Geekscape Reviews Avatar: The Extended Cut!
My personal empirical observation contradicts that “Avatar” became the most successful movie of all time. Surely it is a beautiful film, and the special effects were just as good as they got credit for; what’s more, James Cameron proves that he is the master of a certain kind of popular filmmaking that appeals to huge audiences, and is effective in a fashion preferred by most filmgoers (if it wasn’t already obvious with “Titanic” back in 1997). But I, personally, don’t know anyone who actually went to see the film in theaters more than once. Surely most of my friends and family did manage to see it, but none of the people I talked to were duly gushy about it. Many critics liked it; Roger Ebert gave it four stars and compared it to “Star Wars.” A few of the critics in the L.A. Weekly called it a legitimate game-changer. But now, less than a year later, few critics continue to cite it (other than to reference its enormous box office receipts), and only a few of my friends have expressed an interest in purchasing a home video copy of the film.
But, for the unseen masses – the ones who did see “Avatar” multiple times, the ones who sparked reports of suicidal thoughts about not being able to live on Pandora, the ones who were eager to dress as a Na’Vi the following Halloween – Fox has released a superdeluxe, three-disc DVD and Blu-Ray version of the film, which contains three different cuts of the movie, a long making-of documentary, the requisite commentary tracks, and nearly an hour’s worth of deleted scenes.
I watched the longest available cut of the film (which added 18 minutes to the theatrical cut), which adds a new beginning, and has a few incidental 30-to-90-second scenes of Pandora’s fauna and ambiance along the way. I have to say that the longer cut does little to change my opinion on the film; I saw “Avatar” as beautiful, but, like most critics, professional and otherwise, found the white-man-goes-native story to be a bit oversimplified, the military characters to be too brutal and cartoonish, the Na’Vi as too perfect, and the film at large lacking a good deal of real humanity. It was a fine example of pop filmmaking: gorgeous, of average intelligence, exciting, effective, and frustratingly un-complex.
The new opening actually adds considerably to the film. In the original cut, we see our hero Jake (Sam Worthington), the crippled marine drafted into an avatar-driving project, already on a spaceship, set to land on Pandora. We learn his story in a voiceover. In the new cut, we meet Jake when he’s still on Earth, wheelchair-bound, and alcoholic. We see the Earth has become overcrowded, and, as Jake observes in a barroom, humankind has simply begun to ignore the rules of simple decency, choosing to abuse each other openly in public, and thinking nothing of politeness or etiquette. Sam, despite being in a wheelchair, picks a fight with a surly drunk, and gets thrown out of the bar, where he is confronted with two shadowy spooks who spirit him off to a factory-like mortuary where his twin brother’s body is being held. The coffins are all made of cardboard, and the bodies are all incinerated on the spot.
This opening provides a hugely important story element, and it’s baffling why Cameron chose to cut it from his final film. By seeing Earth as a rough-and-tumble, dirty, polluted hellhole, it stands in stark juxtaposition to the Eden-like Pandora. Indeed, “Avatar” would have probably been a stronger film had we seen more of Earth’s unhumanity, rather than just having a cartoony evil drill instructor type (Stephen Lang) and an equally cartoony corporate wonk (Giovanni Ribisi) representing the worst of humankind.
The other thing added to the extended cut are a few scenes where Grace (Sigourney Weaver) talks about a Na’Vi girl who, after learning English and bonding with her teachers, decided to rebel against the human oppressors; there’s a scene in an abandoned school where Jake, Grace and Norm (Joel David Moore), inside their Na’Vi avatars, find disused books (among them, Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, how subtle) and, mysteriously, bulletholes. Nothing is outright said about what happened, but we do get the feeling that this spoken-of Na’Vi girl reacted toxically to the human presence on Pandora. We learn a bit later that his girl was the sister of Neytiri (Zoë Saldana). Again, this slight subplot reveals a lot about the inhumanity of the characters without resorting to melodramatic villainy.
All the gorgeous special effects and weird story elements are still intact. If you loved the film, the new footage will only be some icing for your cake. If you disliked the film, your problems with it will not be solved. Jake, for instance, is still given a direct assignment by his superiors at the film’s outset, and becomes so preoccupied learning how to ride dragons and romance a Na’Vi native, that he never bothers to say, just once – not in passing, not sternly – that his bosses are going to come into the woods in a few months time and mine the everloving tar (or unobtanium, as the case may be) out of it. What’s more, we still don’t know what unobtanium is used for. If it were a source of fuel, or provided the cure to some horrid disease, at least we would know the bad guys’ motivations. Heck, even if it was only a good ore for making jewelry, at least we’d know what was going on. Nope. Unobtanium is still opaque.
The 45 minutes of deleted scenes provide the most interesting aspect of this new set, though. Many of the scenes were never completed, so most of the shots were included with the special effects deleted. In some cases, just backgrounds are missing, and we can see the greenscreen. In a few cases, we only see the actors in their SFX motion-capture suits, before they were digitally transformed into Na’Vi. Each of the scenes is only a few minutes long, but each one provides a small little bit of non-narrative incident that would have immensely fleshed out the film’s overall personality. We see scenes where characters introduce themselves, or sit at a table having a meal. We see short walks, and longer version of earlier conversations. I understand that, especially with a three-hour-long film, pacing is vital to making the film work, but I feel that including these extra little conversational bits would have made the film all the more interesting.
The deleted scenes include a lot more of my favorite actor from the film, Joel David Moore in the role of Norm. In the final cut, Norm plays like an intelligent sidekick who tells Jake some of the Na’Vi trivia he should know. In the deleted scenes, we learn that Norm was a vitally important character to the avatar project, and it was Jake who was to serve as the sidekick. I like that dynamic much more, and I like seeing Moore pushed forward a bit. What’s more, we get a curious subplot about his playful love affair with the crackerjack pilot Trudy (Michelle Rodriguez).
One deleted scene which stayed thankfully omitted was Jake’s spirit journey, or whatever it was. In order to join the Na’Vi tribe properly, he had to go through a drug-induced ritual, similar to drinking the Water of Life in “Dune.” Jake had to eat a worm, and then get stung by a bug, and he started having violent hallucinations about the oneness of the planet or the power of Gaia or something. The sequence takes about five full minutes. This scene looks less like a spiritual journey, and more like one of the goofy, brain-melting comic sequences from “Xavier: Renegade Angel.”
If you know any “Avatar” fans, by all means, buy them this set as a Chanukah gift. It comes in several cardboard sleeves, and is laid out like a book, so its satisfyingly heavy to hold, and glossy to touch. The package itself, though, just like the film, is all gorgeous surface, and doesn’t contain anything too deep.
