ArachosiA 78 said:
Is it just me, or does this movie get better everytime you watch it? That last battle continues to astound me. It's far and away the most insane action sequence anyone have ever attempted, and Cameron pulls it off to utter perfection. It's gonna be hard to top that in Avatar 2, although I know Cameron can somehow do it.
I've found that to be the case as well. It also affects me more emotionally each time; the lead characters really do have a depth to them, the music is just so perfect through much of the film, and above all the entire thing is just unrelentingly beautiful. From an artistic and directorial perspective, it's one of the most overwhelmingly beautiful movies I've ever seen, certainly that I've seen in theaters.
What really strikes me about the ending battle is how relatively brief it is: the build up to the battle from the time of Jake's speech to the start of the fight is at least as long as the battle itself. Cameron really nailed the pacing such that the action has impact, but never outstays its welcome; it never degenerates into an unrecognizable mass of chaos. Every shot has a narrative purpose, moving the story of the battle and the characters in it forward. There's nothing in there just to wow the audience, never degenerating into an action montage - it's all narrative.
One quick note on the soundtrack: watching some of the behind the scenes features again, Horner makes the comment that it's basically two scores. One is the "Na'vi world of sound", with a traditional score running beneath and between that. I think everything from the former is just incredible, while the more conventional action music (think, the "Eywa has heard you" cue) ranges from decent to poor.
Stuff like this moves me almost as much as his Titanic score did.
On a random note, someone in this thread pointed out that in the end battle, Neytiri has a five-fingered hand print on her chest as part of her war paint, meaning it was Jake's avatar to put it there. I fired that off to IMDB's trivia page a few days ago, and
they added it, with my exact wording. So there's a little bit of GAF on that page now.