I'm on an Alkaline Trio kick right now. Blame the . . . the . . . me, I guess. This is okay, but when I get mad, all of it gets stuck in my mind in the most horrible way.
We had a review writing contest oin News on that movie "Avatar", and this is mine (you can skip it if you want):
Once upon a time there was a man named James Cameron. He wrote a story called Avatar that was supposed to start filming after the debut of his movie Titanic, but he decided to wait until now to grace us with its presence. Why? He wanted superior technology cover up the cliché storyline.
It’s as old as Disney: man goes to new place as a soldier to do as ordered, falls in love with a native girl, and turns on his countrymen, and ends up saving his newfound love’s people. We saw it in Pocahontas, we saw before that in Dances With Wolves, and the only difference is that the supposed natives are ten-foot blue people with tails.
The story starts off with Jake Sully, a paraplegic Marine, waking up from a five-year journey to Pandora, a mystical far-off planet. He’s there because his twin brother died – the twin brother that was supposed to pilot an avatar on a billion dollar mission for some good ol’ unobtanium. Now, from what I understand, the rules for avatar are World-of-Warcraft like – you can control it from a remote location, and when you want to, you step back from it and it becomes inactive.
Jake Sully is there to run his brother’s avatar, as stated before. Which turns into what could be called a mixed blessing. On his first adventure out in his big blue body, he gets separated from his group, and ends up having to fend for himself for a bit. However, he runs into Neytiri, a Na’vi princess. She takes him to her tribesmen, who decide to train him to be one of “the People” instead of killing him on the spot.
Much of the movie is devoted to showing how Jake adapts to the Na’vi lifestyle and slowly comes to realize he likes it better there than being a human. He turns on (most) of his human counterparts to defend his new way of life from their land-grubbing selves.
Some good points: the imagery was incredible. This would have been the ONE MOVIE to see in theaters. Most of the time the background was dark and everything was all glowing in the coolest way. I love the animals, too – especially those lizards that fly with the little whirly-things on their backs! Man, that’s just so cool. The characters were portrayed well by their actors, and for that I applaud them.
Especially Stephen Lang, who plays Colonel Miles Quaritch – you know, the army guy with the scars (did e=anyone ever really say his name in the movie?). He’s one of those villains that stays in your mind even after the movie. I’m serious, that guy plays a mean villain. Not the same villain like the Joker or someone of the like, but he just had that air about him that sad, “Hey, I’m the bad guy here, but I make it look awesome.”
Some . . . not-so-good points: one word, people: cliché. The storyline is overused. Yes, I know today’s problems . . . everything’s been done before, so everything ends up being cliché eventually. I’m not saying that it was a bad cliché . . . I was just pointing out that it’s in too many places. The action scenes were incredible – but drawn out. A lot of it could have been done simply, but it goes that extra mile too much.
And we’re not going to go too deep into the romance aspect of it, but let’s just put it this way: too much. Way, way, way too much. I could never show this to my brothers or siblings. EVER.
This is one of those movies that wants to be heartfelt and action-y all at once, but tries too hard. And Jake’s dialogue to himself is on the line of “Zen” and “cheesy”. Come on, “One life ends and another begins”? “I was in the place the eye does not see”? Sounds cool . . . but cheesy.
The ending was exactly what you would expect. For the sake of those who haven’t seen the movie, I won’t exactly say how it ended, but I’ll say this: it was long and drawn out. Like, this movie had to hit the 2.5 hour mark by any means possible. It really would have been better if it had been a wee bit shorter.
Let’s put it this way: I would have forked up the twelve bucks to see this movie in theaters and 3D, but I would not have paid twenty bucks for the DVD to watch at my house.
The others poited out that this was an unfair contest because I won a state comp for reviews (1st place, bay-beee!). But Z and B said I won fair and square.
*sigh* and this girl Jess got me all MAD in Drama over nothing and my head hurts and I'm crashing from some Red Bull I drank last night.
I have News to do . . . again. Bye folks.
~Jink the busy
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