AVATAR_lizardi reviews

I know you’re all desperately waiting to hear what I thought about Avatar.  Most of you probably think I hated it.  I didn’t.  But the movie isn’t without its flaws.  It has many.  As some of you may know one viewing is rarely enough for me to make a valid  argument over a film.  I enjoy studying cinema.  I like to view the movie as a whole and then disect the film, pulling it a part piece by piece, before putting it back together again.  Then I’m ready to write a review… or perhaps I’m just feeling lazy.  Anyway, I’ve asked my good friend Ryan Lizardi to write up a review for me.  He is both a fanboy and a filmmaker whose opinion I hold in high regard.  So, without further ado, I present to you Lizardi’s review (unintentional rhyme!)

Good or Bad?! I must know!!!

AVATAR:

It is not that Avatar is a poorly made “bad” film. It might even be that it is the exact opposite. This film comes across to viewers as the kind of high gloss, meticulously planned project we have come to expect from the stable of formerly great directors that used to dazzle us in yesteryears. James Cameron, I would like you to meet Spielberg and Lucas who will be your roommates from now on. They could do a sitcom, it would be hilarious.

Avatar is too slick, too “good,” and it comes out the other end as technically and technologically competent, but severely lacking in places like dialogue, plot construction, and basic human feeling. Was I supposed to care about those cartoon blue creatures? And no they did not look like real people like so many reviews have said. The 3D looked better in the human scenes than it did in the Na’vi scenes because on Pandora everything looks like so many digital cartoons being produced today. There is a sensor on the 3D glasses you get that if you touch it the 3D effect disappears. I couldn’t stop touching it out of sheer boredom. This film is way too long and way too predictable.

Specifically, this film is too neat of a package. When a character says an “offhanded” line in the beginning of the film you know beyond a shadow of a doubt it will be really important in the end. It’s like Cameron couldn’t stop reading the foreshadowing section of his Screenwriting 101 book. The cheesiness of some of the elements in this film know’s no bounds either. Did you really just name the all important reason to attack the Na’vi “Unobtainium”? Honestly, that’s your best shot? It feels like Cameron wrote that as a placeholder early in the construction of this film and forgot to change it by the end. Ridiculous. Why don’t you just shoot Indiana Jones thousands of feet in the air in a metal refrigerator only to suffer minor injuries. Same thing.

Cameron spends most of Avatar ripping off other films (Dances With Wolves), himself (“loaders” from Aliens) and Earth’s biological world (Pandora animals that are dog, horse, and lemur equivalent) only to end up with a film that can only be described as unoriginal and above all hollow. I think that might be the best way to describe it. All surface, no substance. Hurry up and get to the kitchen Cameron, I think Lucas and Spielberg are eating all of your peanut butter.

by Ryan Lizardi

—

Ryan Lizardi is a Ph.D. Candidate in Mass Communications at Penn State.  He’s also my very first guest-blogger and, because of it, will always hold a special place in my heart (that and we went to film school together.)  Hopefully I will be able to con him into writing more film reviews in the future!!

– cK

And if you’ve seen Avatar, and you loved it, or hated it, let’s hear it…