Avatar: A Critique

His newly oiled hands rub together, making squelching and slapping noises as he puts his fingers togther and in the gaps in between. His lips transform into a huge grin, revealing great yellow, misshapen teeth. He strokes the sides of his once-blonde hair, and flicks it past his ears. His tongue covered in grime slaps itself around the gums surrounding it. He gives a cackle from the bowels of his lungs. It is time.

When I looked at my line-up, and saw James Cameron's Abomination, the quote mentioned above was that of a friend's spoken at the time. I have wanted to review this film for a long time, and have stored much disappointment over the years - now it's time to truly unleash that inner fury, and leave nothing but flame, ash and misery in my wake. The smoke that fills is your lungs is truth, and I am merely the wind that blows it towards your lips and nostrils.

You can easily tell that I hate this film. No, not even hate is a strong enough word. Not even "despise" describes a microscopic amount of how much.... agony I go through, thinking of such an overrated pile of forsaken faeces. For every review that gives this film a miniscule amount of positive feedback, I physically cringe and must refrain from tearing my own eyes out. Yes, I am appalled by this attempt to entertain me. Imagine the "curing ultraviolence" scene of A Clockwork Orange but even more painful - yes, I went through that for 2 hours watching Avatar.

I have to say, I'm only watching this because it has become a religion to some people, and I'm now becoming part of this herd just to see what's so special. I wouldn't urinate on the 3D effects if they were on Jeopardy, let alone on fire. And sadly, that's what got people hyped up. Yes, fellow critics - the general film-goers have now degenerated to a mindless flock of sheep who are attracted by "shinies". And boy, does this film have a lot of shinies.

As an action/adventure/fantasy/horror/thriller movie viewer, the trailer doesn't grip me like it does others. While they do contain a lot of information, it's just scenes made for the sole purpose of the trailer. When asked why they want to see this film, film-goers merely reply "It's James-f**king-Cameron!" and "Special Effects". The trailer raised awareness, but it was the hive mind of liars the general public who spread the word around the most.

Worth seeing if you like James Cameron films? Well, I'll put it like this: Do you like Terminator? Alien? You do? In that case, prepare to dispose of all respect for the award-winning director because he's gone ahead and destroyed loyal fans' expectations of a good movie! Am I a fan of Cameron? Certainly not after seeing this, but I still admire his previous works (by that I mean, most of the stuff before Titanic).

When you watch Avatar, do you really watch it for the plot? No, of course not. Why? Because there is no plot! Whatever synopsis this film follows, you can compare it to Walt Disney's Pocahontus, and change the names of characters and places around. What difference is there? Oh, only the names of characters and places. It's like those activities you give to kids in first school, where there's a paragraph with blank spaces in the sentences, and you've got to fill them with a word from a list. Copied much? Yes. Absolutely. I barely say "copied" in critiques, but with this I see little to no difference to Pocahontus.

From what little information I gathered, a marine has a physical disability and has the chance to walk again using the Draenei simulator (property of Jesus Inc.). However, he gets too eager and stumbles into the world of the Na'vi, or something (No, not the Naaru - c'mon, this film isn't too intelligent to take too much World of Warcraft lore). He later learns that the whole idea of the simulator is to communicate with natives, negotiate peace and take the minerals that lie under the World Tree, Danassus. OK, I'll stop with the WoW jokes. However, despite the warnings (given during interspecies romance scenes, of course) the Na'vi don't budge and so the humans come to wreck everything. By the point where I saw the huge human bulldozer thingies, I gave up on all hope in the modern film industry. I had lost all interest. I never saw the ending.... thank goodness.

Other than that, there's uneccessary montages showing the human marine learning how to ride pterodactyls and some other garbage. So TL;DR - All the horrible romance subplots of Mass Effect, the training montages from the Rocky movies, and as filler you've got Pocahontus. No, I won't stop referring you to Pocahontus - I'm the one who was tortured during the viewing of this, now I'm relieving myself.

I'm glad Cameron took this film seriously, because it looked like half of the actors couldn't care less. I'd often play and rewind scenes with Sigourney Weaver, who often looked as if she was thinking, "Am I really in this?" and roll her eyes. While I give some of the actors credit, and the reality-and-CGI sync is convincing, there are many scenes where I wonder, "how much were they paying you to say that?"

The budget was just over $2,000,000, and it earned around 2 billion green notes at the box office. While I wasn't surprised that it took around 15 years to make (script was written in1994), I have to ask - was it worth it? Was the time spent making this disaster-tastrophy worth that much money? I've seen people spend 15 seconds scratching cards, and win more than that on the National Lottery. There're people all around the world starving, dying, and I'd pay that much to see those people living - but no, you spend it on one of the worst productions ever to have been produced on my telly. Even to this day, I'm exorcising it - and I watched this three months ago.

The effects are.... I'm not going to be positive, but I do find some of them useful. The amount of frames put into the animation is ridiculous, and for something that you'll merely glance at. Take the environment - do you really need to put so much effort into copying Nagrand, Outland? But here's where I really want to get my point across - it wasn't worth it. I'm honest here. It wasn't epic nor disastrous - and that's the worst part! It was OK, meaning I can't say anything good about it, but I'd be a liar like many other reviewers who claim this film is good should I complain. The effects were mediocre - I've seen them all before, now can we please develop a plot? No? Just more birds flying around? Fine!

You expected more? Guess what: So did I! But it appears that all Avatar is, is a huge pot of gold with a sign sticking out saying, "Look! Blue and purple plants!" There's nothing more to Avatar than it being a huge investment in a major hype. It's like Halo - looks promising, but you'll be kicking yourself for being tempted to see it.

Do I recommend it? Nope.avi. Not even if you're into interspecies romance (yes, there are "parodies" of this on the internet - and yes, I find them more entertaining than the film), cruddy action sequences and generic alien stereotypes .vs. human stereotypes. So there you have it - I'm probably one of the few people who has said it as clearly as I can. The only way you can make an opinion, is seeing it yourself. Thanks for your time.