Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Stephen Lang
Reviewed by Vance Aandahl
For Valentine’s Day Mary volunteered to bicycle to Avatar with me. She’d turned me down three times in the previous six weeks, so I know she didn’t want to go, but she was willing to make the sacrifice for her beloved husband. What a woman!
She refused, however, to honor her offer until the snow had melted off the streets. That left me wondering. Had she set me up intending to disappoint me? Was her offer just a cruel tease?
But no. On this occasion, Mary’s word turned out to be as good as gold. Two days later, we were seated in the Denver Pavilions with 3D glasses perched atop our bifocals, thrilling vicariously to Jake Sully’s transformation from wheelchair-bound ex-Marine to Toruk-riding warrior. Yow!
To my amazement, even though Avatar celebrates combat, which Mary loathes, she walked out of the theater liking the movie more than I did. When I tried to point out that all the characters and scenes are Hollywood clichés, that the plot is predictable and corny, and that Cameron includes numerous contradictory themes and ideas in an effort to please every possible audience member, she became angry and accused me of trying to “spoil” the movie.
Actually, I enjoyed Avatar immensely. But in order to do so, I had to turn my critical faculties completely off shortly before the movie began and not turn them on again until a few minutes after it ended. If I hadn’t turned off my critical faculties, I never would have felt a rush of Mother Earth spirituality during the magical night-forest scenes when the Na’vi are kneeling around the Tree of Souls worshipping Eywa and zillions of delicate little glowing jellyfish-things are floating around them illuminating the scene like the sugarplum fairies in Fantasia. Instead, the scene would have tested my gag reflex.
What I genuinely admire in Avatar is Cameron’s fully realized, cinematically stunning depiction of Pandora. The moon’s visual appeal is prodigious. The gorgeous natural settings, the cool alien fauna and flora, the computer generated imagery, and the new 3D technology all combined to ravish my eye and fill me with the same sense of wonder I used to feel when I started reading science fiction at the age of 10. David Denby, one of the two film critics who write for The New Yorker, called Avatar the most “physically beautiful” film he’s seen in many years. I agree.
Actually, that wily old Cameron grabbed me even before he led me out into the Pandoran jungle. Early in the film, while we’re still aboard the spaceship, my all-time favorite tough-chick actress Michelle Rodriguez shows up as a Marine combat pilot. I knew then I was in for an enjoyable ride.
