Review: Avatar

Avatar is now the second most successful film of all time (in pure dollar box office terms) – and thus James Cameron owns number one (Titanic) and number two – and marks another great leap forward for special effects, but is it actually any good?

Well, let’s be clear, Cameron certainly hasn’t spent the last 12 years polishing the script!! The story, such as it is, recalls so many films and books that it would be far too time-consuming to list those ‘influences’. If one was to be kind, one would suggest Cameron is using ‘classic’ stories and plot staples (as George Lucas did so well with the Star Wars IV: A New Hope); however, if one was to be unkind, one would suggest Cameron is apparently bereft of any original thought!

As for the dialogue, it never hits the heights of Aliens or the Terminator movies – in fact, in places, it plumbs some new depths.

The film’s pro-environment and anti-imperialism stances are somewhat undermined by Cameron’s woolly liberalism (it’s OK to slaughter in self defence and if you’re saving the planet – at least Arnie in T2 wasn’t allowed to kill anyone…) and his inverted racism: the majority of the mercenaries are white red-necks with no redeeming values whatsoever, while the Na’vi are saints and so at one with nature that they come across as a bunch of hippy do-gooders (and needless to say they don’t operate a democracy…) – and they certainly appear, in tribal terms at least, to be a mixture of every ‘worthy’ indigenous people that the White Man has oppressed.

But of course, they can’t succeed on their own – the hero White Man must turn traitor to his own people to save his adopted Na’vi, and in so doing become their god. Jim: that’s all so tiresome!!!

But, and it is a big but, the film’s 2 hours 42 minute-run time flies by. It is generally well edited, exposition is largely unintrusive, the action set pieces are played for maximum effect, and the effects (especially in 3D) are simply breath-taking – and Sam Worthington continues to make a name for himself (after Terminator 4) as a thoroughly dependable, everyman hero who grounds any script in gritty reality.

Worthington’s first brush with the wildlife (the emphasis is on the wild) on Pandora is as breathless and nail-gripping as chase sequences get – I was pushing myself further and further back into my chair to escape the beasties. And in that typical Cameron way, just when you think a set-piece has topped out, he then goes and trumps it.

Indeed, the attack on the Na’vi’s Hometree is pretty bloody astonishing, ranking up there with the Ride of the Valkyries attack in Apocalypse Now!, anything by Ridley Scott, and Cameron’s own sinking of the Titanic. The impact and aftermath of this attack vividly and chillingly, but apparently accidentally, recalls 9/11.

Cameron’s long-established interest in hardware continues in Avatar – you get the sense he understands the essential physics and science that make every item of technology in his movies work: guns work in particular, mechanical ways, while air-borne/space craft can only do what is physically possible. And this sense benefits the action set-pieces. Indeed, the air-borne/space craft are also clearly developed from previous such craft designs in Aliens and the Terminator movies.

And just as the Abyss and T2 were only possible thanks to improved FX technology, so Avatar marks another step-change. There really are no hokey effects in this movie, no obvious blue screen moments – at times you feel that you can reach out and touch this other world.

Over time, some Cameron themes have waned: women rarely play pro-active, strong, independent roles in his films any more like they did early on (Sarah Connor, Ripley, and Lindsey Brigman in The Abyss for example), and the female roles (as much as the male roles, I admit) are under-written in Avatar.

But that is clearly not a problem for the millions that have gone to see it. Not withstanding that its box office records are in part driven by the premium ticket prices charged for IMAX and 3D screenings, Avatar nevertheless proves people will find the money for pure escapism in the depths of recession and bad weather – film it and they will come.

And that statement proves the power of cinema – and of James Cameron.

If I have a message for Cameron, it is this: take your cues from your former wife Kathryn Bigelow and the likes of Paul Greengrass – it is possible to make visionary, muscular action movies deep with meaning.

Finally then, a score is called for. There is so much to enjoy – and so much that is unforgivable in a film that started life 12 years ago. Cameron has filmed four of my favourite movies, and that’s the benchmark he’s up against, so…
Score: 6.5/10