A technical wonder built on recycled components.

Rating: 7/10 (5 December 2011)

A technical wonder built on recycled components. Like its Oscar competitors "District 9" and "The Hurt Locker", James Cameron's "Avatar" is an amazing technical achievement (although with a $270million production budget, one would hope so) but not an overwhelming compelling story. Cameron turns his "Aliens" plot of bad-guy aliens infecting humans on its head -- good-guy aliens must defend themselves against humans who have figured out how to infiltrate genetic copies of the aliens. The alien "Na'vi" strike more than a passing resemblance to native American tribes or at least a Hollywood version of peaceful, nature-respecting, earth-connected natives. Cameron's aliens are all lightness and good even beyond those found in Disney's "Pocahontas". Cameron's bad guys are the Marines from his "Aliens" feature and the sleazy corporate executive role first played by comedian Paul Reiser. Sigourney Weaver also returns and provides the middle ground between the sweetness-and-light aliens and the rapacious humans as well as providing the technical bridge our hero, Jake Sully (boy, there's a movie character name) takes to transform, like Wikus in "District 9, into one of the aliens. Cameron throws in some mountable, flying dragons from "Eragon", some "Jurassic Park" dinosaurs some of which fly and some of why have hammerhead shark heads and most lazily some "Beauty and the Beast" wolves and "Dances With Wolves" horses with a few extra legs thrown in. Yes, you've seen it all before elsewhere but never rendered by someone with 5 years and nearly $300 million to spend. The effects are immersive and impressively seamless; I especially liked that the arrows thrown around by the 11 foot Na'vi look like spears when they puncture the hapless humans. In short, in this year's Best Picture Oscar race, "Avatar" is the New York Yankees and we all know how that series turned out.