Me again, the guy who can find something to like in every movie. I’ve watched the Blu-Ray about five times, and I still love it. Without the 3D, the images are brighter and seem more crisp, and it’s comparable to the best Blu-Rays I have (e.g., the Ultimate Blade Runner edition). What I like: the incredible, consistent and detailed art direction, the innovative facial motion capture, and another standard-setting blending of live action and CGI.
Despite my happily suspending disbelief, I have a tendency to zero in on the interactions between CGI and real images, to both see if the directions of motion are consistent and if they synchronize the motions from different camera “angles.” Just look at the charging hammerhead/rhinos when they attack the guys in exoskeletons. I thought that was wonderful.
Animals had odd little features that people labored to make consistent. An example: the humongous Thanator that approaches Neytiri near the end. It had a weird flap of skin over its snout that changed shape depending on whether it was snarling or not, a detail they didn’t need to add, but someone did, and they made it make sense.
And when Jake appears as Tupac Shakur (or whatever that name was), you could see “extras” mouthing his name as he walked out among them.
Also, I haven’t seen Fern Gully or Dances with Wolves, and I subscribe to the idea that there are just a small number of fundamentally different stories, and that the skill is in how the stories are told. I’ve also long since stopped paying attention to plot elements that seem to support political or environmental messages. Yes, Sky People are bad because they didn’t respect Mother Earth, but I just focused on that as an element that made Jake’s fears so strong.
Really, I just loved seeing scenes such as dozens of Na’Vi on their little dragons, clinging to rocks and launching themselves into battle, and the really beautiful plant life.
However, I do have some nits. When the dragon things grabbed the Scorpions out of the sky and swung them around, it seems that their rotors’ angular momentum would have had them whip around in different directions, but then again, they had counter-rotating blades, so maybe that’s how it would really look. And “Meals on Wheels” doesn’t seem like a phrase that will still be in use 400 years from now, nor will it be likely that Jake would have “dissected a frog once,” since we’re already going to virtual frogs for that. Also, Jake should have had a little 20-second scene where he clearly shows the Na’Vi what the Scorpions look like, and how they needed to shoot only at that one, critical spot – the pilot inside the canopy, from an angle as close to normal as possible. And the big lander ship (containing the explosives) – blowing out one engine could and should make the ship wildly unstable for a few moments, but a real ship would have an automatic system to drop the thrust on the opposite engine and re-stabilize it (or something like that). It could still go out of whack and crash into things, but I’d like to have seen some activity from some sort of redundant system. I guess there’s just no pleasing me :).
I guess I’ll go away now – I think I’ll watch G.I. Joe, because the redhead is really hot and I like Brendan Fraser’s cameo.
