Embarrassingly derivative in story, but an experience nonetheless

Rating: Null/10 (21 December 2009)

I was adamant on the belief that Avatar's hype and the megalomania of Cameron's shameless "masterpiece" allegations were both far too great for it to be a success. The endless posturing was turning it into a phenomenon, and, no matter how good it turned out to be, nothing could amount to that level of expectation.
But stripped of all preempt bias, Avatar is a handsome effort. Not only is it reasonably accessible sci fi, it's admirably old-school entertainment – engaging and visually stimulating. And if there's one thing that has been truthfully sugar-coated here, it's the special effects; Avatar is simply stunning. Retaining his talent for effortlessly handling large budgets, Cameron manages to satisfy the timeless cinema patron request of escapism by creating a world that is, thanks to a staggering attention to detail, outlandishness at it's most realistic. It's all so wonderfully realized, and what's best is that the soporific first and middle acts are tinged with a near-palpable stillness, with allows for much-recommended scrutiny, whether it be of the inner sanctum of the forest or the cliff's wide panoramas. Not even the bizarre and sometimes laughable topographical features (ground that lights up when you walk on it, mountains that float, etc.) deter from the overall majesty of this breathtaking creation. The bar has been raised once again, and it's been raised once again by James Cameron.
He sure does know how to justify eye-candy (the largely uneventful middle part of the movie contains some of the most glorious filler ever subjected to film), but while Cameron's strengths shine through, Avatar is also a checklist of his weaknesses. For one, the story is utter pants. For a movie twelve years in the making, the plot is unapologetically derivative; there are immediate parallels with Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, Pocahontas, and even Fern Gully, and that doesn't even partially explain just how ham-fisted Avatar is. Subtlety has never been Cameron's forte, but this is just insulting; the basis of the movie's plot is that the big bad industrialists want to level the home of Pandora's indigenous natives, the Na'vi, in order to obtain a rare and lucrative matter known as Unobtainium – that's right, Unobtainium. I'll let the ingenuity of that little grace note sink in. So basically, it's a junior infant's allegory for both environmental negligence and the treatment of the Native Americans, and it's such embarrassingly rudiment plot depth that the audience is practically getting beaten over the head by it.
But our hero, Jake Sully (played by a solid Sam Worthington, the year's breakout star), a man untroubled with the burden of a personality, all swears, unfunny wisecracks and cheesy American interjections, has been transferred into an Avatar (a neat concept that is explained within the first five minutes thanks to the movie's swift pacing) to learn the Na'vi's ways, and he discovers in the process that they're actually not that bad. They've got feelings. Oh, he also falls in love with Neytiri, the – you guessed it – tribe leader's daughter. She's played by Zoe Saldaña, who turns in a heartfelt performance magnificently well-suited to the material.
But do the baddies care? Not in the less-dimensional-than-the-format-the-movie's-presented-in world of Cameron Villains. Stephen Lang's craps-nails Colonel Quaritch is a droll creation, hilariously characterized only by just how much of a relentless douchebag he is. Here's a man so bada** he doesn't need to wear an oxygen mask while exposed to the toxic air on Pandora, he likes to nonchalantly sip coffee while murdering hundreds of innocents, and his heavy artillery-equipped personal robot is at its most effective when armed with a big knife. Then there's Giovanni Ribisi's Parker, who serves as just another cardboard cut-out representation of the archetypical avarice of America.
In a way, there is something appealing about the artifice among the non-blue portion of the cast. Quaritch is a fun character, and there's nothing a well-delivered monologue can't do to make you appreciate a villain. And if anything, the humans' one-note characterization improves upon the much more-developed Na'vi. Sully, though himself a huge victim of the poor screenplay, is an endearing protagonist, and watching him gradually rise from his despondency through the teachings of the tribe is a nice transition, and there's elegance to the culture of the Na'vi (particularly the natural "connection" aspect). Their way of life is an understandably attractive alternative, particularly when compared to the clinical institutionalism of Avatar's futuristic setting. The Sully-Neytiri romance is also how quite tender, albeit a tad rushed.
It's worth remembering that Avatar is brought to us by the man behind Titanic; a slow-burner that paid off immensely in its final act with a superlative climax. And that's always what Cameron has excelled at. He can work a money shot, but he can also intertwine it with deep undercurrents of raw emotion, and that's where he hits his stride, and this is no exception. He's upped his game, and that sinking ship doesn't come close to replicating what has to be one of the most emotionally stirring and most powerful moments in any of his movies, if not any movie made this decade; there's a moment in Avatar that occurs prior to the movie's action-packed finale, and it's a truly unforgettable sequence, that goes straight for the heart. And said "action-packed finale" is an extraordinary example of how it's done. Epic and grandiose is what Cameron promised, and that's what at least his action chops deliver.
Though Avatar has been hampered by the counterproductivity of James Cameron's ego, it still managed to make worthy cinema. It's a sterling effort, and one that, at the very least, deserves endless appraise for its imagery, its acting (no matter how intentionally hokey it might have been), and that, despite its many faults, it's a cinematic experience not worth passing up, especially when you take into consideration that you'd be missing out on seeing the most ambitious movie ever made.