James Cameroon’s latest, Avatar, had taken him quite a while to make – 14 years ago, he says, he started to write the script. No one can really blame him – with amazing 3D technology creating an absolutely stunning visual marvel, Avatar is a movie that is well-worth the wait. However, if you compare to Titanic, one will be sorely disappointed. Avatar is a movie that does hit all the right points – good plot, great effects – but when viewing it, there seemed to be something lacking. Later on I could pinpoint what it really was – the visual effects seemed to be front-and-centre compared to the actual plot of the movie. The plot, which was more dominant in Titanic, didn’t seem to work as well here – there wasn’t enough foreshadowing or character development to make one truly feel for the story.
Sorry for continually making the comparison to Titanic, but Titanic was such a big success that it’s hard to imagine that Avatar even standing up to it. It’s nice to know that Avatar does somewhat stand up to it though. The technology in this movie is much better than Titanic’s, but the plot seems borrowed. One can draw comparisons with movies like ‘Dances with Wolves’, and countless others. It’s year 2154 and humans need a new mineral called unobtainium which can only be found on a moon called Pandora. The humans want to destroy the planet in order to salvage the mineral but the native species, the Na’vi, won’t let them. With this big concept of ‘mankind’s destructive ways’ (it’s quite easy to see the parallels), there’s always the love story woven in. In this case – an ex-marine, Jake Sully, falls in love with Na’vi princess Neytiri, while in avatar form. The plot is just like Titanic – big concept (human destruction, sinking of Titanic), tackled with a personal narrative (love story, emotions).
Throughout the movie, the awkwardness of some bits could be attributed to the characters themselves. The romance between the protagonist, Jake Sully, and Neytiri, a Na’vi warrior, did not seem as, for lack of a better word, romantic as it could have been. There were some bits in the plot that were hard to get at first – what was up with Jake trying to ride that really big dragon thing? But soon the plot does come together, and the latter half of the movie really picks up. Overall, Avatar is a good movie with a decent plot and characters that are thrust to the back in comparison to the visual effects, but work nonetheless.