Movie Review: Avatar – Special Edition

What can I say about Avatar that hasn’t been said already?

It has been 8 months now since the film came out in theatres and took the world by storm. Record-breaking box-office collections, a handful of Oscars and an iconic place in pop-culture have already been reserved for James Cameron’s magnum opus. Now that the phenomenon has (largely) died down, and the movie has returned to theatres, maybe it’s time to sit back, relax and look at Avatar, minus all the hype.

Yes, we all know that the movie is sensory spectacle unlike any other. There are visuals in Avatar that are as memorable as the ones in George Lucas’ Star Wars and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The world of Pandora is inarguably one of the most detailed, exquisite and fantastical fictional settings ever. The technical aspects of the film are spell-binding and dizzying in their proficiency. The 3D of the film is an amazing experience and adds more grandeur and scope to the already epic adventure. The third act of the film is one continuous action set-piece that is extremely thrilling and jaw-dropping, moving breathlessly from aerial warfare to terrestrial battle.

But, we all also know that the story of Avatar is “familiar”, to put it politely. Treading similar ground as Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves, Disney’s Pocahontas and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, the film feels like old wine in a new bottle (a brilliant bottle, nevertheless). The film’s characterization is shallow, and the Na’vi characters, in particular, are one-dimensional. From the initially-hostile-alpha-male to the feisty-warrior-princess to the ethereal-spiritual-leader, there is nothing “revolutionary” or “ground-breaking” about the characters themselves. Moreover, the film is not subtle in its allegories to the current going-ons (especially the US-Iraq war) at all. Not only are certain events jarringly similar to real-world circumstances, people actually say things like “shock and awe” and “fight terror with terror”. Talking about the things people say, writing dialogue has never been James Cameron’s forte, and as a result, there are quite a few cringe-inducing lines peppered throughout the runtime.

So, what is new in this Special Edition re-release? Well, 9 minutes of extra footage, to be precise. What exactly do those 9 minutes contain? Nothing that radically changes the movie, or adds substantial depth to the proceedings. Rather, watch out for slight extensions along with a couple of entirely new scenes. The biggest addition (literally and figuratively) to the Special Edition is a new animal: the Sturmbeest. The Sturmbeest was totally trimmed from the original cut and it’s easy to see why. It has little-to-no relevance to the plot and just acts as filler. It has a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance in the start and in the climax, while its major action sequence, a Na’vi hunting ritual, is good and features the most poke-tastic 3D moment of the film.

Another major addition to this Edition is Tsu’tey’s death scene. The character perished off-screen in the original cut but is given an extra minute here. The sequence in itself doesn’t flow smoothly, but does add a vital detail about the Na’vi customs. There is a scene set inside Grace’s school, the one she creates for the Na’vi children, which is good and fleshes out an important aspect of Grace’s past. Another new entry is a scene inside the Hometree, when Jake Sully finds out what Neytiri is called. This is, by far, the most unnecessary addition and a really odd interchange. The sex scene between Jake and Neytiri is lengthened too, and none the better for it. Already creepy in the original cut, the extra length only makes the scene weirder. However, the best piece of footage added to the Edition is after the humans destroy the Tree of Voices. The Na’vi retaliate to this and the added scene shows a human soldier examining the destruction caused by this retaliation. This addition really works and adds satisfying context to the surrounding events.

The Special Edition just offers you more of a good thing and the beefs I have with it are related to that. One: this was released too soon. 8 months is just too short a time period to bring back the movie, especially when it was such a phenomenon that it’s prominence carried over till (at least) April. Couldn’t you have waited an year, 20th Century Fox? Two: if I am going to pay to see Avatar again, I want more footage. If the makers could’ve waited a bit more, worked on more unfinished scenes and re-released the film with more additions, then it would have felt like a better investment of my money (and time). And finally: the additions, on a whole, bog the film down. Avatar was already slow in its original form, and this is even more prominent in the Special Edition. The mid part of the film actually slows down to a crawl. There is a knack to adding scenes without slowing down the film (Peter Jackson has this knack, as seen in the Extended Cut for Fellowship of the Ring), which would’ve come in handy here.

In conclusion, although the Avatar: Special Edition doesn’t add anything important to the original cut, it does make for a good viewing experience (partly due to the appeal of the actual adventure) and is quite worth your time.

(3/4)

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Photo Credit: 20th Century Fox