Avatar - First Thoughts

When I think of the Adventure Fantasy genre, The Lord of the Rings trilogy stands out in my mind as the true master, an epic adventure bringing new worlds to life.

Peter Jackson paid a tremendous amount of attention to detail in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, as many will say Cameron did with Avatar. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was over 200 minutes long, and while watching the movie, I never once thought about the time, I felt engaged with the characters, I felt like I was part of the journey. The eye candy of Avatar is impressive, but I never felt part of a journey, I felt more like I was watching a documentary on Pandora, and at times found myself wondering about when the movie would be over.

Weta Digital, was the specials effects lab for Lord of the Rings, as it was for Avatar. Could it be that's why the epic battle scenes did not look all that new and awe inspiring to me?

What I remember most about the characters of Avatar, was not as much who they were, but the stereotypes they represent. I clearly rememeber the use of phrases like "shock and awe" and "treehuggers" in this movie, and that is what the stands out as the prevailing theme of the plot, the evil capitalist agressors versus the sympathetic enviromentalists. The characters never became real, they remained images of the stereotypes they represent, the crazy colonel, the greedy corporate figurehead, the environmentalist scientist.

I was never a big fan of Star Wars, as it was more about the special effects, and less about the characters and the story. For the same reasons, I am not all that excited about Avatar.