Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
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by William the Bloody
It's THE FUTURE! And in this future mankind has space travel and they go around to other planets. One they go to has a hostile jungle like environment and temperamental intelligent inhabitants, so why insist on building a camp there at all? Because it has rich deposits of a valuable mineral, that's why. Unfortunately, those temperamental natives have a big, fat colony right smack dab on top of the biggest and best mining area on the entire planet. So, the big company funding the expedition hires some top notch scientists to try to nicely convince the natives to relocate. One of the major steps in earning their trust was the building of the "avatars": a genetically engineered body made of a mixture of human and the alien DNA, through which a human can move freely in the toxic atmosphere and more readily approach the native inhabitants in a body that looks like their own (a tall humanoid cat creature). Humans learn their language and culture and teach the aliens English and attempt to try to offer them something in return for them leaving their home so the humans can mine under it. Much time and resources have been expended on the avatar project, but so far there has been no luck in getting the natives to move. The corporation is giving them one last go at it, but unfortunately, one of their avatar scientists has died in the hostile environment of the planet. However, this scientist has a twin brother, a marine who was crippled in a war, and the company offers to pay for the expensive spine surgery to fix his legs if he will use his brother's avatar (being an identical genetic match) to help them get the natives to move off the mineral deposit. However, the marine grows to enjoy his avatar body and likes even more the company of the natives once he is offered a chance to learn their rich culture first hand. He becomes torn between his sense of duty to the mission he was given and to the fine native people who have accepted him as their own.
The Good: There were some pretty cool designs in this film. I really do have to applaud the creation of the alien race, The Na'vi. They are interesting to look at and are instantly appealing. I also like the designs of the alien planet and its ecosystem. The LOOK of the plants and the IDEA of everything having those "filaments" that they can "connect" to each other with was a really neat concept. The thought that all of the trees tie in together with all the other plants into a large "network" and that the animals can connect with each other and the trees and the WAY they pulled this idea off... so cool. Overall, the acting was pretty good and there were some good camera shots and angles. James Cameron really CAN direct, after all. He gets just the right performance out of each actor and you get the feeling that all of the shots, even the tricky CGI ones, look just as Cameron imagined in his mind.
The Bad: Well, the story and the character types are so stereotypical and recycled that it sickens me. Why oh why does a girl who starts out hating a guy eventually HAVE to fall in love with him? Why does every military general have to be scarred, tough as nails, and think violence is the only way to solve every problem? Why are all corporate big wigs greedy, snot nosed tools? Why are all scientists gentle academics who want nothing more than to preserve nature's natural way with as little disruption as possible? Couldn't we have mixed it up maybe a LITTLE? Why not give the military guy some compassion and a scientist a greedy streak? And the plot was predictable as all heck, too! Of course we couldn't get the natives to move and we now must engage them in a big action sequence! Of course those particular characters had to die! You knew within seconds of them being introduced which character held what role in the story and who was going to die. I'm sorry, but I don't like a story that doesn't surprise me or make me think a little bit. Okay, enough about that. On another note, I wasn't as impressed with the CGI as much as the rest of the universe apparently is. I don't know, but there's something about humanoid CGI that I still don't think is quite there yet. There's just SOMETHING about the movement that doesn't look completely natural yet, especially when mixing it with live action elements. Also, the dragons and other animals of the planet completely looked CG. I wasn't "fooled" into thinking that those creature could really be there, not one bit. And somebody needs to start THINKING before naming stuff in their scripts. The planet is called "Pandora"... really? And the mineral they want to mine is called "unobtainium." I shit you not on that. I can't even SAY that without sounding like a douche. SO AWFUL! Why would you purposefully name something in a way that sounds so cliché? Oh yeah. I forgot what movie I was talking about for a minute.
C+
