AVATAR

"Avatar has been a pet project for years" he explained at San Diego Comic Con this year. Directing dynamo James Cameron spoke of a brave new world where 3D went beyond characters reaching out towards the audience and things flying towards the screen looking like they were about to decapitate you! Avatar would be the first truly immersive movie experience, he asked the crowd “Do you want to go to Pandora?” I looked into Cameron’s eyes and said “Yes Jimmy! Yes! Take me to your new wonderful new planet! Take me away from this stink town and let me dance with the blue cat people!” Cameron’s eyes welled up. This was the moment he’d been waiting for, the moment to usher the nerds into a new era of cinema. I reached out and nodded emphatically at the director, who was trying to compose himself, this was obviously the greatest moment of his life. He looked around and raised his left hand, ready to signal the beginning of events we will tell our grandchildren about. As he made us wait that little bit longer he saw me. My arms outstretched, sweat dripping down my brow. I had a look of a man who wanted to know more, who wanted to see beyond this frail, miserable world and into a new universe!

“Boy?” James Cameron bellowed. I nearly shat.
“Boy? Do you…” His voice broke, he gargled water and spat it into the first row, hitting a teenage boy whom I assumed died of happiness shortly afterwards.
“Boy? Do you…YOU… want to go to Pandora?” I was stunned and mouthed “Yes, by all that is loud and expensive, YES I WANT TO GO TO PANDORA!”
“Then you know what you have to do right?” He smiled and two women in the second row were hit with an orgasm of almighty proportions.
“No” This time I let out a little squeak of noise.
“Put on your goggles and lets goooooooooo” He punched the air and the rest of the capacity crowd threw their hands up in euphoria! We were about to see it! The cheering continued long after Cameron’s podium had lifted off the ground and descended into the heavens. Finally the smoke cleared and the footage began and it was…it was…. pretty good.

Pretty good was my feelings then and a couple of months, one ticket, garbage bag full of popcorn and a large coke later, I feel exactly the same. We have waited for a while for a new James Cameron opus and well that is what we got. It’s obviously a labour of love and kudos to him for creating a world that is totally believable and beautifully designed. All the sights, smells, the colours are all very fully realised and at times quite stunning. Cameron has put a lot of work into this and visually I am really impressed. But unfortunately, that’s it. There is nothing more to it. In fact the sheer lack of anything else almost negates the pros of Avatar.

You see when I found myself at the one hundred-minute mark losing entire interest into anything that was going on. We’re talking about a one hundred and fifty minute movie here! I soon realised the problem. The bones of Avatar are cool but the meat is pretty damn boring. This is pretty much down to the script. The dialogue is clunky and dull, when there should be “Game over man” and “Your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle” there is nothing but characters explaining the plot to each other and chatting about how wonderful nature is.
Now I not looking for the next Aliens here but the dialogue is so stilted and dry that it makes me care less about the plight of the people of Pandora.
I’ll give the cast its due though Weaver, Worthington and the rest of the cast do a fine job. Its just the material is so bland. It just seems that James Cameron has built this wonderful impressive playhouse but the toys he has made to put it in are shoddy, useless and made entirely of blue Plasticine. I would recommend you see it, if only for the wow inducing last fifteen minutes and well its new James Cameron so you kinda have to. But I just have one question…where the fuck is True Lies 2?

- Pahl Disasterfield

THE DESCENT PART 2

Following up from The Descent (well the American cut since the European one ended rather bleakly), we find Sarah (Shauna McDonald) alive and terrified after escaping the caves and making it back to civilisation. Sadly and yet unsurprisingly she is hurling back into the caves with an inept rescue team to find her missing companions.

If you look at the first Descent film for even ten minutes, you can see why The Descent 2 fails worse than a one legged man in a stand on two feet competition. When the first Descent is making you bite your nails down to the bone, the sequel is making you bite down on your fist just to resist punching the person next to you in utter rage. I mean how the FUCK does a man that stupid become a sheriff? He is bafflingly dumb and though that does lead to one of the more satisfying deaths of the whole film, don’t use this as a reason to go see it. Suspense and tension is chucked out the window in favour of loud things going 'bleh’. Thankfully Neil Marshall doesn’t return to direct, rather the editor of the first movie has muscled his way in. At the risk of sounding very up myself, I don’t think director Jon Harris really ‘got’ the first movie. One of the main reasons the first movie is that scary is because of its first half. Completely monster-free, the first half of Marshall’s film relies on characters and the very real fear of being trapped. Marshall establishes characters early on and makes you care and so when the their expedition into the cave goes pear-shaped, you are with them as they struggle to get out. Especially when they scrape and crawl through that next narrow space. Marshall piles on the dread and this is way before we see the monsters hiss and growl around them. Part 2 contains none of this. Instead we are plunged headlong into monster-town and while the filmmakers hoped that it would grab the audience by the scruff of the neck and shake them till we were disorientated, emotional and exhausted. Instead we wind confused, bored and suffering from a serious case of who-gives-a-shit. It suffers from a common creature-feature problem where when the monster is right in front of us, its loses its threat. So like if your characters stumble into a large group of nasties and must wander among them to find a way out (oh…the creatures are blind) and these things are just hanging out, they are not very scary anymore! When you don’t see them, THEN you feel that fear for when the fuck they’ll jump out and eat your face.

I will admit that the gore is, at times, kind of cool. Though no amount of squashed heads will make me forgive this films other crimes (well maybe one more than this film had).

The Descent Part 2 fails on almost every count. Though the gore does make you want to cheer, it doesn’t really deserve it. Its lacks any other types of horror that its predecessor had in buckets, it’s dumb, dull and very disappointing. Also I must mention the ending, I mean really? Its like being slapped in the face with your very own copy of The Descent causing the plastic bits that go into the middle of the DVD to break and now the disc just rattles around inside the cover getting all scratched, i.e. very annoying.

- Pahl Disasterfield