Avatar
Written and Directed by: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana, Giovanni Ribisi, Michelle Rodriguez, Joel Moore

We’ve been waiting for over a decade now to see James Cameron return to the world of big budget filmmaking. After Titanic there was simply nothing left for him to conquer, and everyone knows that the one thing that drives James Cameron is a challenge. Now that technology has had time to progress to the next stage, he has finally decided to up the ante all over again.

Despite Cameron’s untarnished track record, many questions remained. Had he been away from the game too long? Was the hype starting to exceed all reasonable expectations? And was he asking too much of audiences to embrace a strange new world when they’ve grown accustomed to so many familiar sequels, remakes and spin-offs? Valid questions, perhaps, and yet they quickly fade away after being absorbed into the world of Avatar.

Avatar is a fantasy/sci-fi epic that takes place on Pandora, a lush, green planet where an humanoid alien race known as the Na’vi live in total harmony with nature. Humans want to get their hands on some of the valuable minerals contained beneath the planet’s surface, but in order to do that, they need to relocate the natives. To gather intelligence and learn more about their culture, the U.S. military creates genetic Na’vi clones that can be controlled remotely by human soldiers using a neural link. When Jake Sully, a wheelchair-bound Marine, infiltrates the Na’vi clan, he soon finds himself torn between two bodies and two opposing ways of life.

This movie is equal parts Star Wars, Jurassic Park and The Lord of the Rings, all passed through a James Cameron filter. It’s hard to shake the feeling that you’ve seen a lot of these elements before, but at the same time, you’ve never seen them quite like this. The story is fairly straightforward, and it’s a little light on plot and character development, but your appreciation for Avatar will hinge almost entirely on just how earth-shattering you find the visuals.

From a sensory standpoint, there is nothing comparable. The environments are stunning, the CG is absolutely top notch, and the 3-D enhances everything in subtle yet significant ways. People who thought that the Avatar previews looked like Star Wars: Episode 1 (or worse yet, Battle for Terra) have no idea what they’re in for. The character models are ridiculously detailed and expressive. The eyes and the mouths are so eerily real, and the motion capture so fluid that you can’t quite believe what you’re seeing. Live action and CG intersect seamlessly and with flawless execution.

The 3-D also helps with the realism because it distances you from the characters slightly, and obscures some of the details when the camera is moving. This can be frustrating during some of the action scenes, when you find that you can’t quite focus on anything. On the other hand, it really immerses you in the world; you are constantly surrounded by floating seeds, falling ash or thick foliage. And the aerial scenes truly give you a sense of speed and height like never before.

Sam Worthington (Terminator Salvation) proves why he is the next big action star. Even if he didn’t seem to do much physically on screen, his presence and personality carry this movie through to the end. It’s great to see Sigourney Weaver in another strong female role, Michelle Rodriguez is surprisingly likable, and Giovanni Ribisi is the best corporate douchebag since Paul Reiser in Aliens.

The two standout performances, however, come from Zoe Saldana and Stephen Lang. Saldana (recently seen as Uhura in Star Trek) plays the Na’vi princess Neytiri, and through the performance capture process manages to sell the character about as well as any CG character has ever been sold before. Lang, on the other hand, is the hulking Colonel Quaritch, the movie’s memorable (albeit two-dimensional) villain. Some of his dialogue definitely rides the line of cheesiness, but at the same time, the macho military stuff is pure Jim Cameron and perhaps the greatest tie to his earlier films.

Like Michael Bay, James Cameron subscribes to the theory that bigger is better, and at times Avatar feels like it’s trying to wow you into submission. Almost every vehicle or creature has to be absolutely gigantic, and the environments also rely more on overwhelming scale than intricate detail. The world is impressive, I just wish there was more of a sense of discovery throughout the film. I also think he overdid it a little bit with the Na’vi spirituality and the environmental themes, which seem clumsy and heavy-handed, and sometimes border on being comical. But we all expected that, right?

Yes, the movie is a bit too long as well– I felt it dragged a bit in the middle while Jake was learning the ways of the Na’vi with no real conflict to push it along. That being said, the last half-hour is an all-out assault that barely pauses to let you catch your breath, and it is pretty awesome. Regardless of how the movie gets there, the action sequences are beyond thrilling, and the relationship between Jake and Neytiri packs enough of an emotional punch to make it mean something.

On a purely technical level this movie is unparalleled and easily earns four stars in that department, but it is debatable whether or not it deserves a perfect score overall for that alone. Due to the relatively predictable story, occasionally cheesy dialogue and uneven pacing, I am inclined to rank it somewhere alongside Star Trek as another 2009 blockbuster that is highly entertaining, but not particularly deep. I just happen to think Avatar stops a bit shy of being a masterpiece.

Your mileage may vary, but one thing’s for certain: this is the beginning of a new powerhouse sci-fi franchise and it is a must-see movie if ever there was one. You should not wait to see this on DVD, because the home theatre experience won’t even come close (at least not for a couple of years anyway). Whether or not James Cameron has truly changed the industry remains to be seen for the time being, but in the end I think all the money and hard work was definitely justified by the final result. — Sean

SCORE: