Spectacular Visuals BUT Story Needed More Development: Rather Weak Ending

Rating: 7/10 (20 February 2010)

I will certainly not argue that this is a highly entertaining film. But again with a lot of films of this type recently, the script gradually takes a back seat to the visuals. The premise of the story is a good one, and I admire Cameron for giving us a relatively original plot from which to tell his story via CGI. However, there were still a few problems with the script. Like many of movies of this type, the script seemed a couple of re-writes away from being an absolutely phenomenal story. There were a few too many aspects that started ringing of Aliens and Titanic, both of which Cameron wrote and directed. And there were glaring holes in some of the story but instead the action sequences were overlong almost to cover-up the lack of development, particularly in regards to the mineral substance sought-after by the corporate baddies.
The basic plot is pretty complex. American white capitalists are exploiting Pandora, a world that is a cross between the jungles of modern-day Africa, the world of the dinosaurs 100 million years ago, and the unpredictability of Wall Street. Some of the creatures that habituate the planet are crosses between dinosaurs, reptiles, mammals, and Enron Corporation. At one point a character says you could get a little rest and relaxation in Hell after being on Pandora. Nestled inside this wilderness are a race of green humanoids resembling something that could pass for an ancient African or Native American tribe with a little bit of Vulcan added for good measure, called the Na'vi. They reside inside a giant tree that would give the Empire State Building a run for its money.
Trouble is the Tree (aka Hometree) contains a mineral that's supposed to be worth $20 million per 2" x 2" x 2" cube, which would mean that one the size of a bowling ball would be enough to buy the entire state of Rhode Island or the estate of Bill Gates. But this is one of the holes in the script: What the hell is this stuff and why is it potentially worth more than all the that pops up on "Antiques Roadshow" and "Pawn Stars" combined? This is never explained. I think we are given only one line about the mineral and left to speculate ourselves, and the subject never comes up again. Of course this is a gaping hole as the whole premise is based on the immense desirability of this stuff! The man in charge of the corporate interests of the operation, Parker Selfridge, seemed a clone of Carter Burke from Aliens. (I notice their first names seem like a last names!) Like Burke he is only interested in the capital gain of mining the mineral. The native people, of course, are going to get screwed.
A crippled soldier, Jake Sully, who lost the use of his legs in the Marines, is hired to place his consciousness inside an "avatar", a life-like replica of one of the Na'vi and infiltrate their society and culture to see if an agreement can be reached between the money-hungry corporation and the Na'vi. The agreement is the native tribe is being evicted from their Tree, without even a written 30-day notice. The better part of the film is Sully learning about the Na'vi. That aspect worked relatively well, although there were characteristics of the Na'vi that seemed so much like either idealized Native American or Ancient African culture that it was getting a bit deja-vu all over again. My favorite moment is the relationship between the Na'vi and the winged beasts, the Toruk, and how the Na'vi tame them. Later, the scientists discover that much of the planet is interconnected like a giant organism but again the idea is neither developed nor resolved.
The baddies are led by a colonel who is so replete with over-the-top military cliché I half-expected to see him worshipping at a shrine to General Patton. He would probably feel right at home in the company of Atilla the Hun. (Again he was very similar to Cameron's character from Titanic, Spicer Lovejoy, who is just pure evil even when the ship is sinking! Without giving it away, there is a similar scene in Avatar.) Which points to what I think is the biggest problem I had with the final confrontation of the horrible white corporation with the wonderful Na'vi. The Na'vi seemed to have very little dark aspects to them and the baddies had almost no redeeming qualities barring the scientists and Sully. For those who like their bad guys and good guys very well-defined, this is your kind of movie.
Unfortunately, I predicted the last 20 minutes of the film during the first 20 minutes. The ending needed something unexpected that also tied up the loose ends concerning the valuable mineral and the idea of interconnected consciousness of life on Pandora. I speculated that the corporation might earn greater profit from fostering this idea of interconnected consciousness, but nope. They don't listen to reason and simply go for the jugular. Probably the first one-half to three-quarters of this film were exceptional. The last quarter became a slash-and-bang shoot-em-up action video game. Sort of a Spaghetti Western in space. The ending needed to transcend itself to meet the very interesting rhetoric of the middle of the story. But of course that probably would have meant cutting down the action sequences, God forbid.