Random Movie: Avatar (2009)

No one can deny that the trucker turned film-maker James Cameron has been one of Hollywood's biggest movers and shakers of the last several decades. Movies like Aliens, The Abyss, and Terminator 2 have not only cemented Cameron's name in the halls of movie history, but were also big parts of my childhood, shaping my expectations of how amazing a science fiction film could be.

After a twelve year hiatus and some deep sea documentaries, Cameron returns to the director's chair for his new sci-fi opus, Avatar. The story is fairly simple. A paraplegic space marine named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is dispatched to the alien world of Pandora, where a corporate mining operation is trying to gather a rare and expensive mineral ore. The planet is filled with giant, aggressive creatures, chief among these being an intelligent tribal culture called the Na'vi. To avoid violence, the company's scientists, headed by Doctor Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) have engineered several avatar bodies, which look like the 14 foot tall natives and are remotely piloted by humans via a complex electronic interface. Jake Sully has been brought onto the project to control the avatar intended for his now dead twin brother. Apparently, some kind of genetic compatibility is required between avatar and pilot and Jake is the closest genetic match available. There mission is to infiltrate the Na'vi tribe and peacefully convince them to relocate away from their giant tree village as it sits on a monstrous deposit of the priceless metal. Jake's avatar meets the tribe's resident warrior princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and is accepted into the Na'vi tribe where he learns of their ways and their connection to the planet. (This does bring up one of the more aggravating elements of the film where the Na'vi can plug their brains into the planet's various flora and fauna through nerves in their hair. Taking the idea that these people have a spiritual connection with nature, then making it literal seems childish.) Eventually, when the peace talks break down, Jake has to choose between completing his mission or defending the Na'vi against the corporations fierce mercenary army gunning to wipe them all out. (Although Jake's major motivation throughout the film seems to be getting some blue alien pussy.)

The movie's main appeal is in its costly and well crafted visual presentation. I saw the movie in 3-D and seeing it in this format adds to the film's immersive atmosphere. Surprisingly, it has none of the gimmicky “throwing objects at the audience” moments that one might expect. The film does have a running time of well over two hours, so some people, myself included, will have an eye-trickery induced headache by the time the credits roll, if not before. I wouldn't call any of the singular special effects used throughout the movie innovative or ground-breaking, as rendered CG environments, creatures, vehicles, and motion-captured characters have all been used in movies since the mid-90's. What is ground-breaking is the way all of these elements are integrated together to create a striking and memorable visual whole. All of the Na'vi acting and creature riding and battle scenes play out seamlessly. As for the non-visual elements, well... Sam Worthington is passable as the story's protagonist but his performance never really got me cheering for his character, but that may be the screen-writer's fault. The stand out performances are defiantly Sigourney Weaver, being a sci-fi heroine veteran, and a surprisingly moving Zoe Saldana in her motion capture performance of Neytiri, the blue cat-people equivalent of Pocahontas. (fortunately, she never breaks into a musical number) All of the other supporting characters are remarkably one-dimensional, my cheesy favorites being Stephen Lang (you might remember him as Ike Clanton from 1993's Tombstone) playing a blood thirsty mercenary Colonel who might as well have been named Duke Nukem, and Giovanni Ribisi playing pretty much the exact same corporate douche bag that Paul Reiser portrayed in Aliens. I also have to mention Michelle Rodriguez, here playing the same hard-nosed chick that she's played in almost every movie she's ever been in, and it's getting old.

Some people have complained about the story being weak or that its just a rehash of Dances with Wolves or Ferngully, and yes, the plot is paper-thin, but my biggest gripe with this production is the disappointingly lackluster musical score. Composer James Horner really dropped the ball on this one. At no point is there a memorable lick or theme that a grand, sweeping, epic movie like this really needs to compliment the scope of the action that is being shown on screen. James Cameron really should have spent an extra million dollars to get John Williams on this project. Overall this movie is, at the very least, great to look at, but a few things like the score, the uninspired writing, and the ham-fisted environmental and anti-imperialist messages really hold it down from being a timeless classic. It's not the herald of a new era in film-making that the advertisements promised, and certainly not as good as some of the other movies on James Cameron's resume.