Cameron delivers again

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2009)

***Spoilers ahead***
I was having a pretty lousy day when I entered the cinema yesterday. And despite James Cameron being one of my favorite directors and Aliens being one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, I was not sure about Avatar. The criticism has been about the story so naturally I was worried that this one would be all fluff but no substance. After having seen the film I can gladly report that is not the case, rather I would say the story and its themes is one of the stronger points about the movie, not considering the fantastic special effects.
It seems unnecessary to recap the story since I'm sure you've all heard it a thousand times by now. To point out a few things about it that no one seems to have talked about I would think is a better thing. All of James Cameron's movies are in some way about dreams. He frequently uses his personal dreams as inspiration for his films, perhaps most famously the idea for the Terminator which he got from a fever dream. This motif is used to its fullest extent in Avatar, where Jake Sully's journeys with his avatar body are like dreams from which he has to wake up. It all takes a fascinating meta-level when you think about our mediated world today and how many things we do just to get away from our real lives: Playing video games, drinking alcohol and of course - going to the movies. The very final scene of the movie is a clear nod to this notion. One could view Jake Sully's very physical disability as an analogy to any sort of disability or disadvantage that would keep a person from doing what they want. In the dream world that Jake flees to he has everything he ever wanted; Adventure, a beautiful potential love interest, "people" or rather Na'vi who care about him and so on. In the grey, cold and lifeless world he comes from, he is just "meat on wheels"; A nobody.
The movie actually leaves you with a bitter sweet feeling. Nobody's existence on this planet can be as wonderful as living on Pandora, much like Jake Sully you don't want to "wake up", but after 166 minutes you have no choice. Thank God you have the option of seeing the film again which I will do for sure, wallet-raping ticket prices for the 3D version or not. It certainly is worth it.
People think the characters are thin and the story is clichéd and predictable, but I could not agree less on all points. To me it seems like a conspiracy, an attempt to bring the film down. I've seen a lot of movies in my days but most of the time I could not predict what was going to happen. The critics seem to be mistaking narrative means of telling a story with clichés. More than anything, the use of familiar themes and shapes for the animals and so on, is a sign of good storytelling by letting the audience recognize the familiar and thereby relate to the film on another level.
In the above tirade about Avatar's story I have not said much about the special effects in the film which of course are outstanding, but they are very seldom there as anything more than a means to an end, just like in any good science fiction film. The same goes for the 3D, they are never just a gimmick where they point something straight into your face, it's just there to add to the whole experience. Avatar is far from a perfect movie, you could easily cut about 30 minutes out of the film and still tell the same story, and some moments are cringe-worthy. But as an experience, which to me is what movies ultimately are about, there is simply nothing that compares to Avatar.