Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) Review

I can think of a lot of words to sum up this film... overrated seems to be the first one that comes to mind! Yeah! I I said it! I did not like this film. There we go. Don't get me wrong, I agree with the whole "ZOMG IT LOOKS AMAZING LOLOL DEM GRAPHICS!!!" in the sense that it looks fantastic. That's it. There is nothing else great about this film. Actually I take that back, It's the only ORIGINAL thing from this film.

The first aspect to how unoriginal this film is to take a look at the narrative. No i'm not going to be specific with the narrative, you'll see why. So there are two cultures, natives and colonists. The colonists send in a spy to try and convince the natives to move from their land but the spy falls for one of the native women and decides to help them by turning on the colonists. Yeah...that's it. Now why is that uninspired? Pocahontas and Dances With Wolves say hello. They use pretty much the exact same plot. I will give Avatar the benefit of the doubt by saying that the idea of Pocahontas in space is...certainly interesting.

When talking about Avatar there is one thing that comes immediately to mind is the visuals. It's the whole reason for the epic hype. It looks phenomenal and I can see how people can call in a reinvention of how a film can look (ironic considering the following years biggest film was the silent black and white The Artist). Normally someone reviewing this film would probably talk about the 3D used...not the best route for someone who can't see 3D...good marketing technique.

As you can probably guess, I was glad when Avatar did NOT win the Academy Award for Best Film. I wouldn't have minded if James Cameron won best director. Just because it's a bad movie doesn't mean James Cameron did bad directing. I don't know though...I feel like James Cameron has a habit of making incredibly popular films that really...I do not like (I'M LOOKING AT YOU TITANIC!).

Normally I talk about the cast of the film. Well let's see there's Sigourney Weaver and...er...Zoe Saldana? Yeah we'll go with those two. Well, Sam Worthington is becoming more popular recently who stars as the protagonist of this film, Jake Sully. Jake is the aforementioned spy who is placed into the community of the Navi, a native alien race on the planet Pandora. You know what, I should have mentioned this stuff when talking about the narrative.

Avatar 'borrows' heavily from the narrative of other films so considering how unoriginal it is (blue aliens is the best they could come up with) but I just can't deny how great it looks.

Verdict:
4.5/10
An overrated, unoriginal film. The only thing going for it is great visuals...and awesome robot suits...