Blaine: The first semester of my junior year in high school wasn’t all that great and I was feeling down in the dumps, but then “AVATAR” came out and really cheered me up by giving me the feeling of adventure, excitement, action, romance and of course being amazed of it’s life like visual effects. Not to mention it is fun to watch. James Cameron wrote the script for “AVATAR” in 1995 and it was to be his next film after “Titanic”. James spent fourteen years enhancing visual effects so that “AVATAR” could live up to his vision. He hired the best artists to help him create this world he came up with.
Plot(Spoiler Alert)
Jake Sully fills in for his late brother’s place to journey to Pandora in an avatar body that is made to look like a blue species known as the Na’vi. His job is to try to get to know the way of the Na’vi and try to convince them to leave their home tree so that humans can tear it down because it stands above the richest deposit of unobtanium in the area. The problem is the more Jake spends time there the more he sees the beauty of Pandora and falls in love with one of the Na’vi, Neytiri. Jake reveals to the Na’vi the truth of who he is. The humans fire missiles at home tree and destroy it. Jake has become an outcast, but wants to help the Na’vi take back their lands. He gains their trust back by controlling a viscous, but honorable creature known as the Toruk. Jake then leads a Na'vi army against the humans, but the humans have a lot of fire power and chase the Na’vi away. The creatures of Pandora come to the rescue and take down the humans under the command of the mother goddess Eywa. The Na’vi become victorious and send the humans away to go back to their planet.
Blaine: A couple of months after “AVATAR” was released, I heard people saying they didn’t like the story and I couldn’t understand that at first. They were also saying this is like “Pocahontas”, “Dances with Wolves” and “The Smurfs”. I watched “Pocahontas” and discovered that it is somewhat like it, one with the Susan Constant crew looking for gold on an island where the Natives live and “AVATAR” is about a business wanting to take down the forest because it sells for a lot of money, but there’s a culture that lives in the forest. I like “AVATAR” a lot more than “Pocahontas”.
James Cameron thought about more of how the film would look visually instead of how the story would go and I’ll admit there is lines in it that sound ridiculous. The Hallelujah Mountains is not that good of a name for floating mountains nor is it a creative name. I don’t know what to call them, but certainly not Hallelujah Mountains. At the final fight scene between Quaritch and Jake, Quaritch says “Nothing’s over while I’m breathing” and Jake’s reply is “I kind of hoped you would say that”. I would have said “I was afraid you were going to say something like that” because it sounds better.
James Cameron said the look of the Na’vi took a really long time to come up with. He wanted them to look alien with animal like features like cat ears and tails and having a flat feline nose. They would also have an alien structure. The skin color being blue was never in question at first. Because there’s a love story in the movie, James wanted them to look attractive as well. He wanted them to look good enough that people would want to be one of them. The creatures were easier to design. For the colors of these creatures they looked at poison dart frogs and tropical reef fish.
Casting for “AVATAR” happened in 2006 and the actors were willing to spend two or three years on this film. They took photos of the actors who were playing the Na’vi and played around with the photos in order to turn them into Na’vi people. They also did 3D sculptors of the actors as Na’vi and played around with the designs a lot.
The actors had to do a lot of training. Sam Worthington had to do military training. Other trainings for the actors involved horse backing riding, movement, language, dancing and archery. The actors even had to travel through a forest for three days in Hawaii and rehearse out the scenes they were going to act out because when they were going to be acting on a grey set, James wanted them to believe they were in that forest. And they had to be in character while they were that forest. James wanted them to believe. Stephen Lang joined the cast later in 2007. Stephen had additioned to be apart of James Cameron’s “Aliens” back in the late ‘80s and even though Stephen didn’t get a part in that movie, James remembered it twenty years later and wanted Stephen to play Colonel Miles Quaritch. Stephen was very honored because of that. Michelle Rodriguez wanted to know how to fly a helicopter in order to fly the air craft in “AVATAR" even though it isn’t real, still she’s pretending it’s supposed to be like flying a helicopter.
Even though “AVATAR” needed a little bit more work to the story still there’s a lot of stuff I do like about it, like the romantic relationship between Jake and Neytiri and how they become close and fall in love with each other. Neytiri thinks Jake is clumsy and a moron at first, then he grows on her, then falls in love with him, then hates him after he reveals that he portrayed her kind, but then loves him again after he comes back on Toruk Makto.
The scene that I find so romantic in “AVATAR" is when Neytiri saves Jake’s human self just when he is about to die because he can’t breathe the air. I like how Neytiri holds Jake almost like the pieta and seeing him put his hand on her face. They say to each other “I see you” and my thoughts were the first time I saw “AVATAR” is that he sees her with his real human eyes and she sees his real face that’s human and not Na'vi. Of course I didn’t know that "I see you” was the Na’vi’s saying because I wasn't paying attention to that the first time, but I still like to think that’s what those two mean in that scene. Another thing about “AVATAR” is that it is a movie with a lot of color, blue in particular. And I love the action. My favorite scene in the whole movie is when the mother goddess, Eywa has summoned all the creatures of Pandora to take down the Marines. The Marines destroyed the home tree, they were beating the Na’vi and I was feeling a lot of hate because of that. But I knew something would come along ten times better and more powerful than the Marines and their weapons. Just watching that scene gave me an intense feeling.
Extended editions to movies like “AVATAR” are better to watch because it makes the film longer and it shows more to the plot than what fans haven’t seen in the theater version. In the extended edition you get to know more about the school Grace had for the young Na’vi and what happened to it. Neytiri’s sister is mentioned and what had happened to her was she destroyed a bulldozer and Marines followed her to the school where she was killed. The extended edition also shows a creature known as the Strumbeest, some kind of dinosaur like creature with one horn on the forehead.
Deleted scenes to movies like this I don’t care for so much because the effects aren’t fully complete. One of the deleted scenes I do like is Jake coming back from a day with the Na'vi and notices Trudy and Norm fooling around with each other. Another deleted scene shows the Na’vi dancing around a fire while Tsu’tey challenges Jake to some kind of drinking contest. Then Neytiri comes over and wants Jake to dance and Jake drags Grace into it. Jake and Neytiri dance with each other, then they just stop and look directly into each other’s faces like they are starting to really like each other. That’s what I like about that scene because it starts to show them growing closer to each other romantically. I use my imagination to see that scene with completed visual effects on it. I think it’s a scene they should have put in the movie. Another deleted scene is after the Na’vi have become victory and send a lot of the humans away, it shows the beginning of a new tomorrow. A Na’vi woman shows a big baby bump. Jake and Neytiri are expecting a child of their own.
At the end of “AVATAR" Jake leaves the human life he had behind so that he can live in is Avatar body for the rest of his life. He’s thought about it long and hard and feels his purpose in life now is to be with Neytiri. In the extended edition of “AVATAR”, it shows Tsu’Tey telling Jake that he has to lead the Na’vi now that he is dying and that’s another reason he’s leaving his old life behind him.
Sequels have been in talk after the first one became so successful, but there’s no knowing when they are ever going to be released. I remember seeing an online article saying Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings Trilogy) is helping out with some of the lines in the sequels. James Cameron really made history with “AVATAR”. He spent years experimenting with visual effects in order to make them so life like. There’s also a lot of movies you can see in 3D because of the inspiration “AVATAR” and other movies of 2009 gave them. And it also became the highest grossing movie of all time with $2,787,965,087 at the box office.
My rating on “Avatar” is five out of five stars.
Concept Art
3D sculptures
Parodies
I’ve only seen "The Simpsons” do a few parodies of “AVATAR” and it started off with a coach gag. Then they did a parody of “AVATAR” in their twenty second Treehouse of Horror. Except instead of being blue creatures they are the aliens on “The Simpsons" Halloween specials like Kang and Kodos.
Simpsons episode, “The Blue and the Grey"
Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXII
Awards
I really think that best picture should have gone to “AVATAR” instead of “The Hurt Locker”, but “AVATAR” did win three oscars for cinematography, visual effects and production design. “AVATAR” won two Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture Drama and Best Directing. I think “AVATAR” was more popular at the 2010 Scream Awards. It won for Best 3D Movie, Best Director and Best F/X.
“AVATAR” creator, James Cameron, and his co-producer Jon Landau at the 2010 Scream Awards.
