By: Saeed Janghorban
Avatar is a masterpiece… is great. Certainly you will tell and/or hear these words after watching James Cameron’s “Avatar”. Don’t surprise! This is normal after watching the eye-catching scenes of a movie with a powerful story.
The name of James Cameron is bind with the movies with high-tech structure. His every film makes a great voice in the world of art. Terminator, Titanic and True Lies may be most famous of them. I like many other movie audiences knew Mr. Cameron as a good teenage movie maker. His Titanic with its eye-catching scenes became a legend for many audiences. We heard that many watch his movie for several times.
Avatar is a James Cameron movie too. The special effects of the movie are as we expect from Mr. Cameron. But the story of the movie is very different. If you’ve seen his previous works, you can not believe that this is another work of Mr. Cameron. It’s beautiful and strong story is beyond Cameron’s movies.
Avatar is story of Naturalism and Gnosticism; is the story of oppositeness of tradition and modernity. The story is about an American soldier who solved in the nature and Gnosticism of a civilization that their humanity isn’t altered yet. Earth men are in searching of a new element that has find in an alien planet called “Pandora”. Pandora is a planet resembles to earth but its atmosphere is not good for human beings. Mans traveled to the planet for this element and try to take it as a colony. But Na’Vi, only intelligent creature on Pandora, resist In front of this invasion.
Sally Jake loses his twin brother who is a scientific member of Project in the name of AVATAR. In this project, they transfer their soul to the body of Na’Vis to contact them. Sally Jake is first soldier that joint to this and his boldness caused to take better relation to them and finally attracted to their life style.
When I see the Avatar I remember Kevin Costner’s masterpiece, “Dance with Wolves”. The story is so resemble to it. “Dance with Wolves” is about an American officer who attracted to the life of American-Indians and finally help them to fight in front of US army. The Avatar is same; with same manifest. Na’Vis are so resemble the American Indians; their life style, love of nature and even their screams and accent. In fact Mr. Cameron tried to remember the history of America.
The movie has good direction as we expect from Mr. Cameron. Special effects are so strong and are one of the movie’s strengths but in opposition of Cameron previous movies, this movie lean on its good screenplay. The special effects are in serve of the movie structure while previous works use expensive special effects only for attracting audiences. It means if you eliminate special effects, the movie will lose much of its content. The characters of Na’Vis and other creatures of the planet show primary stages of life in Pandora. The blue skin of Na’Vis shows the different element structure of their body. Their body color is same as the planet color that is like us in the earth.
The soundtrack is another factor of movie success. James Horner is one of the well known composers in the movie industry. Last cooperation between Horner and Cameron in Titanic, bring academy award for him. Mr. Horner has many famous soundtracks in his records; Brave Heart, Legend of the Fall, The Mask of Zorro, Jumanji, Enemy at Gates, Devil’s Advocate, Troy and more; his works usually has romantic content but he has shown that has more ability in making epic music. The music of Avatar is great; Horner’s music helps to foster movie manifests. Horner has made a romantic music instead of great epic music such as Star Treck, because Avatar is romantic movie in science-fiction format. Horner has grasped the content of movie and tried to transfer his understanding to audiences. This is one of a reason nominating the soundtrack in Academy Awards.
Selecting no superstar actors for the movie is one of the avatar differences. Cameron preferred to use teenage superstars for financial reasons but in this movie we see no superstars. However playing is so good and we watch uniform playing of actors and actresses; although they played more with motion capture.
At all Avatar is an excellent movie and shows that the future of cinema is not dark. Some recent movies disappoint professional audiences. But avatar, although is not like great classical movies such as “dance with wolves”, but is a good movie in its style. Avatar is a critic of men future and their ambition. Time of movie is short and the story happen so fast as you can match yourself with it. In my belief Avatar needs to at least 3 hour time and some parts need to more fostering. Mr. Cameron could to talk more about spiritual changes inside Jake Sally instead of showing eye-catching scenes, which refer to his teenage thought. The story telling of dance with wolves shows exactly the wind of changes in John Dunbar and you can understand it but in Avatar this doesn’t show as good and somebody may think that his decision is as a result of his legs problem. Another weakness of the movie is about Director’s boldness to show the deep reason of the invasion, while Mr. Costner takes a small point but deep to the reason and quality of invasion to American Indians.