By Jeremy Azevedo

I’ve never really been a big believer of hype. As the marketing and P.R. tradesmen become more and more skilled with each passing year, it becomes impossible to differentiate genuine enthusiasm from outright lies.As a result, my initial response to hype generally ranges from distrust to outright hatred.

It doesn’t help James Cameron much that his last big film as a director was Titanic, an immensely successful but ultimately schmaltzy piece of work that few critics remember as fondly as the young girls that went in droves to see it back in ’97. It bears mentioning, however, that those same critics have a very short memory.

I don’t care what anyone has to say about James Cameron, this is the guy that gave us Terminator 1 and 2, The Abyss and Aliens. And let’s not forget that he also co-wrote and produced Point Break, for crissakes. For these achievements, Jim Cameron gets a lifetime pass and I’ll hear no backtalk about it. When you look at his body of work, what you see is a director that knows how to tell a simple story while simultaneously pushing the whole medium of filmmaking forward. Never content to follow in the footsteps of the effects trailblazers that came before him, each film introduce new technologies that change the way people make films. Avatar is the ultimate culmination of this desire to innovate, and (for once) was every bit as much of a leap forward as the hype would have you believe.

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Many people that saw the initial trailers immediately dismissed Avatar as “Fern Gully Meets Robot Jocks”. And in some ways that’s a fair assessment, but it’s also a shortsighted one. For Avatar, new technology was developed that allowed Jim Cameron to employ a “virtual camera” that allowed him to see the actors rendered (in real time) as their Na’vi counterparts. The actors themselves were filmed in immense “Volumes” that allowed for total body capture while also wearing special head-rig cameras that recorded every subtle nuance of their facial features. This differs quite a bit from traditional methods of motion capture in that the final performance is exactly that of the actors. When you look at the performers on the screen, you do not see a CG animated character, you see an actor that just happens to be eight feet tall with cat eyes and blue peach fuzz. There is no “uncanny valley” and there is no disconnect. 

Everything in Avatar is so beautifully detailed that it almost wouldn’t matter if there were any story or dialogue at all. The 3-D effect was likewise so subtle and spot-on that you had a feeling of actually being there. At one point, ashes were falling from above (on screen) and I caught myself brushing my shoulders off in my seat like some kinda jerkoff. That’s how immersed I was. In scenes that take place in the forest, you feel as if you can almost reach out and touch the foliage. When there is action on the screen (and there is a lot of action, I assure you), I can’t imagine that you’d be able to sit still in your chair unless you’re on some kind of barbiturates or something.

If being vaguely attracted to an 8ft tall, blue-skinned alien cat babe is wrong, than I don't wanna be right.

There is probably not going to be any debate as to the merits of the visuals, which anyone would have to agree are impressive. So the question is, really, is the story any good? Some might call it heavy handed. It’s clearly a condemnation of man’s propensity to destroy nature in the pursuit of physical wealth, which has no real worth to people that are spiritually connected to the earth. And as much as I hate hippy stuff (anyone that knows me will tell you that I’d don riot gear and a billy club over a tie-dyed shirt and dreadlocks any day of the week), the unabashedly “green” message did resonate with me. And it’s not because it was hammered in to me, it was because I watched a main character that I related to come to the same realization that I did.