The Couch Potato reviews 'Avatar' on DVD
Welcome to The Screening Log's latest feature column. Each week, our new contributor Dave Fogerson will screen a DVD and share his viewing experience, and to kick things off, he decided to get a hold of James Cameron's "Avatar" and find out what the hit movie looks like in 2D on a smaller screen. Enjoy the result below, and if you like what you're reading, please spread the word. Welcome Dave! Here we go...
“Dude, you gotta see it in IMAX 3D. “
“Uhh, no I don't.”
Such was my attitude about seeing Cameron's mega-event movie "Avatar" from the get-go. I didn't need the sniveling movie geeks telling me what to do. If the movie was gonna stand at all, it had to stand on its story and characters, none of which are enhanced by football field-sized screens and uncomfortable (or at the very least, unfashionable) glasses worn by someone with lice and greasy skin the showing before mine.
Nope, I was going to be a sniveling film snob, wait for the DVD/BluRay and judge it on it's merits. Hah! Take that, Jimmy, you'll never top "T2." But can such a monumental ode to filmmaking technology be fairly assessed on the tiny scale of my living room television?
Let's get the obvious out of the way. Yes, it looks fabulous. CG is great, fine details are great, and every minute Cammy spent rendering this movie appears on the screen. Great. Terrific. Stupendous.
Which leads me to my main gripe about "'tar." There isn't a single hint of subtlety anywhere in this movie. Not the imagery, not the characterizations, not the symbolism, nothing. The Na'vi dress, act, and sound like stereotypical Hollywood Native Americans, to the point where the six or so drops of Cherokee blood in my body were offended. Lovable savages in touch with the land; now where have I seen that before? Symbolism ceases to be symbolism when it becomes explicit in-your-face preaching. The relative intimacy of home video brings that point home with a vengeance.
And let's face it, folks, in a damn-near three-hour movie, there's plenty of room for subtlety and subtext. There's also, apparently, plenty of room for volume. And I mean, this movie is loud. Let's put that in bold caps: L O U D. By design, I imagine. After all, if you're swimming in an IMAX 3D induced haze, high volume adds to the level of immersion. On television, it's just annoying.
Ding number three, the movie is just too kinetic for television. Got no problems with the whole shaky cam thing, if used judiciously, but when everything on the screen is animated, and the cam is still shaky, you begin to realize that the director is just trying to get your head spinning. There are no cameras in CG, so how can they shake? Damn you, Cammy, I don't need another headache. Again, maybe not so noticeable on the big-big screen, but with the periphery of my vision locked in the stillness of my living room, very distracting on the small screen.
So what's good about "Avatar" on the small screen? The simplicity of the story makes it the perfect kind of movie to have going in the background if you're making dinner, cleaning the house, or clipping your toenails. You can get up in the middle of the movie, go to the bathroom, and feel like you haven't missed a thing. Let's face it, you knew how it was going to end the moment the opening credits rolled.
Article written by Dave Fogerson
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Reader Comments (5)
Sooooooooooooo....... you liked it?
"Sooooooooooooo....... you liked it?"
Meh.
Very difficult to be in a room full of Avatar fans when all that runs through one's mind is the fairy tale about the emperor having no clothes.
I am still going to buy this dvd and the special edition when it comes out in november.Thanks for your review.
Did anyone else see the film in the theater and notice that the home version has some wrenching cuts? I mean, at one point I was not sure how we had gotten to that point, it was so bad. And I'd seen the movie before! I need to watch the ending again; I ducked out to make coffee and was told (by another also-saw-it-in-3D) that the whole ending was jerky and abbreviated on the home version. I actually preferred it without 3D, though; had to take the glasses off in the theater because I was getting nauseous!