Farewell to Avatar's Rerelease, Here Is a Fan's Final Thoughts and Defense Against Its Criticism

The Avatar Rerelease has officially been removed from movie listings a few days ago. As someone who watched the rerelease 5 times, I don’t know what I am feeling. Sad? Not really, it has been in fact been in theaters for 3 weeks, that is longer than a lot of other new movies. During these 3 weeks, us Avatar fans and other people has brought in another 30 million+ of box office and pushed the its gross global box office to 2.9 billion dollars, a record that will even be hard to beat for Avatar 2. Although it is not correct to equate box office success with the true artistic merit of the movie, but one might still find the records to be awfully satisfying as a fan of the work that James Cameron has brought upon us.

So yes, this is me, writing for a third time about Avatar, which I have never done before. I know this is a blog post from an obscure personal website from a “who’s your face” kind of person, but I believe Avatar is worth it. I see a lot of people criticize this movie from all angles, and I have defended the music choice of the movie in my last post. What I don’t understand is why there is so much hate towards this movie; it doesn’t deserve that much hate. So, yes, I will try to judge this movie unbiasedly for a third time, after another 4 viewings at the movie theater with both RealD 3D and IMAX 3D.

There is 0 organization going into this post, this is just me writing stuff I have on my mind but trying to be as scholarly as possible. I will first share a few things that I have noticed about seeing Avatar again as an adult, and I will try to engage the criticism of the movie as unbiasedly as possible.

A few things I should note at the beginning. As a 22-year-old, I have seen a lot of movies at this stage of my life, and I am easily impressed. When I first watched Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice in the theaters, I loved it. Hans Zimmer’s music was one of the reasons I loved it. However, upon further viewings, the holes of the movie’s plot came quite clear, and I didn’t love it so much afterwards. What I am trying to say here, is that a movie is only good in my books, if it can survive multiple viewings and still be enjoyable. The Sound of Music, Ratatouille, and The Dark Knight by Christopher Nolan are three movies that I find enjoyable after seeing them 3-5 times after my first viewing, and these are movies from three different genres that are all hailed as excellent motion pictures. This is what I see about Avatar. Everything survives after 5 viewings; the plot, the characters, the settings, the pace, everything still stands when you give it a more detailed look.

Let’s start with what I saw differently as a 22-year-old vs what I didn’t notice before. The big thing would be the frame rates. I did not notice this on my first time watching the rerelease because I was so encapsulated in the advanced visual effects and the plot; however, watching the rerelease the second time, you start to see the frame rates laggy at a couple of places when the characters are moving fast across the screen. This is such a subtle thing, and a normal audience member would never see this for their first viewing, but you cannot unsee it after noticing it for the first time. It is like playing a really stunning looking video game, but your PC is too slow to render everything to a comfortable frame rate. I am guessing this is not unique to Avatar as most motion pictures are captured in 24 fps, yet, it is one of the things that the rerelease did not address.

The second thing that I noticed after a second viewing, was the detail in the characters. Obviously, no one could have ever noticed this. Avatar’s CG was incredibly lifelike, and after 13 years, it still holds up. The skin on the Na’vi look incredible. I don’t know if it is in the lore or if it was easier for the CG company to do its magic, but the Na’vi do not sweat. I am guessing that this in fact helped Avatar to maintain its superior visual effects even after the market is being bombarded with Marvel’s special effects. However, when you in fact, see the trailer of Avatar: The Way of Water, which I did after viewing the rerelease for the first time, you start to see the difference in CGI technology and prowess in these 13 years. It’s another thing that once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Neytiri in the trailer looks 100 times better than the original Neytiri, which already is life-like enough so a 9-year-old me thought it was people in makeup; and I am guessing this is a compliment to the technology we have today — if Neytiri looked exactly the same after 13 years, have we even progressed?

The third thing I noticed was with Avatar’s music choice. I did have a deep dive into this topic earlier, and this only occurred to me after thoroughly listening to James Horner’s album a couple of times, but it would seem like Cameron did indeed favor the pace and the visual aspect of the movie more than the music. Most of the time, the sound effect of bombs and bullets do overshadow the music; but as I said before, the music is there to service the movie, not the other way around. Another thing I noticed with the score was with swapping the music interchangeably. In Horner’s album, there is a song named “Shutting down Grace’s lab”, and it goes parallel to the story when, interestingly, they were pulling Jake and Grace out of their Avatar linking pod after RDA bombed the home tree. It is such a beautiful song that reaches its climax with the two intertwining voices at the end that even though they were not in perfect harmony, resonates with each other so perfectly that it is incredibly powerful to hear; by itself, or with the powerful imagery of dying Na’vi struggling to escape in the hellish fire and smoke.

The reason that I brought this up is with the ending of the song. In the album, the song ends by 1 beat of drum with 5 additional beats as a powerful combo to remind the theme of the song, which is sadness. The combined 6 beats of drum after the voices are incredibly powerful for that occasion, which is why it was very memorable to me. To my surprise, in the movie, that’s not what happened. The second act ended with Neytiri looking back at the ruins of home tree and left with regret and hate. However, and this is pure speculation, I am guessing because there are so many important imageries that needs to be fitted into that last few seconds of the song, James Cameron asked Horner to extend the song with an extra few seconds to fit everything. The song being at its complete state, any addition of the original format would be unsavory. Therefore, Horner introduced an assortment of string instrument playing that was clearly tagged on by the end of the production cycle. This effectively pushed the 6 beats of drum further down. Again, this is something you absolutely will not and cannot notice if you are just a regular audience member who is viewing this once and will probably never even search for Avatar’s album on Spotify (you totally should). However, as an invested fan, this became apparent.

Another thing that I noticed, which I wasn’t really happy about, was with another song in the album named “War”, which, well, is about the war between the Na’vi clans and RDA. At the 6:58 mark (it is a long song), it went into one of my favorite part of this entire song. It was played by string instrument, and although it is weak, it is still a very interesting segment that gave a powerful (I know I use this word a lot) breather. Yet, This segment (6:58 - 7:31), was never put in the final movie. In the film, when Neytiri was being chased by the Scorpion helicopter, the song was at around the 6:36 mark, which still sounded epic. However, right before it was about to hit the 6:58 mark, the movie showed Neytiri’s banshee being shot in her stomach from below. Obviously this part cannot feature a heroic feeling segment of this song, therefore Cameron cut from the 6:58 mark and went straight to 7:31, with the discord created by the wind instruments, and the music went to the sadder part from an earlier song in the album. I never noticed this before I took the time to appreciate the score of this movie, and it is such a shame that this was never a part of the finished movie.

There is still a lot to talk about Avatar’s music on why I appreciate it or get a little annoyed by it; but if I make this post all about music, it will get too long. Maybe I will write another one for fun some day.

Let’s now talk about outside criticism of this movie, which is shocking to me. Their criticism can be boiled down to these few points:

1. The plot is too simplistic

2. Who even remembers the big blue chick’s name

3. It’s just Pocahontas but blue

Let’s break everything down shall we. I understand that as a fan of the movie, my defense of it may seem completely biased. I will try to respond to every criticism of the movie with the best state of mind possible, and as scholarly as possible. It deserves that much. However, be forewarned, most criticism of this movie can be seen as undermining it because they cannot comprehend its box office success.

To the first point, indeed, Avatar does not have the most complicated plot in the world of movie making. Arrival starring Amy Adams will forever be the movie that shocked me to the core with its plot and reveal. However, does the complexity of the plot dictate whether a movie is good or bad? I don’t think so. What differentiates a good movie from a mediocre one is whether the plot captivates the audience, and whether the characters are charming enough to make them likable. One major disadvantage with movies that have complicated plot or interesting reveal in the end has to do with repeated viewings. Although Arrival blew my mind when I was watching it for the first time, the world that the story took place in seemed fully explored by the audience when the movie ends, therefore it did not warrant a second viewing unless whoever watching it for the first time did not understand it. People will find it taxing or tiresome to go through a complicated movie again, which does not help its box office. Having a simplistic plot helps.

Let me give an examples. The Sound of Music, one of my all time favorite movies, has a simplistic plot. However, the love between the Captain and Maria captivates those who are watching, and indeed, all the characters, the Von Trapp kids, and even the Nazi boy are all very charming. And by charming, it is an Asian expression to say that whether a person is likable in a certain extent, to have a quality that people find relatable or cool. Does the simplistic plot make The Sound of Music a bad movie? Absolutely not.

Let’s return to Avatar. Every character, Jake Sully, Neytiri, Grace Augustine, and especially Miles Quaritch, are extremely interesting. Jake’s legs became the symbol of his human and na’vi difference. He wants to be free, broken from the shackles that are his legs. However, in his quest of getting his legs back, he found something more profound. He fell in love with the forest, the Omaticaya people, and Neytiri. It is due to this love, that helped him see (a movie term, to see, is to see through a person), and made him realize that he must help the people fend off the human invaders. Neytiri, an alien “princess”, is a strong warrior. She is the deciding factor that ended the war by shooting two arrows into the body of Quaritch. Every character that has a line is necessary to the plot of the story, and none of them are redundant. If a simple story is a good story, it does not mean it is a bad movie. People just can’t seem to comprehend that how come a movie with such a simplistic plot has the best box office record. They all have a favorite movie in mind, with differing levels of story complicatedness; they don’t want their favorite movie to be looked down by another movie. It is very much like the “God Father and The Dark Knight” debacle in iMDB. In order to immortalize their favorite movie, they must stomp on the other one who is competing to make themselves feel better.

The second point is paraphrased from John Oliver, who used this as a punchline in his monologue. This criticism is absolutely valid. It has been so long for James Cameron to deliver the sequel to Avatar and people are forgetting what is going on in the movie. Even Cameron himself noted that because it has been so long, Avatar does not have the zeitgeist of movie franchises like Star Wars or anything Marvel. Cameron failed to produce enough movies to keep the audience interested in the franchise. What’s not helping, is that even though Avatar is an overall well-rounded movie, it does not have a certain catchphrase or a certain piece of music that is impressionable enough to be repeated. Quotes like “I’m your father” from Star Wars or even “I’m the king of the world” from Cameron’s Titanic are very good examples of movie quotes that still live on within the public consciousness, something Avatar does not have. Even the music, although it is one of Horner’s best work, still is not memorable enough like certain movie music, like “Binary Sunset” from Star Wars; or in a different genre, like “Ezio’s Family” from Assassin’s Creed franchise in gaming. I will maybe expand on the music in a different post, but there is nothing excruciatingly memorable about any specific part of the movie other than the scenery of Pandora and the action scenes.

The third point, with playing down Avatar’s plot by saying it is merely a copycat of previously engaged plots, has some merit to it. Yes, Avatar is not completely original. Na’vi, the indigenous population of Pandora is clearly inspired by Native American clans, and the RDA is clearly inspired by colonialism of European countries in the past. Cameron purposefully designed RDA’s dining room blinds to look like an American flag should give it away.

When trying to engage frank discussions with people whose opinion is differing from mine, I like to be upfront with them about what I do not know. People have equated Avatar’s plot with that of Pocahontas’s and Dances with Wolves’s, which involved a white savior saving the aboriginal people. I have not seen these two movies, but I roughly know their plot. Since the colonialism in Avatar was clearly inspired by the world we share right now, Avatar can never be a completely original movie. However, building onto this point, is any movie wholly original? Both Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves used the story of the Native Americans as models for their story; yes, they are the first to put it into movie form, but is that story completely original? Their story is again just tropes of what’s already known and dramatized into a motion picture that lasts for more than an hour. Does that mean these movies are not original? If we’re using the standards of those who are criticizing Avatar, no, they are not original.

Now, to those who likes to pound on Avatar, my argument may sound like: “the only original movie is the first movie ever made!” That is the biggest non-argument of all time. What I am simply saying, is that even though you have seen a similar story in the past, it does not make the story unoriginal in its own right. What’s refreshing about how Avatar, is that it tells the story about the natives fencing off against the colonialists, but Jake is not the typical white savior. He does not come down from his white-man group, bestow himself upon the indigenous people, and save them as if he is their ultimate savior. No. What’s interesting about Cameron’s version of this story, is that Jake literally becomes one of the people. He let go of his past self, and fully immerses himself into the lives of the Omaticaya people, and eventually becoming one of them. He proved his worth to be one of the Na’vi; he is no longer a human, but a Na’vi. He fights the RDA not only because he has the western thinking of “justice”, but because he needs to defend his homeland, as that homeland’s new original inhabiter. In the end, he forgoes his earthly self, and completely becomes one of the Na’vi. This is not a story that has been told before, or even discussed; it is original. But of course, people’s minds cannot be easily changed or enlightened, so whatever I say can still be jibber-jabber that falls on deaf ears.

The criticism against this movie have some valid points, but ultimately, to those who enjoyed the movie, to those who like this movie for what it is and what it is trying to bring to us, it is simply a good and enjoyable movie. A three-thousand word essay does not fully manifest my love for this world that James Cameron has created. Although it might not be as memorable in pop-culture as many other contenders, it still made impressions to the world that the world of Pandora is as beautiful as possible. The plot has no lose thread, everything you see on screen is tied to a plot point later on, and comes to a full circle at the end. Everything unnecessary to the advancement of the movie was cut in the theatrical release, therefore there is no “pee-break” in this 2 hours and 45 minutes of adventure. I am passionate about this movie, and this is the sole reason why I am willing to sit here and write 4 pages worth of defense and analysis for this movie, and is something that is not really understandable to most people. I get it, I am a nerd, but all for the good reasons. Avatar: The Way of Water can’t come soon enough, and I genuinely hope that it will be as good as the first movie, and knowing James Cameron, it might as well be.