Absurd politics with a maddeningly unoriginal story

Rating: 3/10 (25 January 2011)

If you're one of the five people who has managed to abstain from watching James Cameron's 2009 megahit Avatar, than I have one thing to say to you: stay home, watch Pocahontas, The Last Samurai, or Keith Olbermann and save yourself 10 dollars.
The shopworn story in Avatar revolves around Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paralyzed marine who is sent to a military/mining outpost on the faraway planet Pandora. Pandora is inhabited by 10-foot tall primitive blue aliens affectionately named Na'vi, who basically look like the most likable and cute creatures imaginable. Jake is enlisted by a team of scientists to take control of a human-Na'vi hybrid body through some futuristic mind-link technology and is soon a 10-foot tall blue version of himself. Without giving too much away, Jake finds himself captured by the native aliens and soon has to choose where his loyalties lie. Don't be fooled by the exotic premise, the movie digresses quickly into a cliché-ridden mess with an ending that can be seen from a mile away.
The two antagonists in Avatar are laughably one-dimensional white males (what else?). One is the head of the military complex, Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). The Colonel is everything that Hollywood thinks of the military: aggressive, chauvinistic, callous, and eager for destruction and death. He has some of the most ridiculous dialogue: lines to the effect of "Let's hurry up and destroy this peaceful native culture so I can get back in time for dinner" and "shock and awe". On top of this he sports a ridiculous set of scars on his face that is only surpassed in dumbness by his over the top southern accent.
The second antagonist plays less of a role in the movie, but is equally comical, bland, and stereotypical as the Colonel. Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) is the corporate executive of the mining operation on Pandora that is seeking the mineral unobtanium which, as Selfridge explains, "sells for twenty million a kilo." And wouldn't you know it, the deposit of unobtanium is situated right under the village of the Na'vi. Selfridge thankfully makes only a few appearances in the movie, but Cameron makes sure to squeeze the max amount of populist anger from the audience out of each appearance. By his second appearance, I was fully expecting him to give lavish bonuses to AIG bankers or at least, start laying-off workers.
This film is as smug, simplistic, and manipulative as it gets in Hollywood. Especially in the movie business, you sometimes have to look past the absurd pseudo-philosophical politics and just enjoy the movie for what it is. And had this movie had the same politics, but instead been, say, The Godfather, I would've done just that. Unfortunately, Cameron's Avatar mixes a ridiculous message with even more ridiculous dialogue. The story is predictable down to me being able to foresee exact lines and the forest setting is a little too neon and fantastical to be taken seriously. Don't get me wrong, this movie isn't unwatchable. On the contrary, the visuals (especially in IMAX 3D) are everything they're cracked up to be. But visuals don't make a movie, they're meant to compliment it. As soon as Cameron sacrificed story and script for 3D effects, he ceased to be making a movie. The ultimate irony is that I would've sacrificed all the expensive stunning imagery and motion-capture technology in the world for a little bit of depth and originality.