What exactly can we expect from a reviewer from a newspaper whose conglomerate sibling is Fox News? Let's find out.
First, here's an interesting article about how James Cameron took Joe Morgenstern on a trip inside a 0 G simulator plane.
But don't let that skew your objectivity. I'm sure ol' Joe didn't.
James Cameron's "Avatar" takes place on a planet called Pandora, where American corporations and their military mercenaries have set up bases to mine a surpassingly precious mineral called unobtanium. The vein of awe mined by the movie is nothing short of unbelievium.
Gettit?! They both end in "um!" What a clever dude.
This is a new way of coming to your senses—put those 3-D glasses on your face and you come to a sense of delight that quickly gives way to a sense of astonishment. The planetary high doesn't last. The closer the story comes to a lumbering parable of colonialist aggression in the jungles of an extragalactic Vietnam, the more the enchantment fizzles.
Is that... Is that an actual criticism about the film?
Much of the time, though, you're transfixed by the beauty of a spectacle that seems all of a piece. Special effects have been abolished, in effect, since the whole thing is so special.
Translation: Never mind that, though. PRETTY COLORS!
The Na'vi versions of Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington in James Cameron's 'Avatar.'
The word "avatar" wasn't invented by Mr. Cameron, though everything else in the production seems to have been.
Except the story or characters.
In Hindu myth, an avatar is a deity descended to earth in human form. In computer parlance it's an icon that represents a person in virtual reality or cyberspace. In the movie it's a manufactured body that's remotely controlled—not by some hand-held clicker but through brain waves generated by a human being who functions as the body's driver.
Joe uses Wikipedia!
If this sounds technobabbly in the description, it's dazzling in the execution.
I believe that's what Kevin Costner said about "Waterworld".
No description of that scenery will spoil the experience of the 3-D process (which dispenses with the usual eye-catching tricks) or the seamless integration of live action, motion-capture, animation, computer-generated images and whatever other techniques went into the mix—maybe witchcraft or black magic.
WITCH HUNT! WITCH HUNT!
(I haven't seen the IMAX version; that's for my next viewing.)
He's waiting for the IMAX early bird special.
Some of the flora suggest an anhydrous Great Barrier Reef (airborne jellyfish, coral-colored conical plants that spiral down to almost-nothingness when touched) or, in the case of Pandora's floating mountains, represent an homage to the Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki. As for the fauna, they're not only prodigiously varied—flamboyant dragons, six-legged steeds, elephantine chargers with heads like battering rams, nature-blue in tooth and claw—but creatures with convincing lives of their own, unlike the cheerfully bizarre creations that filled the Mos Eisley cantina in "Star Wars."
But those brain-aliens with clarinets are much less likely to kill you.
Then there are the indigènes, the French term for natives being appropriate because Pandora evokes the Indochina that existed before France's doomed war against an indigenous insurgency, as well as the Vietnam that became a battleground for American troops. They're called the Na'vi, and to describe them as humanoid may be to defame them, inasmuch as they, unlike most of the film's Americans, revere their planet and live in harmony with their surroundings.
I'm sure that James Cameron was going for an allegory for the complex French/Indochina relations, aren't you?
The most beautiful of the Na'vis—at least the one with the most obvious star quality—is a female warrior named Neytiri. As most of our planet already knows from the publicity, Jake falls for her in a big but complicated way.
If by complicated you mean "Pocahontas-esque", sure.
Big because Neytiri, as played by Zoë Saldana, is so alluring—cerulean-skinned, lemon-eyed, wasp-waisted, long-tailed, anvil-nosed, wiggly-eared (trust me, it's all seductive)
Is there something slightly creepy about an elderly man commenting on the sexyness of a CGI woman he stared at on a screen?
But complicated because Jake is secretly working both sides of the jungle.
You mean like Pocahontas?
He's in love with Neytiri, and soon embraces her people's values. (Yes, there's circumstantial evidence that Mr. Cameron knows about "Dances With Wolves," along with "Tarzan," "Green Mansions," "Frankenstein," "Princess Mononoke," "South Pacific," "Spartacus" and "Top Gun.")
As much "circumstantial" evidence as the OJ Simpson trial.
At the same time, Jake is spying for a gimlet-eyed military commander, Col. Miles Quaritch. (Stephen Lang proves that broad, cartoony acting can also be good acting.) The evil colonel has promised the ex-Marine a procedure that will restore the use of his paralyzed legs in exchange for information that will help chase the Na'vi from their sacred land, which happens to be the only place where unobtainium can be obtained.
Making Jake a double agent makes everything original. That explains it.
It's no reflection on Mr. Worthington or Ms. Saldana, both of whom are impressive—though how, exactly, do you judge such high-tech hybrid performances?—that their interspecies love story lacks the heat of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet clinging to each other on the storm-swept decks of "Titanic."
Joe misses the nude-sketching scenes.
Teenage girls will not return to see this film half a dozen times or more unless they possess a rogue gene for wigglable ears. But then "Avatar" revises the relationship between everyone in the audience and the characters on screen. Actors have always been avatars; they've always represented our hopes and fears in the virtual reality of motion pictures. In much of this film, however, they've been transformed by technology into a new and ambiguous breed of entertainment icon—not the quasihuman denizens of "The Wizard of Oz," or the overgrown glove puppets of "The Polar Express," but nearly palpable fantasy figures that inhabit a world just beyond our reach.
We get it, Joe, you liked the Special effects.
The fantasy quotient of "Avatar" takes its first major hit when the Na'vi take their first hit from the American military. Mr. Cameron has devoted a significant chunk of his movie to a dark, didactic and altogether horrific evocation of Vietnam, complete with napalm, Agent Orange and helicopter gunships (one of which is named Valkyrie in a tip of the helmet to "Apocalypse Now.") Whatever one may think of the politics of this antiwar section, two things can be said with certainty: it provokes an adrenalin rush (what that says of our species is another matter), and it feels a lot better when it's over.
No anti-war stuff! This is the Wall Street Journal, remember!
Other narrative problems intrude. For all its political correctness about the goodness of the Na'vis, "Avatar" lapses into lurid savage rituals, complete with jungle drums, that would not have seemed out of place in the first "King Kong."
Jungle drums = Savages?
While Ms. Weaver's performance is a strong one, it isn't clear what her character is doing as an avatar, or how the Na'vi perceive her.
You're right, it isn't clear at all why the person heading the Avatar research group has an Avatar.
What couldn't be clearer, though, is that Mr. Cameron's singular vision has upped the ante for filmed entertainment, and given us a travelogue unlike any other.
Except it didn't end in a plug for "Expedia".
I wouldn't want to live on Pandora, mainly because of the bad air, but I'm glad to have paid it a visit.
The bad air didn't stop you from drinking the kool-aid.
Now I'm not going to imply anything about Joe's lack of journalistic integrity.
But I will show this picture:
Joe is on the far left, James Cameron is in the center, getting chummy.
