Something to watch tonight: Monday 15 December
Avatar (Cameron, 2009)
So this weekend was taken up by the Australasian premiere of the third Avatar film (Avatar: Fire & Ash) and the attendant media junket.
I was representing RNZ at the press event but declined an invitation to the red carpet screening at the Embassy. I’d seen the film already (we had a preview at the Queensgate IMAX on Thursday night) and I’m not super-comfortable at those sorts of things.
On Saturday I called in to RNZ’s Saturday Morning show to chat with Susie Ferguson about the preparations and the mood of the media at the InterContinental. Then about 45 minutes later, I sat down with director James Cameron for a 20-minute interview. I was nervous as heck but it went really well and you can listen to it here (embedded half way down the article I wrote on Saturday afternoon). Also on that page is a two-minute clip of the video to prove I was actually there.
I also had a ten-minute session with actors Sam Worthington, Cliff Curtis and Jack Champion which I used mainly to try and get more background on what Cameron is like as a director of actors.
The embargo on reviews lifts on Wednesday morning and mine will appear on the RNZ website (and I’ll link to it in Wednesday’s newsletter).
As my mind has been on little else except Avatar this week, I thought it might be fun to go back to my contemporaneous review of the first film which opened exactly 16 years ago tomorrow.
There have only been asked two questions that anybody has been asking me this week: “Have you seen Avatar?” and “Is it any good?” Thanks to the helpful people at Readings I can say “Yes” to the first one and thanks to James Cameron I can say “Whoah” to the second.
Like many Wellingtonians, I have been following Avatar’s progress since production started in 2007 and it’s almost impossible to be genuinely objective. It’s only natural for locals to try and claim some ownership of a project like this and we are all a tiny bit invested in its success. The hype has certainly been hard to avoid so I was slightly pleased when the fifteen minute extract on “Avatar Day” didn’t fill me with delighted anticipation. I couldn’t quite my head around the character design of the Na’vi (the indigenous race peacefully populating the beautiful but deadly planet of Pandora). The blue – the tails – the ears. I couldn’t for the life of me work out how these characters were going to be cool and I thought that *cool* was going to be important.
Well, I’ll hold my hand up and admit that Cameron was right and I was wrong. Avatar is the finest example of commercial blockbuster entertainment in years but still containing more than enough subtle surprises to satisfy the film nerds.
Paraplegic Marine Sam Worthington (described by this reporter as an “Aussie boofhead” in the review of Terminator Salvation, a comment which probably should be gracefully withdrawn about now) is sent to Pandora to take his dead brother’s place in an experimental anthropological team attempting to bond with the natives before the mining company starts ripping the heart out of their home. His DNA will be fused with the Na’vi and the he’ll be able to remotely control the resulting creature – an avatar – learn their ways and get them to trust us. The evil capitalists in charge of the project have other ideas, however, and it is up to big Sam (along with his new Na’vi chums) to save the planet of Pandora from exploitation and genocide.
There’s nothing startling about the story. Given how long Cameron has been gestating this, I suspect that he has been recycling characters and elements for his earlier films (like the Paul Reiser character in Aliens) rather than the other way around but it’s the technology, and Cameron’s supremely confident use of it, that really makes Avatar soar. It’s easy to forget when watching the endless line of forgettable dull product passing through multiplexes that cinema has always been as much about the ride as anything else, and when the ride is exciting you really can leave your own life behind for a while.
Somehow I also had room that week to review the Liam Neeson drama Five Minutes of Heaven, “toothless” comedy Bandslam (“David Bowie should be ashamed for letting himself get anywhere near it.”) and the dishonest documentary about intelligent design, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (“… it’s a scandal that the Paramount, for 90 years the home of cinematic enlightenment, should be giving a showcase to this small-minded fraudulent horseshit.”).
Where to watch Avatar
Aotearoa, Australia, Canada, Ireland, USA, UK : Streaming on Disney+
India: Streaming on Hotstar