Avatar (2009)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez

Have I Seen it Before: I think if you were alive in 2009 you were required to see it. The box office numbers would certainly seem to back that up.

I first saw the film in IMAX 3D, which is probably the way to see it. I certainly enjoyed Avatar: The Way of the Water (2022) in that environment. What I wouldn’t recommend, however, is seeing the film in IMAX 3D… from the first row of the theater. I don’t like to include nausea in my filmgoing experience, unless Ari Aster is involved.

I feel obligated to say that this film is one of the few films my cat has ever taken an interest in**. It is entirely possible that I’ve only seen it the second time when I watched it with her, back when she was a tiny kitten.

Did I Like It: The film works better out of 3D in the long run. That’s a little bit because I don’t have to grumble about the rash of 3D conversions that riddled movie releases for the better part of a decade, but also a testament to Cameron’s fundamental skills behind the camera. He might have had ambitions to bring a new level of spectacle to the movie-going experience***, but he still understood that the movie would be playing on my crappy TV for the most of the rest of history.

I might complain—and was indeed, more than a little bit surprised—that the film leaned on VO narration so much, and the less said about “unobtanium,” the better, but when the shit really starts to hit the huge helicopter blades on Pandora, the film picks up with a pace that can’t be denied. If I’m more than content to judge the entirety of a film based on the strengths of its third act—and I am—it’s entirely possible that the film earned all of those eyes on it way back when.

*Even then…

**For obvious reasons.

***Essentially boiled down to “3D without people fling objects straight at the camera.”

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024)

Director: Kevin Costner

Cast: Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Giovanni Ribisi*

Have I Seen it Before: No. Tried to orchestrate a delicate movie watching schedule for the 4th of July, only to pick this one, then find my choice for second movie had sold out. The best laid plans, I suppose…

Did I Like It: Which might be the perfect point into which I should enter the review proper. I spend the first half an hour of this film really gearing up for the reality that I’m going to have a uniformly bad time. The villagers of Horizon we meet in the opening of the film are dumb. They are a gentle kind of dumb, but they have invited the disaster that befalls them. Granted, I tend to think that about a lot of people in our own chaotic day and age, but it became clear I might not be the right audience for this.

Then the movie makes it pretty clear that they were duped and are pretty dumb for it as well. That almost wins me over, but the reality is a film that has a wide array of engaging moments, is more often than not content to be pretty run-of-the-mill western, and is pointedly disinterested in having any kind of catharsis (see the apt reference in the footnote about Giovanni Ribisi). It’s stuffed to the brim with characters, and edited with enough lag to the proceedings, I’m really not sure why this didn’t become a prestige television series. It’s going to spend the vast majority of its life watched in essentially that format, why hang everything on theatrical grosses?

The question isn’t really if I’ve ever seen it before, remains will I ever see it again, or watch any of the other parts… Eh. I might wait for it to show up on streaming.

*This year’s winner of the Mark Hamill Award for getting high billing on a movie, despite only appearing for a fleeting, wordless moment at the end of the film… Which was really only a trailer for the forthcoming Chapter 2. That would be kind of like Mary Steenburgen receiving near-top billing for her extensive work in Back to the Future: Part II (1989). I feel like I should get a lot more credit for only mentioning Back to the Future in this review in a footnote.

Avatar: The Way of the Water (2022)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know, I’m running behind. It’s probably mostly a busy holiday season that kept me out of the theater all together, but it might just be a little bit that when I saw the original Avatar (2009), I made the boneheaded move to show up to the theater late. This was before theaters had assigned seating (kids, ask your parents). I then sat in a 3D IMAX screening for 3 hours in the front row. I spent the next few… uh, weeks, if memory serves, vomiting.

The movie was fine. I enjoy it now a lot more on Blu Ray and with no 3D

Did I Like It: So, anyway, yeah, I went to go see it in IMAX 3D again. I chose seating anywhere other than the front row, and am happy to report that I experienced not even the slightest bit of nausea this time. Put that on a newspaper ad*, Disney!

There’s been an obnoxious, bad-faith debate leading up to the release of this movie about whether or not the whole Avatar thing has any cultural relevance, especially with more than ten years between movies. Given that the sequel is making money hand over fist, that argument feels quaint already, but why did it come about in the first place?

Is it that gap? No, I think that’s too easy. Really, I think it was the first film’s success giving way to a new trend of 3D releases, many of them not needing them in the slightest. I’m looking in your direction, The Green Hornet (2011). I spent most of the 2010s patiently wearing two pairs of glasses in every movie, and you can’t help but feel a little resentment for the Na’vi each time it came up.

Which is unfair. The first was great (even with becoming quite ill), and now it is absolutely impossible to deny both the skills of James Cameron, and any film that goes north of 3 hours and doesn’t wear out its welcome. Sure, the man who built the Terminator may be returning to some wells here (is there a director who can better make a third act out of a sinking ship?), but the action is non-stop, it all serves character and story.

But do you want to know the movie’s best special effect? Sigourney Weaver. No, not the fact that Weta’s motion capture can make her character look like a 14 year old, but her performance in making me believe that she might actually be one.

That’s Cameron’s real strength. All the toys and tools are put to full effect, but in the end the writing and performances keep things aloft… until the third act, when they’re supposed to sink.

*Do newspapers even run a movie times section anymore?