Avatar

Oh yes. Another exciting Eric review of movies. What more, THE self proclaimed movie of the century, Avatar. Hell, maybe not just the century but of ALL TIME. Now, I'm sure that everyone who will care to read this, has probably read the dozens of reviews written by many other critics much more qualified than me, but my Xbox is currently in the shop and I'm bored so I might as well throw in my two cents.

Like my other movie review notes, I'll probably be having some spoiler comments in here so if you haven't seen the movie don't read.

So here's how the whole movie thing played out for me. I was closing at work, feeling a little stressed out and just wanting to go home and sleep. However, my roommate tells me that he got tickets for James Cameron's Avatar opening night at 10:15 or whatever. Frankly, I'm a little annoyed. I've seen only one trailer for it and other than that, saw a reference in Southpark. My analysis and conclusion: James Cameron spent more than 200 million dollars to make "Dances with Smurfs". Needless to say, I wasn't too hyped about seeing the movie. I love seeing movies and I've seen an endless amount opening night and I gotta say that 2009 had only a few ups. It didn't exactly please me either when we arrived an hour early and I saw the line go all the way down the stairs.

I harassed my roommate, asking him questions like, "Wtf is the hype about Ben? Why the hell are people getting so excited for movie that has a fourth grade storyline?"

Ben told me to stop whining and he said that there was a ton of hype about this movie and I had apparently been completely ignorant to the endless stream of advertising about this movie.

About three hours later, it was about 1 in the morning and I was completely blown away. I really, honestly can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's cause I'm a sci-fi geek but Avatar was a complete win for me.

Okay so yeah, the storyline pretty much was dances with smurfs, Pocahontas, Last Samurai, all put into one. Rather than critiquing the story for being a well used thread, I actually applaud James Cameron for taking a well known idea of side switching, identity confusion, and learning more about nature, and truly taking it into his own. I'm thinking that since a large part of the movie drew you in because of Jake's story in becoming one of the people that made you feel really connected to the characters and gave the characters a more relateable feel.

Even though the movie was about two and a half hours, I felt like some of the story development was hastily skipped. Especially towards the middle-end with Jake's return and the whole climaxing conflict upon discovering his true intentions and then leading to him uniting the Na'avi clans. If I could hazard a guess, it would be that James Cameron got bored and just wanted to skip to the fighting scenes, which were totally worth it. Even though I think some of the story had holes in it, or were skipped altogether, I liked how every theme sort of tied together. For example: Grace's death and then leading to Jake's final assimilation in the end, or the tale of Turuk Makto and then Jake's "solution".

The Graphics. James Cameron gets an A+ in my books for the graphics. While I'm not a big fan of 3-D, I think that Cameron is essentially paving the way with what we can expect from 3-D movies. All the artwork was amazing and I still can't get over how realistic everything was. That's the problem with the introduction of technology and graphic stimulation, is that sometimes you can over-stimulate an audience just by having too much, or having it so outlandish, it gets to be like a regurgitated Scyfy original movie. I think James Cameron did well here, because while he pushed the envelope, I don't think he ever went beyond his limits.

James Horner is one of my favorite movie musical conductors. I'm in love with the soundtrack and that's all the really needs to be said about that. The music and the movie were meant to be together.

To me, the ending of a movie is one of the most important aspects to a movie. It's about finishing the story and leaving your audience with a lasting impression. I hate the sequel effect, I hate endings that just confuse people. Endings are a lot more simple than I think many directors think they have to be. Deep thought and pondering are for the beginning and middle of movies, not the end. Avatar had a feel good ending, which wasn't too corny, but still left a content feeling that there wasn't going to be a Disney sequel.

So what did I think? On a personal opinion, I have never walked out of a movie feeling like that since I first watched the original Star Wars on VHS. It might have been that this movie was right down my alley, or I just had extremely low expectations, but especially in relation to 2009's movies, I'd give Avatar a 9/10 stars. If I were to be more critical and look at it from what I think professional critics expect out of movies, it'd be either a 6 or 7 out of 10.