Avatar

You can imagine James Cameron (director of The Terminator, Aliens, and Titanic) pitching Avatar to a studio executive: "It’s like Dances With Wolves in space!" "But, James, hasn’t that movie already been done?" "Yeah, but this time it’s in space!" "That doesn’t sound very imaginative." "Yeah? Well, I’m James ‘Titanic’ Cameron, so you can kiss my ass. Can you imagine that?" "… Sold! Cameron, you’ve done it again! Genius!"

The plot of Avatar is, actually, Dances With Wolves in space. In case you haven’t seen that classic film, Avatar is set in the 22nd century when humans have mined the earth to a husk. Having found large deposits of the essential compound ‘unobtainium’ (no joke) on the planet Pandora, the humans arrive and continue their wicked ways on a new world. The only snag is the local population of aliens, the Na’vi, whose village sits right on top of the largest unobtainium deposit. To convince/cajole the aliens into moving, the humans have created the avatar program – essentially transferring the consciousness of human beings into home-grown alien bodies so they can gain the alien’s trust. The only snag in this plan is that the film’s protagonist, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), gradually becomes more and more attached to the Na’vi’s naked jungle ways and goes native. He also falls in love with a local (Zoe Saldana) and eventually switches sides to help the big blue aliens fend off the barbarous human invaders.

The first thing you notice about Avatar is that it is visually stunning. I saw the 3D preview, and after a shaky first few minutes (I felt a bit sick) the effect made the film’s fantastic graphics even more impressive. You can believe that it really is the culmination of years of visual effects work, and, as film aesthetics go, it’s beautiful. The second thing you notice is that behind the spectacle, there’s not a lot going on. The plot is engaging enough, but around the two-hour mark you start to lose patience. And as far as characters go, we have, besides Worthington and Saldana, Sigourney Weaver as an unlikable Jane Goodall figure (she’s needlessly bitchy to Jake over the death of his brother); Giovanni Ribisi as an entertaining executive who isn’t really evil – he just wishes the tree-huggers would go away and make his life easier; Michelle Rodriguez as a spunky fighter pilot (is there any other kind?); and Stephen Lang as a very watchable security-chief-turned-villain. Lang’s performance is probably the best in the film, and one suspects he may be the on-set avatar of Cameron himself.

However, while the drama in Avatar remains intense – you genuinely feel for the aliens being gassed out of their home – the plot isn’t anything new, and the dialogue is wonderfully cheesy, bordering on absurd (“It ain’t over 'till I stop breathing!”). The film’s main weakness lies in its clumsy attempts at social allegory: the aliens become noble environmentalists fighting against capitalism, climate change and (highly suggested) American imperialism. Towards the end of the film this is wrenched up until you expect the Na’vi to send a delegation to Copenhagen. This raised more cringes than cheers from the audience, and rightly so. Judged as an action-drama, however, Avatar is in a world of its own (couldn’t resist) and should be forgiven for trying too hard to be relevant. But see it in 3D if you can.

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