Avatar
Directed by James Cameron (2009)
| Runtime | 162 minutes |
| Release | 2009-12-18 |
| Rating | 9/10 |
The reviews
By Mulder 2009-12-24
To my parents, who passed on to me their passion for cinema
In 2008, The Dark knight was released on our screens and was for me in many ways the movie of the year. A gifted director (Christopher Nolan) had succeeded in recreating Batman Dark knight, a hero tortured by his past and who was dedicated to bring order in a city plagued by violence. This director had surrounded himself with excellent actors (Christian Bale, Heath Ledger) and had been able to rely on a brilliant script, as well as on special effects, which were only present to serve the story and not, as very often, to fill in the gaps of a linear and not very successful script. This year, I was looking forward to the movie that would be for me the movie of the year. The return of James Cameron behind the camera, after Titanic in 1997 and very successful documentaries on the aquatic fauna and on this liner, announced this phenomenon.
From film to film, James Cameron signs a perfect filmography. Each of his films (Aliens, Terminator, Abyss, True Lies) testifies to his immense talent as a screenwriter and, above all, to his extraordinary qualities as a director. Avatar is a story that has been close to his heart for a very long time and he waited until the special effects allowed him to serve his story to launch the production of this film. Lucky for him, because the spectators have the chance to discover a universal and superbly camped story and especially served by revolutionary special effects.
Avatar is not only a revolution, but a multitude of revolutions, comparable to the passage from black and white to color. The director relies on unprecedented special effects, filmed via a revolutionary camera built especially for the needs of this film (the Simul Cam) and a new system to make the 3D optimal (Reality Camera System - also called RCS or Cameron/Pace Fusion). The objective of transcending the immersion of the spectator in his film is a pure success. Once again, James Cameron masterfully directs his entire cast and delivers a universal story on the themes of freedom and ecology. Avatar could thus appear as the ultimate film of this director. It is very interesting to see that this film gathers a multitude of elements already present in his previous films and in the scenarios on which he worked. This film is based on the confrontation between marines and a hostile environment (as in Aliens The Return but in a reversed way, the marines having here the wrong role). Jake Sully's apprenticeship among the Na'vi reminds us of Point Break, of which James Cameron was the executive producer. The war scenes in the film refer directly to the combat scenes of Rambo II (the helicopter scene in particular). The Na'vi / machines confrontation reminds us of Terminator. It is not a coincidence either that we find in this film Sigourney Weaver, who was the heroine of Aliens The Return.
In many passages, this film also reminded me of Kevin Costner's beautiful film Dances with Wolves, where a soldier fighting against the Indians is taken in by them and learns their habits and customs, until he realizes that he's on the wrong side. Avatar shows that the human race is heading towards its inexorable demise, because it no longer respects the forces of nature. The great strength of this film is that we feel that James Cameron has truly created a realistic ecosystem to develop Pandora. Every detail of his film shows that nothing is left to chance. If it took James Cameron so long to present his new film, it is because he wanted to make Avatar his Star Wars. George Lucas and James Cameron have the same vision of science fiction and cinema. The first one transcended in 1977 the Cinema by delivering us a space opera with spectacular and revolutionary special effects. In the same way, Avatar is a real eye-opener for the spectators by using 3D, IMAX format and by tying us to our seats for two hours and forty minutes non stop. Time has never passed so fast during a movie and the spectator will only have one desire after having seen this pure masterpiece: to go back another time.
Avatar can thus be seen as the most beautiful tribute that James Cameron pays to Cinema. His movie is at the same time a war movie, a science fiction movie, an action movie, a modern western and above all a beautiful romance. If you loved Titanic like I did, Avatar will delight you to the max and will give you the passion to go back to our beautiful dark rooms. On Saturday December 19th, when I went to see this movie, I had the pleasure to see the longest queue I've seen in a long, long time, forty minutes before the beginning of the session. All the screenings were taken by storm at my Gaumont in Disney Village and the three theaters were not enough to satisfy the audience demand. If the Academy of the Oscars does not give at least four of its awards (special effects, director, screenplay, film) in recognition to this film, it would be beyond comprehension. While waiting for this ceremony, the Golden Globes ceremony should pay tribute to this brilliant artist that is James Cameron.
Finally, James Cameron had said openly during a press interview that if Avatar was not a great success, he would shoot himself. Fortunately for him and his many fans, Avatar is by far the best movie of this year: a hymn to life, an intergenerational movie, a pure masterpiece! I hope now that we won't have to wait another eleven years to discover his new revolutionary movie, Battle Angel (?).
Thank you James Cameron for this very nice Christmas present you are giving to the spectators all over the world!
Avatar
Written and directed by James Cameron
Produced by James Cameron, Jon Landau
Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Sigourney Weaver
Cinematography: Mauro Fiore
Editing: Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron
Music: James Horner
Production companies: 20th Century Fox, Lightstorm Entertainment, Dune Entertainment, Ingenious Film Partners
Distributed by 20th Century Studios (France)
Release date: September 21, 2022 (France)
Running time: 166 minutes
Seen on December 19, 2009, at Gaumont Disney Village, Room 11
Reviewed on September 20, 2022 at Pathé Beaugrenelle, Dolby Room
By Tootpadu 2009-12-11
James Cameron is a god. Rest assured, this is not the die-hard Mulder fan talking to you, who has already decreed that this epic spectacle was the best film of the year before even seeing it. It is not a blasphemous provocation either, but rather a proposal to reflect on the work of a director who let himself be celebrated as the king of the world, in all modesty, when he was crowned for Titanic, twelve years ago already. In any case, James Cameron is a man who thinks big and to whom commercial and sometimes critical success smiles in all his major undertakings. With his long-awaited return to directing, he is venturing further into the realm of lavish entertainment, finally and perhaps even definitively giving credibility to the recent craze for 3D cinema and allowing himself to create a magical world from scratch.
The Canadian director has always been a precursor of introducing fantastic elements in a real setting, as in his two Terminators. And he even plunged us into the mysterious world of the deep with Abyss. In his new film, however, the movement is completely reversed. The dazzling progress in computer terms, which makes everything feasible, although not necessarily credible, has opened up unsuspected horizons for cinema, which visionary creators like James Cameron know how to take full advantage of. In front of our amazed eyes, barely veiled by the obligatory glasses to dive into the adventure, a new world is born: enigmatic, dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful. The magnificent spectacle is further enhanced by the fact that everything fits together. Comfortably supported by a budget that we guess is colossal, James Cameron's imagination was able to take its ease, without descending too much to the shaky level of writing, which episodically marred the scenarios of his previous films. Freed from most of the constraints of the human conception of reality - and especially from those linked to visual and technical feasibility - life on Pandora represents an inexhaustible mine of enchanting discoveries.
The bluffing efficiency of the show is rooted, however, in a perspective of the exploitation of natural goods and human beings, which essentially lends itself to two axes of interpretation. On the one hand, the sad fate of the Na'vis inevitably recalls that suffered in the past by the American Indians. On the other hand, the nihilistic philosophy of the mining company, undoubtedly a branch of the one in the Alien series, as well as its heavy-handed methods that do not care about the preservation of the environment, must probably serve as a barely concealed warning to our current civilization, which will make our planet unlivable in the long term if it continues to ignore the warning signs of a climatic catastrophe. James Cameron has never been overly distinguished by the subtlety of the filmic means of expression with which he seeks to convey his messages. But at least his preaching about the urgency of living in harmony with the world and nature around us provides a solid emotional foundation for Avatar.
The only major downside, which is not compensated for by the stunning special effects, nor by the rather unrehearsed soundtrack compared to James Horner's other scores, is the tendency of the last third of the film to get carried away by a warlike frenzy, which at best duplicates the comparable confrontations of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. More than two hours after the initial amazement at the judicious, even revolutionary, use of 3D, the borderline B-movie level of the final fights almost gives us a bitter aftertaste, whereas the major part of this splendid entertainment had let us anticipate a slightly more mature conclusion.
Avatar
Written and directed by James Cameron
Produced by James Cameron, Jon Landau
With Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Sigourney Weaver
Cinematography: Mauro Fiore
Editing: Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron
Music: James Horner
Production companies: 20th Century Fox, Lightstorm Entertainment, Dune Entertainment, Ingenious Film Partners
Distributed by 20th Century Studios (France)
Release date: September 21, 2022 (France)
Running time: 166 minutes
Seen on December 11, 2009, at Gaumont Marignan, Room 3