I just got out of watching Avatar and while I had originally thought I was being held to an embargo I have just learned the embargo has been lifted. However, I am not ready to run with my full review yet so I have put together some select sentences from the four reviews currently out there that do reflect a lot of what I thought about the film…
First off, Kirk Honeycutt at The Hollywood Reporter has written one of the longest reviews of his career and instead of focusing on the film’s box-office prospects he actually reviewed the film. (Good on yah Kirk, but perhaps cut back on ruining the entire story next time.)
After a brief history of the film’s upbringing he kicks in saying, “A fully believable, flesh-and-blood (albeit not human flesh and blood) romance is the beating heart of Avatar. Cameron has never made a movie just to show off visual pyrotechnics: Every bit of technology in Avatar serves the greater purpose of a deeply felt love story.” He continues saying, “Cameron’s collaborators excel beginning with the actors. Whether in human shape or as natives, they all bring terrific vitality to their roles.”
In a positive review at Variety Todd McCarthy does add a caveat in terms of the film’s excellence writing, “Thematically, the film also plays too simplistically into stereotypical evil-white-empire/virtuous-native cliches, especially since the invaders are presumably on an environmental rescue mission on behalf of the entire world, not just the U.S. Script is rooted very much in a contemporary eco-green mindset, which makes its positions and the sympathies it encourages entirely predictable and unchallenging.”
Mark Brown at The Guardian has put together a hodge-podge of opinion mixed with a report of the London premiere and in his most revelatory paragraph he writes:
Perhaps most surprising was the politics. At one stage the deranged general leading the attack, with echoes of George Bush, declares: “Our survival relies on pre-emptive action. We will fight terror with terror.” Cameron agreed there was a connection to recent events, but there were also references to Vietnam and to the 16th- and 17th-century European colonisation of the Americas. “There is this long, wonderful history of the human race written in blood. We have this tendency to just take what we want.” And that’s how we treat the natural world as well.” There’s this sense of we’re here, we’re big, we’ve got the guns, we’ve got the technology, therefore we’re entitled to every damn thing on this planet. That’s not how it works and we’re going to find out the hard way if we don’t kind of wise up and start seeking a life that’s in balance with the natural life on Earth.”
Over at Empire Chris Hewitt aptly addresses the idea of Avatar being the game-changer it has been suspected of being:
On [screen], it may not be a game-changer, but no director to date has built a world of this scale, ambition and complexity before, and Avatar – much as the arrival of Raymond van Barneveld forced Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor to up his game – will have rival directors scrambling to keep up with Cameron. Avatar is an astonishing feast for the eyes and ears, with shots and sequences that boggle the mind, from the epic – a floating mountain range in the sky, waterfalls cascading into nothingness – to the tiny details, such as a paraplegic sinking his new, blue and fully operational toes into the sand. The level of immersive detail here is simply amazing.
I hope that satisfies your thirst for early opinion. As for my opinion, well, I heard I can publish it now if I like… We’ll see how soon it arrives. My guess is Monday morning so I can chew on it over the weekend… Stay tuned…
Now, for more Avatar goodies you can click here, where I have trailers and a gallery of 72 images. The film hits theaters on December 18 and I am anticipating big things.
