Clichés aside, a breathtaking adventure and a heartfelt plea for nature preservation!

Rating: 7/10 (11 January 2010)

By the year 2149, mankind has colonized the distant planet Pandora. To further explore AND exploit it and its civilization - giant, blue-toned nature creature race called Na'vi's - war veteran Worthington is called in on a mission to replace his killed twin brother by entering artificially generated double bodies of the Na'vi called Avatars... but has second thoughts after learning about the Na'vi's way of life and becoming one of them.
Action/sci-fi auteur James Cameron returns after 12 years with this highly hyped epic. Was it worth waiting for? Definitely yes! We're thrown into the action as quickly as possible and as a result, characters and their development play both second and third fiddle (and honestly suffer as a result), because here it's the world of the planet Pandora itself in the lead role. And some lead: the visual explosion, redefining the line between CGI and real objects, is nothing short of amazing, and means everything to draw us in, accept and surrender to its terms. It's a far cry from the plastic sceneries of "The phantom menace" or "Attack of the clones", e.g. with Cameron's unsurpassed sophisticated touches, including perfected technical machinery and weaponry. Naturally, this is not for cynics with no sense of fantasy and wonder, as fairy tale cuteness (I honestly had to choke a giggle or two at the first looks and sights of the Na'vi) meets rough, thunderous action. Again, I feel the itch to make a TV-series out of this, to do the whole Na'vi/Pandora mythos justice!
Theme-wise, overly obvious (if commendable) paraphrases and parallels of the white man's burden of the slow holocaust of the American Indians and subsequent colonial heritage are there. So are equally obvious old-time adventure hero clichés. But in all fairness, who else but the above-mentioned cynics would care when we have such a completely fresh and unique ballpark/fairground to play in? I haven't seen many complaints about "Star wars episode IV" totally ripping off the plot of "Seven Samurai", but still managing to be just as good a movie anyhow!
But this whole vessel wouldn't carry its load if there wasn't a heart that works, which I find in Cameron's huge plea for nature and environmental preservation, with a touch of the need for spiritual rebirth thrown in, just as he did in "The abyss". And any movie accomplishing that message to such a degree of bringing a tear to my eye, is easy to embrace. In all, a breathtaking adventure with action scenes all set and ready to move up on any such a best-ever list!
7 out of 10 from Ozjeppe