heart. BAD Sarge is totally some white genocidal douchebag who wants to wreck shop and fuck people up for daring to be alive on his watch. he has a funky character-building scar, and at first he identifies really well with Timmy. Because Timmy is a lying sack of shit jarhead who serves the corps like a TRUE MARINE. Which is pretty good. because it means that eventually TRUE MARINES (like bitpart foehammer Pilot McTitties) decide not to fire on helpless civilian targets with anti-tank rounds and incendiary missiles. Sarge though, he did it whilst sipping coffee and slouching on someone else’s chair. This guy had a serious chip on his shoulder but it was dignified in that it was unexplained. He didn’t hate the blue meanies because they killed his platoon or gave him his disfiguring character building facial scar. He wasn’t angry at the world or planning vengeance or… arguably anyway, sociopathically insane. He was just fucking SARGE. Sarge says jump, you jump. Sarge says die, you get til the gas rounds clear out before they burn your fucking tree house down. I cannot argue that Sarge was a badass either. I mean, I looked at him and I said “You are the provided villain and I can sync with that.” But then I thought, ok, if Master Chief was doing this shit I would be jizzing myself and needing new pants. The difference, and the IMPORTANT difference that it is, is that the Covenant in Halo were taking pretty much the role the Humans in this movie were going with. Motivation trumps method.
That being said, the methods employed in this movie were sweet. I mean, there were badass flying gunships, rock awesome military and industry grade exosuits, dragony wyvern Gyaos lookin things, Guns, spears, bows, aerial battles, ground battles, cavalry charges met with anti-tank weapons. Floating cloud mountains equipped with track jammers making dogfights conveniently line of sight. Giant armored pumas and hammerhead bulbasaurs. It was seriously some epic shit right there. Makes me think back to when everyone got a RAGING ERECTION when Jackson made the war elephants show up in LOTR. and makes me think people need to STFU about their whiny bitch bullshit cause they’re spoiled. This movie was an ORGY of visual delight. It’s totally what would happen if Apple was an evolutionary process. Everything would light up colourfully, make awesome sounds, and totally integrate with no issues whatsoever without sharing viruses. Steve Jobs Was Here.
It's time to kick ass and chew bubblegum... and I'm all out of bubblegum.
The story was very story. It had protagonists and antagonists. It swathed about with its heavy hand with a completely acceptable lack of discretion. Just because you think your tastes are so uppity and refined and that you’re an intellectual enough to prefer your messages subtle, this story was good. Tried and true and even possibly relevant; it’s good to learn from our fictions so they stay that way, and I hope I never see the day when we find it acceptable to steal land from people with overwhelming… fire… power… and… fuck shit. Well, at least not for stupid reasons like natur..al… resources…
Moving on. Mind the heavy hand there.
Avatar in 3D had action, excitement, romance (and arguably beastiality depending on how you look at things) morality, readily understandable plot devices, gorgeous visuals, unique and creative environment and immersive settings. I didn’t even notice the music, and I ALWAYS notice the music. Which means it was perfectly suited to every scene that it was in, or it would have been notably lacking. It was fun, friendly, had awesome blue titties, and I got to see Timmy the Crippled Space Marine help Sigourney Goodall reclaim a planet from an invasive technological superforce with rocks and sticks.
Next year, they will drop meteors from space and then have to change the name of Unobtainium forever. So go see Avatar before you lose your chance to try on these rad glasses, which totally fit over my own glasses without giving me a problem at all.
peace.
