Monday, December 21, 2009

Avatar: A hype or, a true revolution?

It's been five days since I watched Avatar( a paid preview on 17th Dec ), and i deliberately kept away from writing anything about it in form of review apart from one or two lines on the facebook & twitter.This James Cameron saga, at four years in making(discounting the 15 yrs he waited for the technology to catch up with his vision), and at over $230 million cost, is the biggest movie in term of ambitions, no doubt, but does it work?

Oh, it's a visual feast. The 3d experience is immersive. And for the entire length of 3 hours you feast in the vivid colours of Pandoran world, where the battle between good(US Co) and evil( native Na'vi) takes place, all over a mineral (unobtanium) which sells at $20 million a kilo. You get to see some new creatures, not created by God, but by a man, using the tools of computer generated scenery. About 70% of the movie is entirely the work of computers, and was shot in the same hanger where Howard Hughes ( Recently played by Leonardo Di Caprio in some movie) built his mammoth planes.

But in these past five days, not once have i thought about Avatar. Never has any character made any impression in my mind- i am niether happy, nor sad about the movie. And that is puzzling to me. To see the biggest film in history and not be excited or swayed by it, means only one thing to me- IT WAS CRAPPY. The visual effects may have been great, but it was devoid of that extra something that makes a movie great, a soul sort of...It was a soulless movie, full of technical perfection, but devoid of a compelling story.Maybe Cameron has saved it for the following two sequels to it.

It is likely to be a mega blockbuster..it took second highest opening in US history despite half the county keeping away from it (due to blizzard); and it has recuperated about $230 million from worldwide audiences in just these five days. A great flawed movie, lacking a soul!

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