Rewatch – Avatar (2009)
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang
Year: 2009
Original Rating: ★★★★☆
New Rating: ★★★☆☆
I need to confess something. When Avatar came out in 2009 I gave it four stars. I saw it in IMAX 3D and I was genuinely awestruck. The visuals. The immersion. Pandora felt like a real place. I walked out of that theater convinced I’d seen the future of cinema.
Sixteen years later I watched it again at home on a 65-inch TV and. Hm.
The visuals still hold up. Mostly. There are shots of Pandora that remain gorgeous — the bioluminescent forests, the floating mountains, the sheer density of the worldbuilding. Cameron and his team created something visually unprecedented and that achievement doesn’t go away.
But everything around the visuals has aged poorly.
The story. My god the story. In 2009 I forgave the “Dances with Wolves in space” thing because the spectacle was so overwhelming. Now? It’s just. Thin. Jake Sully is a blank. His transformation from corporate stooge to Na’vi champion happens because the script says so, not because we understand it emotionally. The villain is cartoonishly evil. The corporate guy is cartoonishly corporate. Every character is exactly what you expect them to be and nothing more.
Sam Worthington. Look I don’t want to be mean but. He’s not good in this. He was cast for physicality, not presence. When he’s in the Avatar body doing action stuff he’s fine. When he has to deliver emotional dialogue he’s. Not fine. Zoe Saldaña does what she can with Neytiri but the character is basically Noble Savage archetype with cat ears.
The dialogue. “I see you.” “You are not in Kansas anymore.” “I was a warrior who dreamed he could bring peace. Sooner or later, though, you always have to wake up.” It’s fortune cookie wisdom delivered with complete sincerity and I don’t know if that’s endearing or embarrassing.
Here’s what I think happened. Avatar was designed for theaters. Specifically for 3D IMAX theaters. The experience WAS the movie. Take away the experience and you’re left with the movie and the movie by itself is. It’s fine. It’s a competent blockbuster with incredible production design and nothing else.
Cameron has always been a technical pioneer. Terminator 2. Titanic. He pushes what’s possible. But those movies also had strong characters and emotional stakes that worked independent of spectacle. Avatar doesn’t. The spectacle is all it has.
And that’s fine. Spectacle is worth something. Movies can be rides. But I think we were all so bowled over in 2009 that we called it a masterpiece when it was really just an extraordinary technical achievement with a mediocre movie attached.
The sequels haven’t changed my mind. Way of Water was the same thing: beautiful to look at, hollow to think about.
Four stars was wrong. Three feels right. The visuals get a star. The technical achievement gets a star. And the third star is for ambition, for daring to make something this weird and expensive and unlike anything else.
But I won’t be watching it again.
My rating: ★★★☆☆
