Review of Avatar

The short, short review: Avatar is an experience, and there're many reasons to see it; most of those reasons are not because it's the best story ever. It's not. But it is very much worth seeing. Whether you do so in an IMAX theater, in 3D (or both), or on your own TV when it’s on DVD someday, it doesn’t matter. But the larger and clearer your screen, the better.

The regular review: If you want your movies to have intricate, unpredictable plots and never-before-seen characters...well, you already know how hard it is to find that in movies today, so don't pick on James Cameron's Avatar if it's deficient on such criteria. The story is fairly solid, though hardly groundbreaking, and many of its plot points and character archtypes you've seen before.

But the fact is, this film compensates with visuals alone. That's not normally a redemptive trait. Eye candy is eye candy, not a piece of memorable cinematography. But Avatar is a bit more than that. The CGI effects and fluid visual landscapes almost feel like a story of their own, worth engaging quite apart from the one writer and director James Cameron is offering. In truth, I could have watched a fictional, plotless documentary about the lush moon of Pandora and all its flora and fauna for 3 hours instead and I might well have been just as impressed. It's that amazing to see.

Here's the spoiler-free set-up: In the year 2154, humans have long since burned up Earth and have moved on. In one corner of the galaxy, a corporation known as RDA has decided to mine a verdant moon named Pandora for its most commercially valuable mineral called unobtainium (a clever name, perhaps, but used before). The only thing making this task hard is the presence of an indigenous population of humanoids called the Na'vi, who are defending their home from the destructive impulses of humanity. To deal with the Na’vi, RDA has employed a group of ex-marines,

Sound familiar? The story and themes in this film have been done before, but doesn’t make them less valid here. It works, though I personally wish the characters were more original. The hero was flawed, but he was also your typical bad boy turned to good. The romance scenario (let’s call it the princess factor) and “love triangle” of Avatar have been overused long before this movie, but at least the love interest herself is no shrinking violet. It’s gratifying to see that damsels-in-distress continue to follow the path of the dodo.

What I also found fairly refreshing was the angle that humans—called the Sky People by the Na’vi—are the invading aliens of this story. The expansionist-minded, resource-greedy race that this movie shows us to be immediately called to mind District 9. In fact, the “Religion and Rocketry” excerpt in my review of District 9 may be better illustrated in Avatar.

Beautiful as the world of Pandora is, the show-stealers in this film are the Na'vi themselves, which Weta Workship and motion capture technology have rendered almost seamlessly into the real world. The Na’vi are a tall, primitive-if-sapient people with catlike features and glittery blue skin. Willowy and light—likely due to the thin atmosphere and low gravity of Pandora—their culture centers around belief in their nature goddess, Eywa. It is this spiritualism and the biological wonders of their society that is threatened by human encroachment.

The avatars referenced by the film’s title are Na’vi hybrid bodies created by humans that can be genetically and remotely controlled by human operators much like in The Matrix. It’s in this way that humans—and we, the audience—can experience the beauty and danger of Pandora like one of the Na’vi. The Na'vi call them Dream-walkers.

The acting in this movie was decent, and was fluid between both real and CGI characters (which overlapped frequently). Sam Worthington portrayed protagonist Jake Sully with accessible heroism and stereotypical military nonchalance. He plays with the alien world of Pandora as any of us might, with natural curiosity and more than a little idiocy. Zoe Saldana is Neytiri, the fiery Na’vi clan princess, stealing as much audience attention as the landscape itself. The ever-cool Sigourney Weaver is no-nonsense scientist Dr. Grace Augustine, playing a role both callous and endearing; she belongs in science fiction or at least among aliens. And in this movie, she gets to be an alien via a Na’vi avatar. Stephen Lang gives us Colonel Miles Quaritch, the cold-blooded but all-too-common “nuke ‘em all”-style military commander who casually drinks his coffee while giving genocidal orders. Michelle Rodriguez reprises her perpetual role as the token badass, tough-talking girl, which many of us may recall from Resident Evil or Lost. The list goes on, and no actor truly disappoints.

Whatever one might think of James Cameron, one has to admit he’s upped the ante once again. Titanic might have shown the scale of his efforts, but Avatar looks and feels more like a directorial evolution of the films that really showcased his visual storytelling. This is the guy who brought us Aliens, The Abyss, and the first two Terminator movies, so no matter what faults you find with Avatar, it’s bound to be chock-full of goodies, too.

For more complex science fiction, you’ll certainly want to mine a bookstore for the classics. For solid movie sci-fi, Avatar is a new classic.