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Avatar: Movie Review

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart,” said William Wordsworth. Thus, without letting our admiration for James Cameron come in the way of our verdict on ‘Avatar’, with a heavy heart, we’ll have to say that we found Cameron’s highly anticipated, expensive motion picture ‘Avatar’ not living up to our expectations.
Many who have seen the film have an opinion that since so much time (10 years), effort and sweat has gone into creating stereoscopic 3D effects for the film, and combining live and computer animation, one ought to appreciate it. True as it might be, at the end of the day, if a film fails to establish an emotional connect with the audiences, no effects whatsoever can salvage it or make it special.
Coming to the story, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is an ex-marine who is forced into participating in Avatar program. The program is setup by humans and comprises of encroaching a distant moon Pandora as it has an abundance of precious minerals on its land. However, getting hold of Pandora won’t be easy as humans can’t breathe on it. Also, the warrior Na’vi tribe resides in it.


In order to encroach Pandora’s land, one has to be able to breathe its air and thus become one of the Na’vis. Scientists thus create these genetically-bred human-Na’vi hybrids known as Avatars. The Avatars have a Na-vi body and a human DNA. Jake becomes one such Avatar...human kind’s weapon to make truce with Na’vis and thus force them to evacuate their planet. As Jake starts shuttling between his human and Na’vi body, he starts getting emotionally attached to Pandora and there begins the conflict between his medium of existence.




Avatar begins well but goofs up as it progresses. The story which seems promising initially starts faltering the moment Cameron shows Jake fall in love with a Na’vi woman. The film then on becomes just another clichéd love story where a hero will save his lover and her people from the villains. The villains happen to be humans here who now want to wage a war on the Na’vis as they refuse to give in to their demands. Jake even readies himself to battle it out with the humans to save his Na’vi tribe... things people do for love! If the love wasn’t clichéd enough, Cameron even makes his hero single out the lead villain and engage him in a one-to-one fist fight with him!

Avatar begins well, drags tremendously in between and then picks up on its pace towards the climax, but its too late by then. Titanic oozed romance and we loved it but the setting of Avatar didn’t require romance as its prime ingredient. This wrong move of Cameron transforms a sci-fi ‘Avatar’ into a highly clichéd run-of-the-mill dramatic love story set against a war backdrop.

The film is a visual delight, but lacks an original plot. This visual treat doesn’t make up for the weak storyline. The infusion of human trauma in an idyllic fantasy setting doesn’t seem to be a good idea! Avatar loses direction somewhere along the way, and its huge length plays spoil sport too.

Performances are decent, but not outstanding. Unfortunately, so is the film! However, ‘decent’ is not what one expects from a James Cameron.

Method Journeys to Solar System for Black Eyed Peas

Visual effects studio Method recently collaborated with Little Minx director Ben Mor on the music video for the Black Eyed Peas Billboard Top 10 hit, Meet Me Halfway. The video dispatches the four members of the Black Eyed Peas to different corners of the solar system: Fergie languors in a lush jungle, willi.i.am rides an elephant on a moon of Jupiter, apl.de.ap levitates above the ground of a desert planet, and Taboo hovers at the surface of the sun, wearing an astronaut suit.

As they sing longingly about their desire to be together again, will.i.am unlocks a portal that appears in each location. The Peas step through the portal and the video ends with a shot of four comets careening through the Earth’s atmosphere.

More shot the footage on partial sets built on blue screen and left it up to Method to extend the environments, from the desolate moonscape to the verdant jungle to the looming sun.

“Ben provided us with a spread of pictures and photos, then our matte painters took those concepts and fleshed it out to create these environments,” explains Method’s Creative Director Aron Hjartarson. Method relied on matte painting and CG set extensions to create four dramatically immersive environments, and the transition from set to set extensions is seamless.

“The word epic was in my mind from the beginning”, explains Mor. “I wanted to make it feel like once you’re done watching the video, you’d wanna see the movie.”

Method also granulated the footage to create a low-tech visual texture versus an overly sharp and crisp finish. “We tried to achieve the vintage prime lens look, which ends up giving you that Penthouse porn shoot softness,” explains Mor. In effect, the video conveys a surreal hybrid of futuristic and ancient aesthetics.

A centerpiece of the video is the sun sequence. Taboo floats at the surface of the sun, bathed in a hot orange glare. The sun’s surface roils with flames and casts golden rays onto Taboo’s visor. “It’s tricky to pull off that really hot-texture look and keep it convincing,” says Hjartarson. “We dove into look development and came up with a superb, white-hot aesthetic.”

“Method really came through for me, and I couldn’t be any happier with their creative strength and collaborative approach,” comments Mor. “Method was able to pull a substantial look and environment extension in an obscenely short amount of time and I’m proud of the results.”

Malayala Manorama & Clusters Proudly presents - Mega Seminar on Visual Effects in Films

Clusters, one of the leading Animation and Visual Effects school and
Rhythm & Hues, a Los Angeles based Academy Award

winning film production studio specializing in Visual Effects is conducting a

seminar on Visual effects. Rhythm & Hues studios is known for

its contribution to a great number of Hollywood feature films in the last

21 years, movies like The Golden Compass, A Night At The Museum I , 

Superman Returns, The Chronicles of Narnia, Alvin & 

The Chipmunks and many more. Aspirants who want to build

a career in film and Visual effects can directly interact with technical person

to clear their doubts.

Technical Session by Mr. Dileep Varma, Rhythm & Hues Studios
On 12th December 2009, Saturday 10.30 am. at SP Grand Days,
Trivandrum, Kerala, India

Call us & register for free now @ +91 97470 10001