Avatar Blu-ray delivers truly amazing video and audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
An ex-Marine finds himself thrust into hostilities on an alien planet filled with exotic life forms.
As an Avatar, a human mind in an alien body, he finds himself torn between two worlds, in a
desperate fight for his own survival and that of the indigenous people.
Most of us, after the barrage of pre-release hype, long-winded Oscar talk, and water cooler-style
have you seen it yet conversations, are least somewhat familiar with the story of
Avatar's 15-year journey from script to screen. But for those of you who've been living
on a distant planet for the past few years, I'll recap: Tech-head and film director James Cameron
writes a treatment for Avatar back in 1994—when no one besides Hindus had any idea
what an avatar was—and plans to shoot the ambitious space odyssey after wrapping on
Titanic. "No," he's told, "the technology isn't ready. Plus, it would cost, like, a gajillion
dollars." So what does the man do? He takes a decade off from Hollywood to explore and refine
the 3D camera equipment, motion capture systems, and CGI software required to bring his vision
of the film's world to life. He pops up in the media occasionally, shilling an IMAX documentary or
claiming—in typical, bigger-than-life James Cameron fashion—to have found the lost tomb of
Jesus himself, but generally, he lies low, testing, tinkering. Filming finally begins in 2007, and by
this time, the internet buzz is deafening. People—industry insiders and internet lurkers alike—
start claiming that Avatar will be unlike anything we've ever seen, that it'll jumpstart a
new era in digital filmmaking. So, now we jump to the present. Is it? Did it? Yes, and
maybe, with the usual "time will tell" caveat.
Jake Sully, now a Na'vi warrior...
Avatar is, without question, an evolutionary leap forward in motion-capture technology,
3D theatrical presentation—once the headache-inducing province of 1950s B horror—and the
seamless melding of live action cinematography and CGI. Unfortunately, it's also a sloppily
scripted mash-up of various anti-colonialist allegories, populated with characters that talk like
stereotypes of stereotypes, and self-seriously convinced of the profundity of its well-meaning but
poorly executed Save The Earth message. (This, coming from a film being released by the millions
in non-biodegradable plastic cases that, like it or not, will one day end up in a landfill somewhere.
A topic for another time.)
Anyway, Kevin Costner, as John Smith, travels to the New World—a mystical valley called Fern
Gully—where he meets Pocahontas, dances with wolves, gets in touch with Gaia and…oh, right,
I'm getting those stories jumbled up. Well, so does Avatar. In James Cameron's version
of the well-worn tale, the money-hungry RDA corporation—assisted Blackwater-style by a
privatized military force—descends upon the peaceful and verdant planet of Pandora to mine for
an almost unobtainably rare mineral called, yes, unobtainium. The only problem is, the Native
Americans…sorry, the native Pandorans—a spiritually attuned race called the Na'vi—live in a giant
tree atop the planet's largest unobtainium deposit. Do you see where this is going?
The RDA's administrator, Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), perhaps the biggest corporate prick in
the universe, has reluctantly brought along a group of nature-loving scientists, mostly to assist in
the campaign to "win the hearts and minds" of the natives. (The language of the Iraq War
features prominently in Cameron's fable. You'll hear "shock and awe" too.) The scientists, led by
Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), are running the so-called Avatar program, which allows
unconscious "drivers" to remotely control half human/half Na'vi hybrids. Corporal Jake Sully (Sam
Worthington) is one such driver, but the ability to run and jump around Pandora in a new body
means more to him than most. See, Sully is paralyzed below the waist. Plus, Colonel Quaritch—a
hardass, built from pure gristle R. Lee Ermey type who looks like he loves the smell of
napalm in the morning—has promised Sully an all-expenses-paid pair of new legs back on Earth if
Sully will spy on the Na'vi for him. And we're off! Sully assimilates himself with the natives, who
want to study him as much as he wants to study them, and falls for—who else—the chieftain's
daughter, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), the hottest piece of tail in Hometree. Cue the expected reversal.
Sully finds himself drawn to the Na'vi and their ways and is forced to betray his species, as
Quaritch puts it, when the RDA mounts an all-out attack.
First, the good. Avatar looks every penny of its record-breaking budget. The years spent
tweaking the technology have paid off in ways that not even James Cameron could've envisioned
back in '94. Here, he creates a sci-fi world of stunning biodiversity, with surprises—in the form of
bizarre flora and frequently angry megafauna—waiting in nearly every frame. The fully digital
Na'vi represent a tangible advance in mo-cap, miles away from the creepazoid, primitive-in-
comparison creations of Robert Zemeckis and Co. I'll admit, I was sorely disappointed when I saw
the first leaked production designs for the Na'vi. They looked goofy, gangly, like creatures stuck in
some perpetual puberty. And even for the first reel of the film, they stick out like a big, blue, sore
thumb. Then, almost imperceptibly, the artifice—the realization that you're looking at something
someone made on a computer—gives way to acceptance and, finally, belief. What's harder to
believe, however, is the characters themselves.
I don't really care that Avatar's story is well short of original. I mean, I saw Disney's
Pocahontas in 1995, but that certainly didn't keep me from loving every second of
Terrance Malick's The New World. As I mentioned yesterday in my review of Crazy
Heart—itself a more secular Tender Mercies—some tales are simply worth retelling.
But where Malick, with emotional subtlety and narrative grace, tells essentially the same story as
Avatar in The New World—of encroachment, displacement, assimilation, and the
clash of cultures—James Cameron just throws more money at the screen and calls it a day.
Granted, it's not really fair to compare the two films—one an artful historical metaphor, the other
a populist action film posing as an Earth-first fable—but there's something amiss here. It's like
every shovel-scoop of technological groundbreaking was unceremoniously flung on top of the
script, burying it under big budget shock and awe spectacle. The characters, human and Na'vi,
speak in emotionally stunted, subtext-free proclamations, as if to make sure we don't miss the
Big Important Message that Cameron is practically shouting at us through his director's bullhorn.
They say things like, "The wealth of this world isn't in the ground, it's all around us," and "Well,
well, well, I'd say diplomacy has failed." And, obviously, this affects the caliber of the acting. Who
can mouth that stuff and not sound ridiculous? The only delicacy the director deals in is the flaky,
New Agey kind; otherwise, he wants every scene to be grander and more visually mindblowing
than the last. To that end, he definitely succeeds—your jaw will be permanently dropped, better
bring a drool cup—but it leaves Avatar soulless, re-reminding us that what we're seeing
isn't real at all.
Reference quality. Demo worthy. Grade-A eye candy. Whatever you want to call it,
Avatar on Blu-ray is the kind of material that not only sells discs, it sells entire home
theater systems. It's a visual showpiece from start to finish, and if the big box stores start playing
Avatar on their floor displays—maybe they already are—I guarantee they'll see a spike in HDTV
and Blu-ray player sales. I don't want to gush. I'm not a gusher by nature. But put quite simply,
Avatar's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer—framed in James Cameron's preferred 1.78:1 aspect ratio,
filling up almost the entirety of a 50 GB disc, and coasting along at an extremely high bit rate—is
nothing short of superlative in nearly every objectively measurable or subjectively eye-balled
category. Clarity is astounding. The texture work and resolve of the various CGI creations shows
a degree of fine detail that's unprecedented. The skin of the Na'vi is defined and has a palpable
presence, keenly reflecting light and glistening with perspiration. You can even make out each
bead on the high priestesses' intricate beadwork shawl. Live action elements are just as well
attributed. In establishing shots of the environment, individual blades of grass can be seen
bending in the wind of a helicopter's blades. The human actors are crisp and, with very few
exceptions, blend in seamlessly with the gorgeous digital backgrounds.
Color is nothing if not eye-popping, with deep jungle greens, phosphorescent purples, bright
orange bursts of fire, and, of course, the Na'vi's Smurf blue, all contrasted against the bleak
fluorescence and gunmetal grays of the human military base. Just as impressive are the deep
black levels
and right-on contrast, which sculpt out an image that's frequently so dimensional that you really
don't miss the 3D. My notes while watching the film looked something like this: "This is the most
vivid, immersive scene I've seen yet on Blu-ray." A few minutes pass. "Wait, no, this is
the most vivid, immersive scene I've seen." And so on, with the film constantly one-upping itself.
On the technical side of things, the encode is flawless, with no compression-related concerns
whatsoever and practically zero noise. My expectations were certainly surpassed. Like it did in the
theaters with 3D, Avatar has just raised the bar for home video on Blu-ray.
With all of the visually stunning landscapes to take in, it's easy to overlook the immersion, power,
and intimacy of Avatar's soundscape, brought to Blu-ray via an exceptionally detailed
DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. There are certainly several sonic shock and awe
moments here that will rattle your ribcage, shake the walls, and wake your neighbors—massive
LFE-heavy explosions, spitfire machinegunning, and metal-rending, tree-cracking crashes—but
where this track really succeeds is in crafting an engaging, believable world of sound. The
surround channels are almost ceaselessly active, filling out the space around you with
directionally accurate ambience. Just listen to the diversity of minute sounds as the characters
traipse through the jungle—strange bird calls, wind, ominous rustlings, the chatter of the
Pandoran equivalent of chimps. The cross-channel effects—zipping arrows, the rush of helicopter
rotors, the flapping of enormous pterodactyl-like wings—are seamless and transparent, shot
through the soundstage with pinpoint precision. More so, the sounds themselves have weight
and clarity—the dynamic range is expansive—and the mix is effortlessly balanced. Meaning, no
volume boosting or trimming required. I set my receiver to my usual listening level, and I don't
think I touched my remote for the duration of the film. Dialogue remains discernable in the
forefront, except for a few chaotic moments when the voices are intentionally—and realistically—
difficult to hear. James Horner's score veers quite closely into Titanic territory at times—
during one motif I can practically hear Celine Dion singing "Near, far…"—but it's appropriately
epic, complementing the film well. I really can't imagine Avatar sounding any better than this.
Consider yourself forewarned. This initial release of Avatar contains nothing but the film—
no bonus materials, no trailers, nothing. Aside from the film itself, the only things on the disc are
the menu, the requisite FBI piracy warning screen, and a brief—but very cool—promo for THX that
only plays after the end credits. The 4-disc "Ultimate Edition" of the film will hit stores in
November, and will include a two-hour making-of documentary, deleted scenes, and other goodies.
Of course, this is all before the inevitable 3D release a little further down the line.
It seems clear to me that, for some time to come, Avatar is going to be the go-
to demo disc for folks wanting to show off—or convince others of—the brilliance of a 1080p
picture coupled with lossless sound. And in that regard—pushing the technology—the film is an
unprecedented success. The screenshots in this review, as brilliant as they look, don't even begin
to approximate how stunning Avatar is in motion. And this is only the beginning. Once
the user-base for 3D televisions starts to climb—which seems like an inevitability—I'm certain the
3D Blu-ray re-release of Avatar will set all new benchmarks for home video. That said, I
only wish the story and script were, if not as groundbreakingly original as the tech, at least more
refined and less cornball. I'm sold on the spectacle of it all, but my awe is seriously diminished
whenever the characters start to talk. For as nuanced as the film is on a visual level, thematically
it's blunt, over-obvious, and generally artless. That's just my opinion, though, and the nearly $3
billion the movie has raked in so far—before Blu-ray and DVD sales—tells me that people either
beg to differ, or they just don't care, content to simply get lost in the film's big-budget escapism.
Which is, admittedly, easy to do. Either way, Avatar is a larger-than-life motion picture
event that demands to be seen. Whether you buy now or choose to wait for the more fully
featured
editions down the line, well, that's another matter.
In an interview to promote the "special edition" re-release of Avatar, director James Cameron revealed that not only will the upcoming Collector's Edition Blu-ray include this extended version, but also a more expanded, "alternate reality version" of the film that ...
Twentieth Century Fox and James Cameron officially announced that Avatar: Special Edition will be released in theaters August 27, in a limited engagement and exclusively in Digital 3D and IMAX 3D. This version of Cameron's epic Avatar will include more than eight ...
In its fifth week, Avatar finally gave up the throne on overall packaged media sales – but not on Blu-ray, where it moved over twice as many units as the New Line romantic movie Valentine's Day, according to Nielsen VideoScan. Clint Eastwood's Invictus was a close ...
Avatar showed no signs of weakness and comfortably held on to the top-selling spot for the fourth week in a row. According to data from Nielsen VideoScan for the week ended May 16, James Cameron's epic outsold runner-up Legion by over 50%. All three theatrical ...
For the third week in a row, Avatar was the top-selling title on Blu-ray, according to data from Nielsen VideoScan for the week ended May 9. In a a week without any major new releases, second place went to a high-profile catalog release: Saving Private Ryan. The ...
According to Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Finke, Avatar has sold 6.2 million copies on Blu-ray in its first three weeks on shelves, "more than double the industry standard for the high-definition format." James Cameron's epic is now the top-selling Blu-ray release ...
In its second week, Avatar was once again the clear Blu-ray top-seller during the week ended May 2, according to Nielsen VideoScan. Fox's blockbuster outsold the number-two title, Universal's new release It's Complicated, by 16 to one, and moved nearly three times ...
Avatar isn't done breaking records. During an interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto, News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch revealed that James Cameron's science-fiction epic has sold "10 million DVDs in 10 days, the highest ever, 40 percent of it in Blu-ray ...
As was expected, Avatar took the Blu-ray sales chart by storm during the week ended April 25, outselling number-two title, Crazy Heart, by nearly sixty to one. According to Nielsen VideoScan data, a record 49% of Avatar packaged-media sales came from the Blu-ray ...
The Target weekly ad features a Blu-ray special offer linked to the recent release of Avatar: if you buy the Sony BDP-S360 Blu-ray player (priced at $124.99) together with the Avatar Blu-ray from that retailer, you will receive a $20 gift card instantly. This offer ...
All countries
