Note the absence of yawns.
OK – saw Avatar. Not on IMAX, as originally planned, but definitely got the 3d experience. Hats off to James Cameron – another epic film with all the JC tropes in place. Groundbreaking visuals – check. Space Marines – check (he basically invented the concept with Aliens). Alien lifeforms – check. Awesome mech action – check. Strong female characters – check. While Weaver’s Dr. Augustine has to take a backseat to Saldana’s Neytiri, it’s a nice homage to the Ripley of times past. I’ll not launch into a 10 page diatribe about the movie – the intertubes are littered with gushing and analytical looks at Cameron’s opus.
I merely wanted to focus on the one tiny niggle I had with how the ‘bonding’ process worked between the drivers and the Navi bodies. It would appear that everytime the Navi fell asleep, the human drivers would then awaken and then go about their day (or night?!), and vice-versa. My only question was this – when did Jake or any of the other ‘drivers’ actually get any time for shut eye? Anyone that has worked a string of nights or ICU call can attest to the fact that after about a week of sleep deprivation, people start to become stupid, lose coordination, make mistakes, etc. And while I’m all for suspension of reality (it is a movie about seven foot tall cat-people, after all), this seemed a slightly obvious mis-step, especially when you had supposedly uber smart neuro-scientists waking around saying awesome things like, “That’s one beautiful brain,” while looking at infinitely complicated 3d renders of Jake’s brain. All I’m saying is that one or two animated rendered yawns might have kicked up the reality notch for this whiny, nerdcore md (that is still madly in love with the technical achievement that the film represents, mind you.) I will, however, go on record saying that as impressive as this film was, I considered Blomkamp’s District 9 a more impressive piece of storytelling, both in terms of character development (was there really any doubt that Jake and Neytiri were going to fall in love?) and a ‘what can I do with what I’ve got’ standpoint, i.e. Cameron had 500 million to make his film, Blaukomp had 6 million, which was a little less than what it cost to make ‘The Hangover’.