Avatar is solid, story needs oomph

Rating: 8/10 (23 February 2010)

James Cameron's films, many times, have been about humanity's love/hate relationship with a cold-blooded or machine-like opposition. There's machine vs. human conflict in Terminator movies. Insect-like aliens go against humans in Aliens. Titanic was about human technology vs. the harshness of nature, in relations to human pride and dependence on technology. In Avatar, the tribal humanoids of Pandora are the more humane, while the actual humans are more machine-like (in their dependency of technology). His frequent use of a strong female character is also in display here, embodied in the character of Neytiri. And, of course, he loves using the color blue in all his films, and there is a lot of it here, not only in the amazing scenery, but the tribal characters are all blue as well.
The story of Avatar is pretty simple and one can pretty much call it an animated version of Dances with Wolves, plot-wise, mixed in with a bit of Princess Mononoke. James Cameron's Avatar makes great use of 3-D technology to bring his fantastic visuals to life. At the same time, I've noticed that humans tend not to look as realistic in 3-D. Perhaps it's from years and years of training our eyes to accept 2-D imagery as real. All the computer generated (CG) characters and places, however, are better enhanced by this 3-D technology, whereas they may not seem as real or convincing otherwise. The colors are brilliant, the details are amazing, and the expressions of the characters are both subtle and spot-on. Does this movie truly innovate the use of this technology? I wouldn't go that far (unlike Terminator 2's use of "morphing"), but it does show that CG characters can truly flourish, especially with this 3-D medium. If the whole movie was CG with no live action, it would still work quite well (and would be consistent).
The human actors do what they can with the amount of live action time given. Most of the time, subtleties feel lost in the realm of live action 3-D. Sam Worthington, admittedly, is more interesting as the blue humanoid, and in this case, perhaps even a better actor because of it. Zoe Saldana (Uhura of Star Trek) plays a CG-fied version of herself as Neytiri. Many character movements have been made with motion capture, and the expressions and movements of Neytiri are full of life and beautiful to look at, which also bring a lot of heart to her character. Rest of the CG characters all come off quite well, and despite the fact that they look a little odd initially, one gets quite used to them and all the creatures in this fantastic world that Cameron has created in great detail. The lighting of the scenes and various plant life and strange creatures all feel like they belong, despite how odd they look—they all move and breathe like real creatures in their own way.
One can parallel the film to almost any sociopolitical theme, past and present, that involves people's use of military force for greed of resources and/or destruction of nature. Unlike the humans, the Na'vi in the film are peace-loving people and somehow connects with all of nature harmoniously, and there seems to be something not unlike The Force (from Star Wars) added in there. With all this peace-loving stuff, one wonders how it happens that creatures still viciously eat and kill each other (but I'll leave that alone). Na'vi also have this receptacle thing at the ends of their lock of hair that can connect to and communicate with other animals, who also have a similar receptacle, kind of like a USB port. It's all pretty neat and convenient. Contrast to this, the humans here are not as friendly. Stephen Lang plays Col. Miles Quaritch, a tough, military commander who does whatever it takes to get the Na'vi's to move from their land. Giovanni Ribisi plays Parker Selfridge who spearheads the operation—he's kind of like the greedy lawyer, Burke, from Aliens. Quaritch and Selfridge both are played with a bit of an old-fashioned bad-guy gusto that can come off a bit two-dimensional (to the service of the story). In the end, one will certainly root for the Na'vi—after all, it's their land, they are peace-loving, and the whole planet seems to agree with them.
James Cameron is famous for his great action scenes, and seeing how all the creatures move and react and the way CG vehicles crash all feel "right." Many directors love to cheese-it-up with tons of explosions and fluid/rubbery/stretchy machines (Michael *COUGH* Bay), but much of that is kept with a bit more restraint. With that said, the film is more of an adventure story than an action flick. Much of the time (the movie is 2 hours, 40 minutes long) is spent allowing us to get to know Pandora and its inhabitants, which fortunately is interesting most of the time.
Overall, I found the movie to be quite enjoyable—it may not live up to the hype as the work of great achievement in 3-D, but it's a good achievement. The CG characters fare better than the human counterparts in almost every way, which is both good and a bad thing. We need the humans there to show that we're supposed to accept Na'vi not as a cartoon, but humans aren't as fluid or interesting or real as they are. The lands of Pandora are beautiful, even if it is a little too good (and convenient) to be true. The story, as mentioned, isn't anything new, and dialogue could use a little more edge. Still, the execution is very good, and it is solid visual entertainment. I give Avatar *** out of **** stars.
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