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redfiona99The Statement For The Prosecution:
Other, much more well-considered people than I, have written about Avatar's many issues. So will just stick to three things that I didn't like.
1 - Jake Sully is terribly underwritten.
I mean it. Name one thing you know about his personality. Nothing. Now, pretty much every character in the film is under-written, more archetype than person, but the other characters are played by actors who can work round that while Sam Worthington ... can't. So he does suffer from being our hero because we've been told that he is. There's this line that Quaritch has later, (and I apologise for the character's vulgarity) "So, you find yourself some local tail, and you just completely forget what team you're playin' for?" and you can't help but feel Quaritch might have a point, because do we think Sully would have gone over to the Na'vi if it had been Tsu'tey he'd run into first, not Neytiri?
2 - The biology, it makes no sense. James Cameron was all over everywhere going 'I got scientists to check this', but none of those scientists appear to have been biologists. Why would you have something as vital as the neural queue (yes, I looked up the name of the thing) dangling out there? I have no first hand experience, but the male fencers of my acquaintance assure me that hits to the groin hurt like the blazes, and that equipment seems to have fewer functions than the Na'vi neural queue. There's so much that can go wrong there that I'm amazed one creature, never mind several, evolved them. Also, the whole plug 'n' play thing with other animals and trees makes no sense either.
3 - James Cameron also wandered around saying he had a linguist invent a new language for the Na'vi. Only it's not new, it's a smerging of sounds from Earth language (and most Indo-European languages at that). Why would blue cat aliens from the planet Pandora have language that sounds anything like ours? It frustrates me. I don't think it would annoy me if Cameron hadn't made such a thing of 'new language' beforehand.
(Also, I kind of wish they'd called the aliens something else, because when I hear Na'vi, I think this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navvy)
Which again, I can't find online because ... I can find the music for it.
Anyway, my scene of choice was Grace's death. Actually, everything from her being shot onwards because it's so Grace, sarcasm and science.
Grace Augustine is my favourite character in Avatar because she's has nicotine and caffeine instead of blood and is every scientist landed with idiot superiors ever. And, and I'll give James Cameron this, his female characters are never written any less well than his male characters. She's real in a way pretty much no other character in the film is. And her death scene fits that character perfectly, from both her carrying on despite being shot to her knowing exactly how bad a gunshot wound to the stomach is (from a doctor of my acquaintance, try not to get shot in the stomach, it's a pain to fix), all the way to being willing to take a flyer on the tree saving her life, which yeah, for all scientists are portrayed as being evidence-obsessed, oh boy are we willing to take leaps of faith on occasion.
The scene is Grace distilled.
I would actually have been happier if there hadn't been the "proof" of Eywa's exists but Sigourney Weaver sells it.
Other, much more well-considered people than I, have written about Avatar's many issues. So will just stick to three things that I didn't like.
1 - Jake Sully is terribly underwritten.
I mean it. Name one thing you know about his personality. Nothing. Now, pretty much every character in the film is under-written, more archetype than person, but the other characters are played by actors who can work round that while Sam Worthington ... can't. So he does suffer from being our hero because we've been told that he is. There's this line that Quaritch has later, (and I apologise for the character's vulgarity) "So, you find yourself some local tail, and you just completely forget what team you're playin' for?" and you can't help but feel Quaritch might have a point, because do we think Sully would have gone over to the Na'vi if it had been Tsu'tey he'd run into first, not Neytiri?
2 - The biology, it makes no sense. James Cameron was all over everywhere going 'I got scientists to check this', but none of those scientists appear to have been biologists. Why would you have something as vital as the neural queue (yes, I looked up the name of the thing) dangling out there? I have no first hand experience, but the male fencers of my acquaintance assure me that hits to the groin hurt like the blazes, and that equipment seems to have fewer functions than the Na'vi neural queue. There's so much that can go wrong there that I'm amazed one creature, never mind several, evolved them. Also, the whole plug 'n' play thing with other animals and trees makes no sense either.
3 - James Cameron also wandered around saying he had a linguist invent a new language for the Na'vi. Only it's not new, it's a smerging of sounds from Earth language (and most Indo-European languages at that). Why would blue cat aliens from the planet Pandora have language that sounds anything like ours? It frustrates me. I don't think it would annoy me if Cameron hadn't made such a thing of 'new language' beforehand.
(Also, I kind of wish they'd called the aliens something else, because when I hear Na'vi, I think this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navvy)
Which again, I can't find online because ... I can find the music for it.
Anyway, my scene of choice was Grace's death. Actually, everything from her being shot onwards because it's so Grace, sarcasm and science.
Grace Augustine is my favourite character in Avatar because she's has nicotine and caffeine instead of blood and is every scientist landed with idiot superiors ever. And, and I'll give James Cameron this, his female characters are never written any less well than his male characters. She's real in a way pretty much no other character in the film is. And her death scene fits that character perfectly, from both her carrying on despite being shot to her knowing exactly how bad a gunshot wound to the stomach is (from a doctor of my acquaintance, try not to get shot in the stomach, it's a pain to fix), all the way to being willing to take a flyer on the tree saving her life, which yeah, for all scientists are portrayed as being evidence-obsessed, oh boy are we willing to take leaps of faith on occasion.
The scene is Grace distilled.
I would actually have been happier if there hadn't been the "proof" of Eywa's exists but Sigourney Weaver sells it.
