Cameron the Director Luckily Trumps Cameron the Screenwriter on His Dazzling Green-Friendly Epic

Rating: 8/10 (3 January 2010)

As a director, James Cameron dazzles magnificently with his green-friendly 2009 mega-opus. As his first full-fledged feature since "Titanic", it's a CGI-generated extravaganza of 3-D and motion-capture technologies that overwhelms the senses. Give him credit for making a film that runs an epic-length 162 minutes without a hint of a yawn in the visual execution. However, as a screenwriter, Cameron resorts to familiar clichés and often corny dialogue in this unwieldy amalgamation of "Land of the Lost" and "Dancing with Wolves". Character development and original dialogue have never been his strong suits, and fortunately, these shortcomings are not as pronounced as they were with "Titanic". At the same time, I really wish he could have seen the benefit of a writing collaborator who could have made something more provocative out of the arresting science-fantasy premise and ultimately push this movie toward the echelon of being one for the ages.
Set in 2154, the fanciful story focuses on Jake Scully, a paraplegic former Marine who has been recruited for a special mission by the U. S. Armed Forces because he's a genetic match for his dead identical twin. The mission is to Pandora, an earth-sized moon in orbit around a massive star, which gives life to minerals that the Earth needs after centuries of abuse and desecration. Pandora's native inhabitants deep in the planetary forest are the blue-skinned Na'vi, a race of slender, agile twelve-foot giants who are at one with their natural environment. In order for humans to connect with the Na'vi, avatars have been created from their DNA, which allows select humans to become Na'vi look-alikes on Pandora, while still being mind-controlled by the original humans wired up on the hovering ship. Physically, there is no difference between the avatars and the Na'vi, but their inner selves reflect a great divide in sensibilities and priorities of which only Scully seems to know how to traverse the deep spiritual chasm.
From that premise comes the inevitable love story (Scully falls for the brave, soulful Neytiri) and of course, the equally inevitable showdown between the Na'vi and the increasingly aggressive military forces led by the gung-ho Colonel Miles Quaritch. The similarities between the peace-loving Na'vi and Native Americans are purely intentional down to the earthly wisdom and the yelping battle cries. Horses have been replaced with pterodactyl-like flying creatures with which the Na'vi connect through intriguingly sensual tubes of dancing cilia. There are other layers of allegory, but Cameron focuses more on the story's visceral thrills rather than bothering to elucidate the government's motivation behind the avatar program, especially since the program director, Dr. Grace Augustine, appears completely out of sync with the corporate-military brain trust almost from the outset. It's pretty clear that none of these nuances matter once the climactic battle occurs, a genuinely masterful sequence that brings the digital technology to a whole new level.
For a movie like this to work, the characters are merely presented to support the action and supply a recognizable set of emotions which an audience doesn't have to think about. Toward that end, the cast is effective in a workman-like manner. Sam Worthington ("Terminator Salvation") plays Scully appropriately like a young Clint Eastwood type, never complicating the character more than Cameron allows. Zoe Saldaña's ("Star Trek") role consists primarily of digital performance capture since her character doesn't have a human counterpart. She lends a palpable voice to Neytiri even though the Na'vi facial expressions remind me of those of the aliens at the end of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Michelle Rodriguez ("Fast & Furious") is on the sidelines playing a too-cool Marine fighter pilot, and there are predictably villainous turns by Stephen Lang ("Last Exit to Brooklyn") as Quaritch and Giovanni Ribisi ("The Gift") as a corporate administrator pushing relentlessly for the mining operation. Sigourney Weaver, who starred in Cameron's "Aliens" 23 years earlier, contributes a few, sassy scene-stealing scenes as Grace. James Horner's bombastic music score will sound familiar to "Titanic" fans down to the treacly ballad sung Celine-style by Leona Lewis. Mauro Fiore's cinematography and the elaborate production design led by Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg reflect world-class work.