Whenever I am pressed with the almost impossible question: what is your favorite movie? I always have to trip and scramble over the hundreds of candidates... How am I feeling today? Is it Halloween? Is it summer? On a typical day I will say it is split between three films, pinnacles of many avid film buffs, and movie lovers, Star Wars Ep.V The Empire Strikes Back, Jurassic Park and Aliens. After tonight it became apparent that those films would have to scoot around, and open up a fourth spot for a newcomer, James Cameron's Avatar.
Cameron's Avatar first popped up on my radar about 2 years ago, figuring now to be about half way through it's production. For that period of time, people interested in the picture only had one still frame to be excited about, a picture of Cameron overlooking a tube like structure with green screen in the background. That was all we had up until this summer.
This last summer brought one of the most eagerly anticipated trailers. A countdown started days prior to the release of the Avatar teaser trailer. I waited patiently until the morning of its release. Of course, so did many others, and quicktime.com/trailers...crashed. I waited and waited until finally it was made available and I sat and watched. The teaser was fantastic, filled with extraordinary visuals of Pandora, the planet the film takes place on, the Na'vi, the natural inhabbitants of Pandora and of course the many creatures that roamed its surface. The teaser was fantastic but didn't get me jacked, it was great, but not mindbending. The trailer was released a few months later and to my relieft was miles better then the teaser, an even closer look into a story so underwraps that people were growing concerned....What was this story even about?
Finally, after it was announced that for one day only, fans of the future film would be able to sit in IMAX's around the country and experience 15 minutes of AVATAR in 3D, Myself and a couple of buddies registered and sat for an hour in line waiting for our actual AVATAR teaser. The subsequent scenes put the few doubts in my mind to rest. This 3D blew me away, and that very moment I knew I was watching history unfold. The next Star Wars was on screen. Another benchmark in cinematic history was about to be revealed.
Cut to, last night, dinner time, a large group of us head out to Easton to catch dinner and prepare to sit for a couple of hours to finally see AVATAR, a 12:01 A.M showing. After sitting for almost an hour in the theatre, the lights dimmed, and the thumping of the 20th Century Fox fanfare started to play. The following 2 hours and 45 minutes were filled with explosive actions scenes, a moving story about divided civilizations, vehicles, creatures, a beautiful soundtrack and so much more. AVATAR is a rare film, perfect in almost every way. This is the film you follow up Titanic with. Cameron's hiatus birthed a film that will be pitted against other staples of the industry, from Citizen Cane to the Wizard of Oz, from Star wars to Alien. From Titanic to Dark Knight. The trailers could not do the film justice. Those "ridiculous blue smirfs" that online participants complained about were more real then the actors of last years Academy Award contendors. Never once did I question the reality of the landscapes that the camera ventured through. Never once did I question the preying six legged predators of the forests of Pandora. Never once did I question...the story.
Although Director's have claimed that their motion capture is the next step, only Cameron's Na'Vi have succesfully bridged the gap between real acting and CGI. They look just as real as their human counterparts.
The film is a very emotional ride. Cameron has a unique ability for making us question what we know. He has managed to make a film that makes the viewers hate our own species. We side with the foreign alien speices, a species we have only been aware of for mere hour before we begin to pick sides. Each of his characters are fully flushed out. It is not as easy as saying "that guy is bad, and that guy is good." Cameron reminds us that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, that even the best of people sometimes do wrong, and the bad guy can sometimes prove good.
The score by James Horner is one of the most elegant and beautiful I have heard since Gladiator and of course the Star Wars prequels. This is one of the last films in recent memory where the music took front and center stage, and moved the story in ways that could not be possible without it. Horner's beautifully emotional pieces played as explosions ripped a village apart in silence. I plan on picking up the Score today, a must have for any fan of film music.
During the climactic final fourty minutes or so of the film it hit me...AVATAR is one of "those" films. A film that will inspire small children the way Jurassic Park and Star Wars inspired me. Whether it is to become a concept artist, modler, director, actor, scientist, soldier, so on and so fourth... this is film that makes adults, kids again and makes kids the shapers of tomorrow. I was choked up for the better part of the finale, as I though about what this meant to a new generation of film goers, what this meant to older film goers, and especially what this meant to me. Avatar is a sign of things to come. It took one man's unique vision and a team of talented artists and film makers to bring the magic back to the silver screen. This is what going to the movies is all about.
Avatar ****/****
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