It’s been 12 years since James Cameron last made a movie. After Titanic, I think he realized it would be impossible to top himself. Waiting until the furor died down was probably a good thing. But the film he’s returned with, Avatar, is closer to his older science fiction credits like Terminator or Aliens, at least in genre and audience expectations. At the same time, he’s attempting to put forth a more emotional story, like Titanic. The resulting film is very pretty to look at, but the story is such a muddled, overbearing mess it makes it almost impossible to recommend.
Set about 150 years in the future, the human race has found another planet — dubbed “Pandora” — with a sentient race of ten-foot-tall blue natives called the Na’vi. Sam Worthington plays a marine who has been paralyzed in the line of duty. His twin brother was part of the “Avatar” program, which allowed them to inhabit cloned bodies mingling human and Na’vi DNA in an attempt to gain the trust of the otherworldly creatures. Each Avatar is genetically coded to a single person, but Worthington’s character (being a twin) can use his brother’s Avatar. On Pandora, Worthington learns that the military and corporate presence on Pandora is hoping to drive a Na’vi settlement away from its homeland to reach rich stores of a mineral called Unobtanium, and he uses the Avatar to begin to seek a way to negotiate their departure before violence becomes necessary.
Much of the criticism I’ve heard of this film is that it’s a thinly veiled anti-United States allegory, with the humans as the Evil White Settlers, the nature-loving Na’vi as the native Americans, and the Unobtanium (unequivocally the worst name for a fictional element I’ve ever heard) as their oil substitute. I disagree. I don’t think the allegory is veiled at all. Hell, I think Cameron could take lessons in subtlety from Kanye West. The first and biggest problem with the film is that it beats you over the head with the allegory for practically the entire running time. Humans (except for the scientists and one Marine) are uniformly evil. The Na’vi (except for one tribal leader who doesn’t trust Worthington, but comes around later) are uniformly angelic and good. Nature is power, technology is baaaaad. It’s so overdone that it saps the excitement. The script doesn’t help either, with heavy, overwritten lines from almost the first scene (where Worthington bemoans the fact that his brother was murdered by someone who wanted “the paper in his wallet”). Matt Gerald, as the Corporal in charge of the operation, is a walking stereotype, firing off terrible one-liners and chewing scenery like a goat going through a tin can.
Furthermore, the story is horribly predictable. Allegory aside, we get moments over and over again that practically scream, “wait, this is going to be important later.” So wait, there’s this tribal legend about a great leader who tames one of the big, red, dragon-things? Golly, why are we taking the time to learn how to fall onto giant leaves? How long can a human last unprotected in the Na’vi atmosphere again? So, about this whole “connection to nature” thing…
Speaking of the connection to nature, a lot of the stuff in that regard reminded me of elements from Orson Scott Card‘s classic novel Speaker For the Dead. I’m not saying Cameron ripped Card off — I know full well how often different writers can come up with similar ideas. I’m just saying that when Card came up with his ideas, he got a much better story out of it.
Then there’s the one saving grace of the movie — the visuals. The visuals are very pretty. The colors are bright and vibrant, the action scenes (if you can make the total avoidance of logic many of those scenes require) are strong. But are the effects groundbreaking, as many of the movie’s proponents claim? Absolutely not. Sure, they look good, but they don’t look any better than other recent effects-driven films like Lord of the Rings or even TransFormers.
It’s not the worst movie of the year, but it isn’t one I enjoyed. If you want a movie that deals with some of the same issues in an intelligent, entertaining fashion, go rent District 9. Avatar just wasn’t worth the three hours I gave it.
Evertime Realms 
You’re smokin’ crack. Avatar was easily the best movie of 2009. A wild ride that never got boring the entire 2 hours and 40 minutes. The visuals were amazing. The story was nowhere near as hack as you’re making it out to be. Yes, there was a anti-tech theme going on, but what do you expect in a movie about nature loving aliens? The humans WERE being evil in this movie. This is a movie about what humans should NEVER do, but sadly I don’t see it as a movie about something that could not happen, since it already HAS happened, in the past, and those were humans and not aliens. So yeah, Cameron has a message, it’s a strong message, the problems are GOING ON TODAY IN THE WORLD NOW, not just in the past, and that still doesn’t take away from the fact that this was a great movie with gorgeous visuals. I feel sad for anyone who over thinks it to the point that they can’t even enjoy such an awesome action/adventure flick.
I have to disagree on a few points Blake. For instance the whole corporation bad natives good. Watch Aliens again, that film is rife with much of the same allegory. Much of the story feels very similiar argumentwise. And while the Na’vi come across as native american the heedless charge into the military is more remniscent of the Last Samurai. Personally when they charged on “horseback” against the armor I thought of the last charge of the Polish cavalry into the SS tank divisions in WW II.
As far as “this is important” moments I’m hard pressed to think of a film in the last 20 years missing those. But the dragon one was pretty good I thought, she talked about her grandfather doing it and how only 5 times has this been accomplished. It didn’t feel nearly as obvious and the falling on leaves was only really obvious in retrospect.
What I found truly breathetaking was I actually forgot they were CGI. This is the first high CGI film I’ve seen where the hair looks real. Where everyone doesn’t look like a botox treatment gone bad. And most especially body language, I realize most people don’t even realize that’s what they are looking for when CGI characters look “off”. In here they nailed it very well. D9 had great CGI but they were able to cheat, those aliens were so alien bady language was only obvious in the broad sense. Here in Avatar they nailed the subtlties and I found that truly groundbreaking.
I think this film truly shows how impressive of films Lucas could have made if his attention to detail had been as good as Cameron’s was.
As far as predictable, these days I can layout most films in detail after a 60 second trailer, it is the rare film that suprises me due to hollywood tendency towards formulaic production.
I’ve gotta disagree about the CGI. I never, at any point, forgot I was watching CGI. It was GOOD CGI, I’m not saying it wasn’t, and in fact I don’t even fault this movie for the fact that I couldn’t get lost in it. CGI in general is so overused these days that I always feel a terrible overawareness that I’m looking at it. It IS rare that a movie can make me forget it entirely. So rare, in fact, that I can’t remember the last time it happened.