A plethora of style over substance; but since it is visually creative and in the caring hands of a master, "Avatar" is also a connoving experience

Rating: 7/10 (20 September 2010)

James Cameron's "Avatar" is a first class example of style over substance. It has some really cornball (and sometimes atrocious) dialogue, a very thin story pulled out of betters like "Dances With Wolves" and "Star Wars," and puts more of its emphasis on its visual brilliance. It is very much like the two "Transformers" pictures in some sense. But what separates them on the rift of good and bad? "Avatar" was blessed to be developed and cared-for by a master: James Cameron the same genius who made the first two Terminator pictures, "Aliens," and "Titanic." In the hands of a lesser director, "Avatar" may have ended up being nothing more than just something to look at. But because Cameraon is in the director's chair, the movie (and audience) is subjected to his inventiveness and energetic style.
Cameron's science-fiction epic is basically "Dances With Wolves" set in outer space. Instead of Kevin Costner adopting the culture of the plains Native Americans, we have rising star Sam Worthington adopting the culture, lifestyle, and physical appearance of the Na'vi: a catlike race of humanoids living in the savage, jungle world of Pandora. A power-hungry billionaire (Giovanni Ribisi) wants to move out the Na'vi and exploit their resources, so he has his top scientist (Sigourney Weaver) develop a machine allowing people to control an Na'vi avatar. In other words, they sit down in a machine, their brain hooks to a Na'vi body, and they can live as a Na'vi and thus, try to talk them into terms. But of course, the stranger is first appalled by the strange people and then begins to understand and cherish them and he finds himself fighting against his own people.
"Avatar" is not significant in terms of its story, as I have made very clear. But it *is* significant in terms of its visual splendor. It's not simply because James Cameron revolutionized the era of computer graphics and digital effects. It was because he used them with ingenuity and imagination and used this to create a world. Pandora is marvelously dreamed-up. It's not enough to imagine aliens and alien technology, but types of plants, insects, and creatures. Herbivores and carnivores. And the fact that Cameron treats this like a real, majestic other world is what I really found invigorating in "Avatar." He used his effects with imagination, not banality. He's entertaining, not commercializing.
The first half of the picture consists of understanding this world. The second half consists of a vicious and heart-pumping battle between the primitive people and the advanced people. And even though the denouement is clear to anybody familiar with this type of story, we nevertheless become tense as it rages on without control. But it is controlled and that's why it works.
So why is not a good movie and not a great one? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First of all, the story is very predictable. Secondly, the dialogue is in a word, lame. Just consider my favorite part in the movie. Stephen Lang plays a battle-scarred general. In one scene, he is lecturing to new recruits about Pandora. He screams at them with menace: "Everything out in that jungle wants to kill you and eat your eyes like jujubes!" Okay. Now the first half of that sentence was menacing and effective; the second half was its harebrained death. In addition, the 161-minute running time is much too long and had it gone on any longer, I might have found "Avatar" exhausting. There are also too many characters for me to care about.
I suppose my review for "Avatar" sounds a little mixed, but this is a movie that I encourage people to see, just for the sheer visual experience of it. True, if you took out the visual splendor, there would not be much left, with it, this is quite an experience. Yes, the story did not ring my bell, but the energy and imagination in creating this fantastic world really got me. And it was truly great to see Sigourney Weaver in another invention science-fiction gem.