Movie Review Avatar The way of Water

Avatar The way of Water (2022) 

Directed by James Cameron 

Written by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver

Starring Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, Zoe Saldana 

Release Date December 16th, 2022 

Published December 19th, 2022 

It's not that Avatar The Way of Water is a bad movie, far from it, this is an incredibly accomplished movie. I just don't care. I can't get emotionally invested in the Avatar franchise. James Cameron's obsession with replacing human actors with CG creations leaves me cold. Without a human face to connect to, I'm left adrift amid the spectacle of Avatar The Way of Water. I can appreciate the technical accomplishment but I can't enjoy Avatar The Way of Water the way I have enjoyed so many more worthy, thoughtful. human movies such as Aftersun or Everything Everywhere All at Once, or even Women Talking, a movie that is more poignant than enjoyable but you get what I am saying. 

Where Avatar is a massive technical achievement, it's not a great movie. It's a machine tooled product and no matter how well made that product is, it's inert, it is as compelling as a really great looking appliance. I appreciate the beauty of a streamlined refrigerator with a neat LED readout and connection to my smartphone, but it's not something I am going to think about much beyond my purchase of it. Eventually, it recedes into the scenery, leaving no lasting memory. That's Avatar the Way of Water in a nutshell. 

Avatar The Way of Water is set nearly 20 decades after the first film. The story finds the Sully family, headed up by former human turned Na'vi leader, Jake Sully thriving in their forest home until the 'sky people' return. The sky people have come back to Pandora not to retrieve more 'unobtainium' but rather to conquer Pandora and make it the new Earth. That's the background story anyway, the main story involves reviving the late Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), by placing his memories into a Na'vi Avatar and sending him to kill the biggest threat to humanity's plan, Jake Sully. 

Thinking that he can protect the Na'vi best by leaving, Jake packs up his family, including his wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), sons, Netayam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo'ak (Britain Dalton), and daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). Also joining the Sully's will be their adopted daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the miracle child of the late Dr. Grace Augustine (Also Sigourney Weaver). The fewer questions asked about Kiri's origin story, the better, I'm pretty sure not even James Cameron could explain it. 

The Sully's run off to live with the water dwelling people of Pandora, led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his wife, Ronal (Kate Winslet). Here, the Sully's will learn to swim and to live off of the bounty of the ocean. They will be treated as outcasts while slowly earning their place in the tribe and blah, blah, blah. There is nothing new here, every inch of this portion of the movie is a trope from other fish out of water movies about new people in new situations. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review: Avatar

Avatar (2009) 

Directed by James Cameron

Written by James Cameron

Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez

Release Date December 18th, 2009 

Published December 18th, 2009 

Back in theaters September 23rd, 2022

Streaming Rental on Amazon Prime 

New generation tech in service of a Bush era mindset, W or HW, Avatar is James Cameron advancing film tech to a place no one has seen before while also a response to American imperialism as Cameron envisions it. The tech is phenomenal, the politics are so 2003. The story of Avatar begins just as James Cameron was crowning himself the King of the World. After his Titanic effort to bring an ocean set romance to screen, James Cameron surveyed the landscape of movies and saw that the form, as it was, could not capture his vision of his project.

So, the King of the World abdicated for several years, biding his time until movie technology caught up with his vision. After seeing Peter Jackson give life to Gollum in The Lord of the Rings Cameron finally saw something he could work with. Employing engineers and film geeks Cameron went to work advancing existing technology. That was 2006. Just about 3 years later, more than a decade after its conception, Avatar has arrived.

Sam Worthington stars in Avatar as Jake Sully a former Marine who was left in a wheelchair after a battle injury. Jake's troubles are increased with the death of his twin brother, a scientist who was to shove off for a very important mission. Since Jake has his brother's DNA he is capable of replacing him and does on a mission to a place called Pandora.

On Pandora Jake's new life will have him taking over an Avatar, a human hybrid of the planet's alien population called Na'vi. Jake's mind is transferred somehow into the body of a 10 foot, blue skinned, Na'vi warrior. He will use his Avatar to interact with the natives and convince them to move to another home, opening the way for an industrialist (Giovanni Ribisi) to move in and strip the area of a mineral called, I kind you not, Unobtainium. 

Jake's mission goes off course when he meets a sultry Na'vi princess named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). She brings him into the Na'vi inner circle after a sign from her god tells her Jake has an important role in the destiny of the Na'vi. Indeed he does; Jake will become a true warrior and a leader after he gives up his militaristic loyalty to his human masters.

No points for guessing that Jake and Neytiri fall happily into cross-species love. The story is eerily similar to Dances with Wolves, minus Kevin Costner's ludicrous facial hair. A soldier in a strange land falls in with the natives and switches sides. I'm not spoiling anything unless you have managed to miss every trailer, commercial or review of Avatar.

Even if you have been living under a rock James Cameron's exceptionally weak script does nothing to hide its twists and turns. The script mindlessly telegraphs its every plot machination and character choice. However, as every other critic in the world reminds us, the plot is meaningless when such wondrous visuals are offered.

There is no doubt about it James Cameron's remarkable dedication to new film technology has rendered a mesmerizing digital landscape unlike any ever before on screen. The characters are stunningly realistic; the landscapes are marvelous and wait till you see the battles between flying gun ships and Na'vi on flying lizard-like creatures. Cameron has even rendered 3D in a way that isn't clunky and unnecessary.

For many the visual delights of Avatar will be more than enough to sell them on the idea of Avatar as a great movie. And, I must admit, the tech is phenomenal. I, however, needed something more.

The story told in Avatar is dopey, derivative and features dialogue so awful as to have Michael Bay look down his nose. Expository dialogue, sometimes necessary, is mind numbingly repeated throughout Avatar. Worse still are the awkward attempts at humor, most of which are dated to around the time Cameron conceived of Avatar.

Even worse still is Mr. Cameron’s preachy, dated subtext about war and natives, 9/11 and terrorism. Cameron is not the first, merely the latest, to exploit 9/11 imagery in order to manipulate the audience. The visual reference to 9/11 is part of Cameron's throwback to the Bush era politique.

It's a rather scattershot bit of commentary that regurgitates liberal complaints about a war for oil, in this case 'Unobtainium,' and an American policy of pre-emptive war that could fairly be called imperialism. All well and good except that these are the complaints of yesteryear.

Is it Cameron's fault that the zeitgeist passed him by? No, but he has to take the lumps for being unable to adapt. He's made a criticism of a President who is gone in an era when a new President looks forward to ending the policies of the past. Whining about a war for oil (Unobtainium) is exceptionally passé.

The soldier going native is even more dated. Dances With Wolves is over 20 years old now. The battle between the American government and American Indians has inspired far better and far less preachy defenses of a native people defending their way of life.

Returning, however, to the main point of Avatar, the technology, you will see this movie because the tech is far too fabulous to be ignored. You really must see Avatar just to say that you have seen what everyone will be talking about in film culture until the next time Cameron revolutionizes the medium. Just be prepared to ignore everything other than the visual splendor.

Movie Review: Conan the Barbarian

Conan the Barbarian (2011) 

Directed by Marcus Nispel 

Written by Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer, Sean Hood 

Starring Jason Mamoa, Rachel Nichols, Stephen Lang, Leo Howard, Ron Perlman

Release Date August 19th, 2011

Published August 19th, 2011 

In all honesty, I expected to hate Conan the Barbarian. Critics aren’t supposed to be prejudiced against a movie but director Marcus Nispel doesn’t have a great track record. Nispel’s Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes are exercises in brutality and I’m not talking about what he puts his characters through, but what he puts the audience through with his ham-fisted, overly stylized, blood and guts approach that treats characters as bags of meat that exist only to be split open like piñatas.

Don’t misunderstand, there are plenty of meat-bags in Conan the Barbarian waiting to be split open like so many pigs at a slaughterhouse, but somehow, one of the writers actually snuck a modicum of character development into the film and the yeoman work of the casting director found a few shockingly talented actors who miraculously manage to act amidst Nispel’s fetishistic bloodlust.

Jason Momoa plays Conan the Barbarian, a man born as a warrior; literally. He was born in the middle of a battle, cut from his dying mother’s womb amidst a clash of swords and the separating of limbs from bodies. Raised by his barbarian daddy, expertly played by that charming lunkhead Ron Perlman, Conan develops into a warrior at a very young age.

14 year old Leo Howard plays young Conan and the kid is a star. It was Howard as young Conan exhibiting badass skill in taking down a small horde of bad guys and carrying their severed heads back to his father as a trophy that won me over. When young Conan is forced to witness an atrocity against his family at the hands of the ruthless, power hungry Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang), Howard brings fierce intensity to Conan rather than the simple tears and fears of a child.

Jumping ahead a decade or so we find Conan as a warrior pirate sailing the scummy sea sides in search of any sign of Khalar Zym and the chance to avenge his family. When his chance arrives, following a siege by Zym and his nutty sorceress daughter, Marique (Rose McGowan), at a formerly peaceful mountainside monastery, Conan doesn’t let the opportunity pass, even if it means using an innocent beauty, Tamara (Rachel Nichols) as bait.

Jason Momoa, I’m told, is quite compelling on HBO’s Game of Thrones where his Khal Drogo is a silent yet imposing killer. In Conan the Barbarian however, Jason Momoa is shown up big time by the young Conan the Barbarian, Leo Howard. Howard is the star, Momoa merely carries on the compelling character that the kid creates. Momoa’s leaden line delivery nearly undoes the hard work Leo Howard put into making Conan so compelling. Thankfully, what Momoa failed at as an actor he makes up for as a physical presence and sword swinging apparatus.

I could sit here and hammer Conan the Barbarian for its blatant misogyny and massive lapses in logic but that would ignore the fact that I knew what Conan the Barbarian was before I saw it. I went into Conan the Barbarian aware that the film was going to treat women as sex objects and damsels in distress and I knew not to expect a heavy dose of brains other than those that spilled out of the cracked skulls of many CGI extras.

It seems unsportsmanlike to call out Conan the Barbarian for living down to expectations. And what would be more unsportsmanlike would be to deny that once you put aside the preconceived notions of Conan the Barbarian, the film is surprisingly compelling, even gripping in its blood and guts way.

Is Conan the Barbarian a little daffy at times? Absolutely, but it is also surprisingly involving and exciting. Do I welcome a Conan the Barbarian sequel? No, I don’t need to see this character ever again but for a one off, blood and guts, 3D epic, Conan the Barbarian is shockingly fun and surprisingly worth the 3D ticket price.

Movie Review Mortal Engines

Mortal Engines (2018) 

Directed by Christian Rivera 

Written by Fran Walsh, Phillippa Boyens, Peter Jackson

Starring Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Lang 

Release Date December 14th, 2018

Published December 14th, 2018

Mortal Engines are a pretty big mess. It’s not terrible but this Peter Jackson produced CGI epic is lacking in numerous ways. Aside from a grand ambition, it definitely has that, Mortal Engines lacking in the kind of engaging, compelling characters that are needed to compete with the massive and rather uninteresting CGI machinery on display. The stars of Mortal Engines are not the actors but the massive machines and those machines, though impressively rendered, aren’t nearly engaging enough to make a good movie.

Icelandic actress Hera Hilmar stars in The Mortal Engines as Hester Shaw. Hester is seeking revenge against the man who murdered her mother, Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving), chief weapons manufacturer for the roving city of London. What do I mean by ‘roving city’ you ask? In this universe, cities are not stuck in one place. Following a massive, apocalyptic event cities became mobile, rebuilding themselves atop massive wheels and running down other cities to steal their resources.

Hester is aboard a small mining city when London attacks it and takes hold of it. Getting on board London, Hester gets her chance to kill Valentine right away and manages to stab him before a kid named Tom (Robert Sheehan) tackles her and then chases her off the edge of the city. Before she goes, Hester tells Tom her secret about Valentine and when Tom tells Valentine what he knows, he kicks Tom off the edge of London.

Forced into the wild, Hester and Tom team up in their attempt to stay alive while Valentine survives his stabbing and sets off after someone who wants Hester dead as much as he does. Shrike is a CGI character with an incredible back story and a far more interesting storyline as a reanimated warrior machine, like a steampunk Terminator. Hester had made Shrike a promise after he saved her life and now he wants to kill her to collect on her debt

Had Mortal Engines settled on the story of Shrike and Hester, it would be one hell of a movie. Shrike is the most interesting and well built character in the movie. He’s incredibly dangerous and volatile but he has this shred of a memory that keeps him tethered to his former humanity. It was that shred that led him to keep Hester alive when he found her near death following the murder of her mother and to raise her from the age of 8 until London arrived on former European shores and she set out for revenge.

The flashbacks we see to young Hester and Shrike are more compelling than anything remotely related to Hugo Weaving’s quest for power or the neutered romance between Tom and Hester which couldn’t be more perfunctory if the studio had announced the romantic plot in a press release. Hilmar and Sheehan have the chemistry of a brother and sister who don’t particularly know or care for each other.

Make a movie about Shrike and Hester that is part Leon The Professional and part steampunk Terminator Judgment Day and you’ve got yourself quite a movie. Unfortunately, the movie we get isn’t nearly as interesting. The characters do grow on you a little as you get closer to the end of Mortal Engine but there is never a moment where they stand apart from or above the monstrous and inhuman CGI.

Even the most skillful computer generated image cannot compete with our connection to another human being. Say what you will about the creation of Gollum in Lord of the Rings or Caesar in the modern Planet of the Apes, they are nothing without the humanity of Andy Serkis behind them. We’re supposed to be impressed by the massive moving cities and the bizarre airships and weapons of mass destruction but without characters we care about around them, it’s like watching a very expensive live action cartoon, minus the laughs.

I have nothing against the young actors in Mortal Engines, they do what they can with these thin characters. The problem is director Christian Rivers who assumes we care about these characters without giving us a reason to care. Rivers has a habit of introducing characters as if their faces matter to the moment. When we meet Tom and we meet Hester, we get reveals of their faces as if we are supposed to recognize them but we don’t.

It’s not the actors fault, they are just not known to most of us watching this movie. Perhaps audiences in Iceland will cheer when Ms Hilmar’s face is revealed for the first time but most Americans will be trying to place her. Sheehan has the bland good looks of an English Justin Long but he lacks any of that actor's modest charisma and likability. One actor, who I can’t even find in the IMDB cast list, is given a reveal as if we are absolutely supposed to recognize him, the camera lingers on his face and he kind of looks like actors we’ve seen before but he isn’t and we're left to wonder. 

I don’t understand many of the choices made regarding Mortal Engines but most especially, I don’t understand the title. I have seen the entire movie and I assumed at some point the title would come to make a semblance of sense. But no, at no point does anyone bother to give a reason for the movie to be called Mortal Engines. I could make something up perhaps but I honestly don’t care enough about this movie to try that hard.

Mortal Engines are far from terrible. It’s competent and passes by well enough. It’s expensive and the expense is all on the screen in the high end CGI but there isn’t anything compelling enough to recommend you spend money on it. The characters are thin and dull, the romance is DOA and the action is of a kind you could get in any of a dozen movies you might actually enjoy and connect with.

The biggest sin of Mortal Engines however, is creating a better movie within their bad movie and leaving us so unsatisfied as we dream of what could have been. No joke, that Shrike and Hester movie had so much potential. Shrike is the best character in Mortal Engines and he’s not even real. He’s given more human qualities and dimension than the male romantic lead and his tragic backstory combined with Hester’s has a depth and complexity the rest of Mortal Engines can’t begin to evoke. I hate Mortal Engines for not being about Shrike and Hester.

Movie Review Gods and Generals

Gods and Generals (2003) 

Directed by Ronald F. Maxwell 

Written by Ronald F. Maxwell 

Starring Robert Duvall, Stephen Lang, Jeff Daniels, Mira Sorvino, Frankie Faison

Release Date February 21st, 2003 

Published February 20th, 2003 

The Civil War isn't quite the blockbuster story that popcorn-loving audiences seek out in search of escapist fare. So I must credit Ted Turner and the makers of Gods & Generals for attempting such a bold, non-commercial effort. That said, at well over three hours in length and with a decidedly pro-South approach, Gods & Generals is not only non-commercial, it's non-watchable.

A dramatic retelling of the Battle of Fredericksburg, Gods & Generals stars Stephen Lang as Southern Colonel Stonewall Jackson and Robert Duvall as General Robert E. Lee. On the Northern side it's Jeff Daniels reprising his role from Gettysburg as Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, though since Fredericksburg is chronologically before Gettysburg, Chamberlain has just joined the Maine contingent of the Northern army on his way to becoming a Colonel. Duvall inherited the role of Robert E. Lee from Martin Sheen who held the role in Gettysburg. 

Of course I'm getting well ahead of myself. Gods & Generals details the beginning of a three part film series that again actually began with it's middle segment, Gettysburg, in 1993. This first installment is about how Virginia was drawn into the war on the side of the South. Representatives of President Lincoln offered General Robert E. Lee the command of all Northern armies to fight the secessionist South. Feeling sympathy for the South's states rights stance Lee declined and began to organize a Virginia regiment to fight on the side of the South. A Virginia Military Institute professor, Thomas Jackson, whose students are quick to join in, also joins Lee. Jackson joins up telling friends that his priorities are God, family, Virginia and country.

Looking for a quick end to the war, President Lincoln is prepared to fight Lee's Virginia troops and the supporting armies from the South in Fredericksburg, with the feeling that without Virginia, the South would fall quickly. Sensing a moral imperative to the end of slavery and reuniting of the country, a philosophy professor from Maine named Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain joined the Northern army over the objection of his wife Fanny (Mira Sorvino, in a cameo role). Chamberlain is joined by his less idealistic brother Thomas (C. Thomas Howell), who doesn't believe in the cause as much as he believes in helping his brother.

Those are the recognizable characters, but like the classic Hollywood epics of the 1930's and 40's, there really is a cast of thousands. Thousands of actors and committed Civil War re-enactors came together under the direction of Ronald F. Maxwell, who also directed Gettysburg, to recreate The Battle of Fredericksburg with nearly flawless detail. From strategy to historic legend, right down to the costuming, Gods & Generals is as faithful as a movie could be to it's subject matter.

The accuracy and precision involved in the recreation of the battle is truly commendable. Unfortunately, all that surrounds it is snooze inducing. Speech after speech after speech drone on and on and on. When Lang, Duvall or Daniels isn't on screen, it's nearly impossible to tell the Northern and Southern armies apart, even as the recreation of the battle is extraordinarily detailed . In the awesome confusion of muskets and cannon fire, telling them apart becomes an entirely futile and exhausting effort and audiences are left out of the film until after the battle when the major characters are back upfront explaining who won the day and why.

That confusion however isn't the film’s biggest problem. The biggest problem is the script, which paints the army from Virginia as the noblest army ever to walk on to a battlefield. To watch Gods & Generals as pure history would lead one to believe that Stonewall Jackson was a combination of Superman and Ghandi. That's not to criticize Stephen Lang, who has a few very effective scenes. It would be difficult for any actor to portray Stonewall Jackson as the second coming of Christ but he does the best he can with the role. We can argue forever, and historians have, why the Civil War was fought, but in the end neither side could live up to the way they are portrayed in the script, written by the director Ronald Maxwell.

The film’s length at just under 7,200 hours is deathly. Actually it was just under 4 hours but it feels a lot longer. Though the battle scenes may hold your attention, the scenes that don't include massive explosions are tremendously dull and filled with pious speeches from characters that Maxwell seems to want to put up for sainthood. I don't mind long movies, I own the nearly five hour versions of Lord Of The Rings and Apocalypse Now Redux, but Gods & Generals has some obvious segments that even junior editors could easily clip out without hurting the film’s narrative in the least. One less interminable speech by Stonewall Jackson about God's judgment and the film would be half as long. 

What Gods and Generals needs more than anything iss an editor, a good one. An editor who could reign in the visionary director and hip him to the necessity for brevity in modern cinema. Gods and Generals would play better as a television movie, broken up over two or three days. There, the commitment to accuracy could be appreciated more while not taxing the backside of everyone watching it.