It's been three long years since we first heard that director and writer James Cameron would go back to the genre he does best: science fiction. And after a long wait in the CGI wilderness, Avatar is finally here.
Ever since Titanic catapulted the Canadian born filmmaker into the box office stratosphere and made him the king of the world - cinema has been left waiting for one of its favourite sons to return and dazzle our eyes once more.
Now that Avatar has arrived, accompanied by unbelievable levels of endless hype, you could be forgiven for dismissing the movie based on its cringe-inducing trailers - to which comparisons with Smurfs, Delgo and Fern Gully seem entirely fitting.
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| A dragonfly helicopter goes in low against an alien enemy |
Fortunately the film shares little with its embarrassing trailers and sits comfortably alongside such epic worlds as Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings or Lucas' Star Wars trilogy.
It's big, bold and probably half an hour too long (over 2.5 hours in running time), but viewed in sparkling digital 3D (as we saw it) the experience is somethig to behold. The computer generated landscapes are every bit as awe-inspiring as you'd expect.
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| Sam Worthington as a Navi in Avatar |
The indigenous inhabitants of the planet Pandora are the Navi. Early in the film, we come to learn that they've been quietly living on a massively valuable natural resource called unobtanium - apparantly a real term still used by engineers to describe rare materials for projects in fields such as aerospace.
A large earth-based corporation is desperate to get its hands on the precious rocks and they've brought in Earth's finest military brass to take care of the native population, who are holding up mining plans. Gung-ho marines and southern-accented Colonel's are keen to "fight terror with terror", in a phrase we've all no doubt heard before somewhere.
Cameron provides references to modern political events and the lessons from the largest imperialist armies of history. The film is unashamedly biased towards the left; peace-loving naturists and defenders of the weak go up against ultra-conservative military muscle, resulting in war on Pandora.
Tree dwelling, freedom fighting Navi are united by Jake Sully's (Sam Worthington) Avatar, a technology that allows humans to transfer their mind into the bodies of captured Navi.
Sully quickly falls in love with the Navi after starting out as an excited spy, realises the depth of his lies, and helps to unite the disheartened Navi to fight back their conquerors. If this kind of plot sounds familiar, that's because it is.
The invading army have access to the world's most advance killing machines and fighting tools. Some of this technology is fascinating, including the incredible Mech suits, armed dragonfly helicopters and machine guns.
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Mech suits: worth the price of admission
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Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) plays another familiar archetype - the corporate slime bag. In fact it seems that Cameron is carefully trying to link Avatar's Selfridge with another corporate jerk, Carter Burke from Aliens.
In fact, much of the Aliens plot line could work in Avatar, minus the spiritual and mystical elements of the Navi. Even Sigourney Weaver's Dr Grace Augustine feels like an older and wiser Ripley. She gets some of the best lines and is most realistically drawn character in the film. Twenty years ago, she would have been the lead.
In fact we sometimes found ourselves getting nostalgic for Aliens., wishing this were the sequel. Instead we get Cameron's revisionist Dances with Wolves plotting, right down to the un-approving brother and wish fulfilment by Sully to desert the spiritual emptiness of modernity.
Much of the film comes across as an allegory for the power of science being outshone by the healing forces of faith, nature and the sacred bond of spirituality.
But too much of Avatar feels like Dances with Wolves in Space. Avatar's spiritual values feel largely tacked on by Cameron, as though he wanted to give the bombastic military scenes some relief and thematic purpose. The spirtual connection is creatively explored by the Navi and the trees - but parts of it feel largely overused and those scences dampen the excitement and pace.
One of the film's main problems is that the bad guys are largely more fascinating than the good guys. Stephen Lang's blood thirsty Colonel Quaratch arguably gives the film its finest performance. He slowly morphs from an old battle leader into an unstoppable bundle of muscle and macho - the final battle scenes between him and Worthington are worth the price of a ticket alone and comparable to the classic Ripley/Queen fight in Aliens.
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| Sam Worthington (Jake Sully) in his avatar. |
Two dimensional side-kicks serve chiefly as plot exposition, and poor dialogue doesn't grant the film any favours. Cameron might have an eye for details and a head for science, but here, his plotting is unusually stiff and artificial (for the writer of Terminator and Aliens).
There's also a love story in there somewhere too. Zoe Saldana's Neytiri is among the most affecting Navi and feels more humanistic than the humans toiling away in the labs.
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| Stephen Lang gets some of the best lines as the crazy Colonel |
Sam Worthington plays it a little too dry. He's not compelling or sympathetic enough and his voiceover took us right out of the film. We were also a little put off by his accent.
Finally, the CGI is not perfect, no matter how many will gush at the scenes. It simply isn't the ground breaking work we've been led to believe, though there are some gorgeous shots scattered throughout.
WETA's efforts are admirable, but they're not perfect. The rendering still shows signs that photo realistic humanoids are not quite here yet. This is not the game changer people will want to be. But it's a good start.
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| The final twenty minutes of battles are incredible |
The Navi horses do not look very convincing either and it reminds you just how hard horses are to animate. Every time you see one of those seahorses racing across the forest floor with their strange contoured muscles, we were instantly reminded of video game footage. We've seen real horses before - we can tell the difference too easily.
Fortunately, the film stops short of becoming a digital whitewash and the moments we spend on board the spacecraft with the main human characters are some of the most interesting. The spacecraft sets are expertly realised and believable.
Avatar is among the best video-game movies ever made, but it's definitely not the best movie ever made. We've seen much of this stuff before in the Star Wars universe and it hardly qualifies as the second coming of cinema. It's made to be seen in 3D and as an adventure park ride, it delivers the type of thrills younger audiences will crave.
But as a deeper depiction of mankind and our ubiquitous nature to conquer and divide, Avatar left us a little wanting.
