Avatar (Extended Collector's Edition) dir. James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Giovani Ribisi, Stephen Lang

**1/2

By Alan Bacchus

There’s nothing really special edition about a Collector's Edition of Avatar, which comprises of 16 extra mins added to the original film, bringing it now to a near 3-hour running time. It’s not very special when the film came out not less than a year ago, with absolutely no time to let it even breathe and have it’s scenes, characters, motivations, special effects, and it’s individual moments of anger, sadness and comedy become etched in cinema history. It’s $700million take notwithstanding, is the film that memorable enough (yet) to justify having new footage added in?

It’s not like Lord of the Rings where there’s the books whose characters and events are already entrenched in pop culture and with an already loyal fanbase who desire to see such excised portions reinstated. And so, watching the new Avatar, I couldn’t even feel a difference in the two versions. Sure, I know the opening scene is different, because it takes place on earth, but, it took me an internet search to figure what exactly these other extra scenes are.

Why didn’t Mr. Cameron, and the fellows at Fox, wait, till say, the second and third Avatars come out before rewarding us with this special edition? Well, it surely maximizes the revenue possibilities releasing this just prior to Black Friday and at the beginning of Christmas shopping season. Or maybe it’s because secretly the filmmakers know that the film might have a shorter shelf life than it’s box office take might suggest?

I doubt the latter is the case, but I do believe 10 years from now Avatar will seem like a fun fantasy adventure, a disposable and forgettable slice of entertainment from the bygone era of 3D hyper and over-exuberance.

Looking back on the film, a third time, twice on Blu-Ray and once in 3D on the big screen, my opinion on the film has changed little.

The plotting of Cameron’s sci-fi version of Dances With Wolves borrows characters, dramatic arcs and story beats are all rooted in familiar storytelling, in addition to Wolves, films like Braveheart, Last of the Mohicans, The Matrix and a number of westerns all contribute to Cameron's screenplay. Although I’ve heard Mr. Cameron expound again and again that ultimately, ’it comes down to story’, it’s all BS because clearly story here takes a backseat for special effects and spectacle. So let’s leave the story as that - a functional skeleton for Cameron to hang all his fantastical creations.

The creatures are all rendered as perfect as can be compared to other CGI films. The blue creatures look almost real. But of course they can never look 100% real, because there is no such creature as a Na’vi. They run just like humans, can shoot guns and arrows just like humans and embrace and kiss just like humans. Everything works as good as it can. But their computer generated facial expressions can never substitute for the expressiveness of the humans - though Cameron would argue against that as well. And so, true immersion into the material comes down to whether you don’t mind watching nine-foot talk blue people interact and act like humans. ‘Titanic’ had worse dialogue and worse characters, yet when Jack was saying goodbye to Rose as her lifeboat was being lowered into the water the moment hit us in the gut because Leonardo Di Caprio was a real person and Kate Winslet was a real person. Avatar does not have that luxury and thus these moments never quite work as well.

The action is a marvel and mind blowing. The final twenty minutes, Transformers-like army vs. army battle, the kind of battle which could have easily been a wash of random swooshing imagery, quick cuts and incomprehensive movement is executed with typical Cameron panache. Even after 15 years, Cameron it appeared to me he hadn’t lost a step in that department.

And yet, after I saw Aliens again, I think he has. The organic feeling we get from the action between physical humans and physical aliens (puppets, of course, but animate objects no less), can not be fully substituted with CGI. And this is where Avatar never reaches it’s full potential, no matter how hard Cameron has tried (and believe me, on the accompanying documentary, he tried really really hard), he just can’t make me feel true emotions for these characters and buy into their journey.

Your sincerely,

A humble but grumpy curmudgeon.

'Avatar (Extended Collector's Edition) is available on Blu-Ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Aliens (1986) dir. James Cameron
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Bill Paxton, Paul Reiser

****

By Alan Bacchus

One of the consistencies of all four Alien films is the launching pad of the four directors who helmed each of the films. For Scott and Cameron, it wasn’t their first films, and for Cameron specifically, he was already shit hot after The Terminator. For David Fincher it was his first film, and though Alien 3 wasn’t a hit, his career has grown substantially. For Jean-Pierre Jeunet, it was his first American film, and like Alien 3, it’s not his best work, but influential on his career nonetheless.

As scripted by Cameron, the sequel finds Ripley floating in space in the module which blasted away from the Nostromo at the end of the first film. When she's picked up she discovers decades have passed, her family long since dead, and now her skills and life obsolete. Except for her experience with the mysterious Alien which the people at the nefarious 'company' want to research, capture and exploit. When Ripley finds out that the planet where that ominous alien spaceship had crashed onto was now occupied by innocent planet colonizers (terraformers), she decides to face her demons and return to find survivors.

Ripley tags along with a very masculine and chauvinistic platoon of gung ho space marines. Once on the planet, their high tech weaponry is employed but against the steath manoeuvring of the aliens, their acid blood and those nasty piercing jaws the marines are no match and Ripley finds herself taking control again of the situation. Stakes are raised for Ripley when she discovers a little girl Newt is the only survivor of the bunch, a child who reignites Ripley's latent motherly instincts.

Aliens is James Cameron at his most brawny and muscular, a film from which would further his mostly consistent visual design aesthetic seen throughout his later pictures - his proficiency for blue, grey and sliver tinted colour schemes, his penchant for big heavy machinery designed to be as functional and practical as looking cool on screen, and his love of big heavy guns.

Great characters realized in the military crew include the heroic Hicks and the whiney Hudson, the oily company man Burke and the butch dyke ass kicker Vasquez. In fact the treatment of the military is a clever mixture of the literature of sci-fi novelist Robert A. Heinlein and timely metaphors of the bombastic approach of the technically superior American troops vs. the low rent guerrila tactics of the Vietcong in the Vietnam War.

It's fantastic authoritative but warm performance from Weaver, who takes command of the platoon, a transition which happens quick in the narrative but feels completely natural and believable. Miraculously Cameron even finds time to adds a quiet romance between Ripley and Hicks in a matter of a few scenes, something which took him 3 hours to do in Titanic.

The organic model work, matte photography and rear projection doesn’t hold up as well, but it’s a product of its time, and the texture inherent in these real world accessories adds to the realism of the film - something gravely missing from say, Avatar.

On Blu-Ray the grain of the original film stock which persisted in the DVD and Laserdisc versions has been mostly removed in here. James Cameron’s 2003 commentary even mentions why the grain is so visible.

The original cut differs greatly from the director’s cut. Both are fantastic films, but there’s no doubt the added scenes in the director’s cut adds much more depth. Specifically Ripley’s character whom we learn had a child of her own but died during her 57 year trip back home. This knowledge adds another layer to her protective relationship with Newt, not to mention another reason why she decides to go back to the colony in the first place.

There’s also a couple of fantastic individual sequences including the opening tease showing the first impregnation of the terraformers, Newt’s father. On the other hand, there’s also value in the increasing pacing of the 137mins version. The point of view is more consistent in the theatrical version, not having any knowledge of the terraformers.

And then there's the aggressive James Horner score which is now iconic, having been used in hundreds of trailers after then.

Sadly the heroic escape of Ripley, Hicks and Newt at the end is negated when the David Fincher version had all but Ripley unceremoniously killed off while floating in hypersleep before the start of the next film, Alien 3.

'Aliens' is available in Blu-Ray in the lovely Alien Legacy Box Set from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

AVATAR (2009) dir. James Cameron
Starring: Jake Sully, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Wes Studi and Giovanni Ribisi

**

By Greg Klymkiw

Given how little use I've had for James Cameron since his great film "The Terminator", I was prepared to hate this movie. I don't, however, hate it at all. Much worse is that I am rather indifferent towards it. On the plus side, it has terrific special effects, a serviceable science fiction premise and it's never boring. On the down side, it has terrific special effects, a serviceable science fiction premise and it's never boring. In other words, the picture is neither a win or a loss, but a draw and in my books, a draw is definitely nothing to be proud of. In fact, there are times when a spectacular loss can be endowed with considerable merit in its folly alone. Alas, this is not such a movie.

Of course, some might wonder why I have no use for Cameron, especially considering my penchant for genre pictures. Well, there are a lot of reasons, but the big three are as follows:

1. Cameron somehow managed to lose the sense of humour he displayed in "The Terminator. Humourless action movies are a dime a dozen and he's been strangely unable to crack a dark sardonic smile since Schwarzenegger uttered the famous words, "I'll be back."

2. Cameron utilizes (save for "The Terminator") lots of noise and bluster to generate suspense and excitement - pounding your pulse rate with wild cymbal-smashes and brute-force baseball bat blows instead of finely wrought and generated thrills that stick in the craw, slide slowly down the throat, burrow into the innards until they shockingly charge back up through the upper torso and uncontrollably spew globs of nasty undigested bits of viscous-enveloped matter into the audience's collective faces.

3. Cameron is earnest. Being earnest is bad enough when it belongs to dour National Film Board of Canada documentaries about children with learning disabilities who find teachers they can really relate to, but when it hangs like a constipated turd from the anus of an action director, it's virtually intolerable.

"Avatar" suffers from all three, but what made it SLIGHTLY watchable for me is that the bluster is finally more controlled, and therefore, ALMOST effective while the earnestness factor manages, at the very least, to generate some surprisingly interesting ideas regarding other life forms in the universe as well as some noodlings on the themes of American colonization, genocidal acts on behalf of corporate superpowers and the exploitation of natural resources

At the end of the day, though, the movie leaves me cold. I admire some of the craft, but I never have the feeling I'm experiencing a picture that truly engages.

One of the primary reasons it doesn't fully engage is that it's impossible to latch wholeheartedly onto any of the characters. If the movie had been endowed with at least a villain on a par with Schwarzenegger in the first "Terminator" instalment (which gave that film something to negate the dour humourlessness of the rather dull Kyle Reese, the "hero" played by Michael Biehn), then structurally and otherwise, "Avatar" might have gone the sort of distance it needed to go to achieve the same kind of relentless energy. Instead, we're forced to follow the slender tale of a paraplegic soldier whose mind melds with an avatar of an alien on a distant planet so he can join a scientific team to gather data that will allow an American corporate superpower to exploit the natural resources of the planet. While amongst the planet's blue-coloured indigenous populace, the soldier comes to understand the simple, spiritual and wholly environmental ways of these New-Agey warriors and joins them in battling the nasty, would-be conquerors.

The characters are finally little more than caricatures and ultimately, since most of them are jolly blue computer generated giants that are oddly not very pleasing to the eye, it's no wonder we're not too wrapped up in their struggle. This is not to say that caricatures in an action picture are always a bad thing, but there has to be some zip and oomph in the writing to give them the resonance that makes you bounce up and down in your seat with the same kind of giddiness that Schwarzenegger inspired in "The Terminator". All "Avatar" has going for it is a humourless hero and heroine and a couple of villains who offer little more than mild amusement value.

Another disappointing element of the picture is the IMAX 3-D format itself and the fact that the true joys of 3-D are never exploited to their fullest because Cameron is so humourless and earnest that he doesn't actually let himself loose and wholeheartedly embrace the real reason anyone might want to see a 3-D picture. In the 50s, when 3-D burst on the screen, filmmakers went out of their way to throw things at the camera lens (or audience) so that it actually felt like a tomahawk or spear or some other projectile was hurtling right towards you. During the brief revival of 3-D in the 70s and 80s, it was more of the same - most notably in Paul Morrissey's film of the Andy Warhol production of "Frankenstein" (AKA "Flesh For Frankenstein") where gooey, blood splattered guts dangled disgustingly before you. In recent years, 3-D has become so boring, so non-exploitative that most of the 3-D films are better off being viewed in flat 2-D. The exceptions to this are few and far between - the otherwise unwatchable "Polar Express" and the unjustly maligned "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" at least delivered on the roller coaster ride pleasures to be had in 3-D. "Avatar" is far too humourless and earnest to engage wholeheartedly in the deliciously exploitative pursuit of throwing stuff in our faces and/or taking us on harrowing amusement park rides. Cameron's more interested in using the 3-D technology to paint a portrait of a "real" fantasy world. This doesn't really cut the mustard since it's not a real world anyway - it all looks and feels computer generated.

This is not to say I have a problem with special effects LOOKING like special effects. The great stop-motion animation of Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen look like effects - in fact, they ALWAYS looked like effects, even when I was a kid I knew they weren't "real". That, of course, never mattered as there was also a huge effort to create a world that existed ONLY on the silver screen while making us care and believe in ALL the characters such as those in "King Kong" or "Jason and the Argonauts". When we watched those movies, we truly felt immersed in a cinematic land of spectacle, but the pictures worked because the stories themselves seemed infused with a heart, a core of human emotion and where the special effects were there to truly serve the STORY and CHARACTER.

With "Avatar", it's the opposite of that. Cameron, always the technophile knot-head, cares more about the effects and visual razzle-dazzle than anything else. This should have come as no surprise since it doesn't take much to remind me of the fact that in the appalling "Titanic", so much time and attention was lavished on making the great ship sets as technically and historically accurate as possible, while spending no time or effort on making the characters SOUND, MOVE or even LOOK (beyond the costumery) like they lived in the Edwardian period (save for Billy Zane's mincingly delicious bit of nastiness and Kathy Bates impersonation of Shelley Winters in "The Poseidon Adventure").

Sam Raimi is the perfect example of a truly great filmmaker since many of his pictures are laden with makeup, optical and/or digital effects, but they're all there in service of the movies themselves, as well as being infused with a delicious, nasty, funny pulp sensibility. Or how about the wonderfully insane Paul Verhoeven who dazzles us with his dark wit and delicious comic-book stylings? These filmmakers are certainly in direct contrast to Cameron who is, finally, a cold, calculating man of craft - a proletarian George Lucas, if you will. And on top of it all (and not the top of the world, by any means), Cameron is just one big square.

One thing in Cameron's screenplay for "Avatar" that I responded to positively was the world of the aliens and how a blend of the spiritual with physical allowed the blue goodies to live as one within their natural world - tethering soul and physiology so that all living creatures are tied together and not just with each other, but with the dimension of the afterlife and the ghosts of the past and the spirits of the planet's ancestors. This is such a lovely and intriguing element that it's sad to note that it leads us to one of the big flaws/holes in Cameron's screenplay. When the scientist, played by Sigourney Weaver, pleads with the corporate boss to not unbalance the delicate balance of the aliens' world, it's simply all too predictable how the New World Order-styled nasty-pants played by Giovanni Ribisi rejects this. What didn't jell with me on this front was the fact that Weaver's character could and should have used her expertise in dealing with corporate lackeys to fund her research by trying to argue that the minerals the Americans are trying to exploit are, in fact, less lucrative than trying to get to the bottom of how the aliens live. This latter secret seems even more ripe for corporate exploitation and that this is NEVER even brought up is an idiotic omission.

As the story, such as it is, is crafted, this logical pitch on the scientist's part is all but ignored (or not even considered) by Cameron's script. One can only surmise that if it HAD been bandied about at the writing stage, the possibility of Weaver pitching the Aliens' ecology as being far more valuable than the mineral deposits might have completely decimated the need for Cameron to blow things up real good.

There would then be no bluster and no noise. And that, finally, is all Cameron is really all about.

Boring!

"Avatar" is cold, lifeless, humourless and only marginally better than Cameron's previous work in this genre (save for the original "Terminator"). Like most of his films, it's aimed at all the fanboy (and fangirl) bone-brains who get off on attending screenings dressed as their favourite characters. No doubt, the "Avatar" fans will be arriving en masse to the theatres with blue paint smeared all over their faces and making all the Star Trek, Star Wars and Rocky Horror deadheads look like Rhodes Scholars.

Happily, the picture's adjusted for inflation gross will still never begin to approach that of a REAL hit like "Gone With The Wind". However, "Avatar" - no matter how you slice it - is going to be one hell of a monumental hit by contemporary standards.

It could, however, have been so much more.

Avatar (2009) dir. James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Giovani Ribisi

***

By Alan Bacchus

If you like nine foot tall blue humanoid aliens, flying dragons, giant lizard creatures, floating mountains, neon willow trees etc ‘Avatar’ is the movie for you. If not, you will hate it. “Avatar” is a film so processed, so glossy, so colourful and so outside of the realm of reality it's purist fantasy of the highest order. But for this reviewer, there’s nothing I wouldn’t have wanted substituted for a real person, a real earth landscape, a real horse instead of a lizard-beast etc. So I therefore must admit, pure fantasy doesn’t turn my crank, so take this all with a grain of salt.

What does turn my crank is balls out action - that is, running, flying, chasing, gun firing, explosions, knife fighting, arrow throwing etc., On this level of filmmaking ‘Avatar’ is a triumph.

The story features a pretty cool sci-fi concept, the idea of a human having the ability to project their mind into the body of harvested aliens, In this film humans are the baddies, an invasive species into the world of Pandora - a pastoral planet full of lush greenery, mountains which reach into the sky, lovely waterfalls, neon trees etc. Two factions of humans have come - the scientists who want to study the species from an anthropological point of view and the military naves who want to rape the land of its natural resources at the expense of the lovely blue aboriginal inhabitants.

A paraplegic marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) arrives on the planet looking for a way to live the reckless lifestyle he led before he was injured in battle. When he infiltrates the blue native people’s society his orders as a spy comes into conflict with his new found love for one of the aliens and their eco-friendly lifestyle. The rest pretty much plays out like ‘Dances With Wolves’…

Additional plotting, characters, dramatic arcs and story beats are all rooted in familiar storytelling, borrowed from films like ’Braveheart’, ’Last of the Mohicans’, ’The Matrix’ and a number of westerns. Although I’ve heard James Cameron expound again and again that ultimately, ’it comes down to story’, it’s all BS because clearly story here takes a backseat for special effects and spectacle. So let’s leave the story as that - a functional skeleton for Cameron to hang all his fantastical creations.

The creatures are all rendered as perfect as can be compared to other CGI films. The blue creatures look almost real. But of course they can never look 100% real, because there is no such creature as a Na’vi. They run just like humans, can shoot guns and arrows just like humans and embrace and kiss just like humans. Everything works as good as it can. But their computer generated facial expressions can never substitute for the expressiveness of the humans - though Cameron would argue against that as well. And so, true immersiveness into the material comes down to whether you don’t mind watching nine-foot talk blue people interact and act like humans. ‘Titanic’ had worse dialogue and worse characters, yet when Jack was saying goodbye to Rose as her lifeboat was being lowered into the water the moment hit us in the gut because Leonardo Di Caprio was a real person and Kate Winslet was a real person. Avatar does not have that luxury and thus these moments never quite work as well.

As for the action, it’s a marvel and mindblowing. The final twenty minutes is a Transformers-like army vs. army battle, the kind of battle which could have easily been a wash of random swooshing imagery, quick cuts and incomprehensive movement. But even after 15 years since Cameron’s last action picture he hasn’t lost a step. Done.

Now let’s get down to the 3D… I am sure that I will never watch another 3D dramatic feature film ever again until they can do it without glasses. If this movie is supposed to revolutionize the medium and make a profound paradigm shift toward three dimensions of film, it still doesn’t work for me. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s pretty good, but unless its perfect, it’s distracting. I’ve mentioned this in other 3D reviews, but:
a) it takes a miniscule fraction of a second before each shot for my eyes to adjust to the 3D dimensions, thus distracting me from the movie
b) the 3D process, especially with wideangle lenses actually reduce the feeling of scope of the picture. Making the screen seem small, like I’m looking into a tiny diarama or through a kaleidoscope eye
c) The tint in the lenses actually dull the brightness and reduce the contrast of the picture.

Ok, Sure, I sound like an old curmudgeon refusing to accept the future of cinema. Maybe one day 3D will become perfect and equal that of flat 2D imagery, but until that day, 2D will always be the superior way to watch a dramatic film. As long as films are co-presented in 2D and 3D, I’ll be in the 2D theatre. Call me in 10 years or so.