Hi Everyone,
Well, in case you were wondering, I did finish watching Avatar. So I will sum up, in full, what I thought of it. Again, don't automatically accept my judgements of it; watch it and make your own. After all, watching it is an amazing experience. Also, I will distinguish between the aesthetics of it, how it was made, and the content, what I thought of its subject matter. So how did the rest of the movie strike me?
The rest of Avatar did not do much to change the view of it I laid out a few weeks ago. In the second half of the movie, the mining company and its military security force begin moving in. It turns out the Na'vis' holy sanctuary rests on a huge deposit of unobtanium, the valuable material that the company is prospecting for. The force begins to launch an assault on the site, and many Na'vi are lost in the skirmish.
Then comes decision time for Jake. The Na'vis feel betrayed by him, since he was working for the people who visited this disaster on their land. So Jake, who has fallen in love with the female who took him in to the tribe, decides to stay with them and fight the miners. By this point, the miners have thrown him under the bus anyway, along with his companions in the avatar experiment.
I said before I expected there would be a hollywood-type ending. I was not disappointed by that. I will say this for the ending, though; I was surprised how well Cameron was able to make a formulaic style of ending engaging and watchable. For the type of conclusion so typical of big blockbuster films like Avatar, Cameron somehow managed to make it work. So the movie was definitely engaging.
So here's what I liked and didn't like about Avatar. First, like I said, the visual effects were unbelievable. Just seeing the movie would be amazing to anybody's eye. The movie was engaging on so many levels. It never became dull or went on and on, though there was some preaching about a network of life, but that was small.
That brings me to my next point. It was wonderful to see a movie like that getting the message out there. However, I said before that the message seemed to come second to the visual splendor, which was considerable, and the action. There is a practically endless amount of movies dedicated to the supremacy of the culture of dominance, the importance of suspicion, and the virtue of warfare. It was nice to see some counterbalance to that.
Now, what did I not like about Avatar? Well, it fell back on the same well-worn Hollywood themes and devices so common in these movies. It relied on a climactic battle royale scene in which there is a clearly defined good guy and bad guy. The only difference here is that the actors have been switched to different sides than usual. What would have made it truly captivating was if they had moved away from that theme in some way. I don't know how someone would do such a thing, but then again, I'm not a screenwriter in Hollywood.
Anyway, to wrap up the review of Avatar, I thought it was good, but in my view, it had some flaws that dragged it down. Still, I enjoyed the film immensely, and I would recommend it to anyone. Anyway, I apologize for the lateness of this post. I have spent the last few days working on my Aunt's farm, and I have been unable to get on the internet for the last few days. I am now going to be back on my regular weekly post cycle. See ya soon!
This is the Daily Reeder, Over&out.
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