Entertaining, but not completely satisfactory

Rating: 7/10 (1 January 2010)

It brings me distrust when a director proclaims: "Until now we have the technology to tell this story" (or similar words).I ask to myself if Shakespeare, Cervantes or Lovecraft had once said: "Finally! A blue ink pen! Now I will be able to write my masterpiece".If the screenplay from Avatar had been extraordinarily good, it would have worked even if it was represented with puppets.But it is not, and the film is supported on many brilliant special effects to simulate the fact that the screenplay is hollow.I cannot deny Avatar entertained me, but I am afraid I will erase it from my memory in less than a week.
In mid-90's, a preliminary screenplay from Avatar appeared on the Internet, and I had the opportunity to read it.Director and screenwriter James Cameron said that that primitive draft was completely different to the final version of the movie, but I feel its basic structure is the same: on the one hand, we have the military and corporative villains ready to raze the "eco-magic" world for the sake of money; and on the other hand, the integration of a human being to the native culture, which does only alter his perspective of the planet, but also from his values and ideology.Sure, I imagine that the descriptions from the flora, fauna and geology from the planet Pandora were increasing their complexity as Cameron found new technological tools to visualize an entire planet.And there is certainly no doubt...the hundreds of millions of dollars the movie cost were well invested on the fantastic images which bring Pandora to life, not to mention that the special effects are also great.Besides, the action scenes are very well filmed by Cameron, because they are always clear and they involve the spectator on them.However, I cannot ignore the fact that the screenplay from this movie is hollow, predictable, full of clichés and packed of unidimensional characters.
With the exception of Sigourney Weaver, the cast does not bring very solid performances.Stephen Lang (unrecognizable in comparison with his days on the TV series Crime Story) and Giovanni Ribisi do not bring too much energy and conviction to their characters.Even Sam Worthington (who was so charismatic in Terminator: Salvation) feels listless as the hero.I guess that it does not help too much the fact that, during the 90% of the movie, Worthington is replaced by a digital creature with a similar face but less histrionic talent.I will not deny that the Na'vi race is created with very competent special effects, which surpass on expression and realism to the insipid dummies from Beowulf (2007) and A Christmas Carol (2010), but they are still far away from being perfect.In fact, it took me around 1 hour to "plunge" myself into the movie and accept them as valid characters.Besides, Avatar has tiring ecological clichés and sentimental formulas which feel too obvious and cloying.
However, in spite of its many fails, Avatar is an entertaining experience and I think that because of that it deserves a recommendation.Finally, I think that the inverse proportion which exists between the technical complexity from Cameron's films and their narrative ability is very noticeable, something which is a pretentious way to say that, in my humble opinion, his best films keep being The Terminator and Aliens, because what I most remember from them are the story and the characters, and not only special effects, like it happened to me with Avatar.