Avatar: The Shakespeare Review by Josh Fuld

Before you read Josh’s review I’d like to give you a bit of back story. This review is writ­ten in response to Slick’s recent review of Avatar.Slick and Josh have very dif­fer­ent opin­ions and while both are in fact accu­rate assess­ments it’s seems that the read­ers deserve both view­points. Check them both out and share you thoughts in the com­ments below –Rich

Here is Josh’s Review.…

Avatar: The Shake­speare Review 

I am a huge movie buff and really enjoy going to the mid­night show on open­ing night. There is some­thing to be said for the qual­ity of audi­ence that makes an effort to buy tick­ets, some­times weeks in advance, and show up at a movie the­ater on a ran­dom Wednes­day night at 11pm to wait in line for an hour to see the lat­est block­buster. For me, Avatar was not one of these movies. See­ing peo­ple dressed up as the Na’vi before the movie was released really turned me off. Mix­ing dig­i­tally cre­ated char­ac­ters with humans did not appeal to me. I wor­ried about the qual­ity of the char­ac­ters, that they would appear car­toon­ish and unre­al­is­tic. Avatar had been out in the the­ater a full month before I decided to check it out with my wife. We saw the movie in IMAX 3D at a brand new the­ater in Deer Park, NY.  

The main knock on Avatar has been that the story is one that has been done a thou­sand times before: Fern Gully, The Last Samu­rai, Dances With Wolves, etc. You might be think­ing, why should any­one see what is basi­cally a rehash of these films with 9’  tall blue aliens? And what does this have to do with Shake­speare? The answer is that William Shake­speare was not the first per­son to write some of his most famous plays. Romeo & Juliet, Ham­let, and Mac­Beth were all orig­i­nally writ­ten by other authors. Shake­speare took these sto­ries, reworked them and made them bet­ter than any­one ever had (or ever will). And that is exactly what James Cameron has done with Avatar. He has taken this story we have all seen a mil­lion times and done it bet­ter than any­one before him. 

We must remem­ber that Shakespeare’s writ­ings were in the form of plays, acted out on the stage that were so spec­tac­u­lar that the front of the audi­ence con­sisted of the poor­est Britons and in the rear were the high­est mem­bers of soci­ety includ­ing Queen Eliz­a­beth. In their day, they were must see. Avatar is just as much of a spec­ta­cle. The visu­als are unlike any­thing you’ve ever seen and the sound is tremen­dous. I sat in the the­ater with the glasses on my face, and soaked it in. 

I think many peo­ple would find it funny com­par­ing clas­sic works of lit­er­a­ture to a pop­corn flick, and they would be right because while Ham­let is a com­plex, finely tuned work that will last for­ever, Avatar is a fire­works show. I was wowed by all the pretty col­ors but once the night sky cleared, it started to fade from memory.  

Regard­less of its inher­ent flaws, Avatar is a must see, and a must see in IMAX 3D. For­get every­thing you’ve read or heard about it. Go to the near­est IMAX 3D, sit back in your chair, take a deep relax­ing breath, and spend the next few hours smil­ing. This is a spec­ta­cle you will want to see in the way it was intended to be seen.

Rich

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