A good movie that only exists to further the advancement of CGI

Rating: 6/10 (26 October 2010)

Avatar is that rare film where everything you ever hear about it is absolutely true. All the criticism is valid and all the praise is justified. It really is the sibling of James Cameron's Titanic, in that it is a very ordinary story presented in an extraordinary fashion. Your opinion of it will be determined by whether you care about what a movie has to say or how it says it.
Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a crippled Marine in a future where a corporation has established a mining colony on the alien world of Pandora. Jake's twin brother was part of the Avatar program, where human beings have their minds projected into genetically engineered bodies that resemble the natives of Pandora, 10 foot tall blue humanoids called the Na'vi. The idea is that by presenting themselves in similar forms, they can more successfully interact with the Na'vi. When Jake's brother dies, the wheelchair-bound Marine is offered the chance to take his place because only someone with his brother's DNA can "drive" his alien form.
When Jake arrives on Pandora and jumps into his Na'vi body, he finds himself caught between the scientist Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), who wants Jake to help her learn about the aliens and their world, and Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who wants Jake to get him militarily useful intelligence on the Na'vi. The head of the mining colony, Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) doesn't care a whit about Jake, he just wants the Na'vi to leave their homes so he can dig up a mineral called Unobtainium which is worth 20 million dollars a kilo.
You may have heard Avatar described as "Dances with Wolves in space". Well, that's a pretty fair characterization as the rest of the movie is all about Jake becoming part of the Na'vi, learning their ways, falling in love with a female named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and eventually siding with the aliens in spectacular battle against the humans that are trying to exploit Pandora for their own needs.
The computer generated images of Avatar are the most extensive and best looking stuff that's ever been on the silver screen. The scenery is incredibly detailed and realistic. The Pandoran wildlife and the Na'vi themselves are phenomenally lifelike. The advanced technology of the humans, like their Battletech-style armored suits, are more clearly defined and believably designed than anything you've seen before. And unlike some films where the CGI action sequences turn into little more than blurs of color and motion, Cameron is able to slow things down and keep things clear so you can follow what's happening in even the most dynamic moments. Watching this entire film is like the first time you saw the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park or the morphing T-1000 from Terminator 2.
Now, the verisimilitude of computerized special effects doesn't really blow me away. I certainly enjoyed looking at Avatar, but I generally need more than that and I just barely got it from this movie. This is an extremely formulaic and pedestrian story. There's nothing boring or stupid about it and if you took away all the CGI effects, this script wouldn't have made a bad film. It just wouldn't have ever been made into a film because there's nothing interesting or compelling about the tale Cameron has written. In fact, there are a couple of points where it seems like Cameron deliberately avoided more complex and potentially engaging story possibilities. I'm not sure if he wanted to keep the story as dumbed down as possible or if he simply focused too much on the special effects, but this is probably the least dramatically ambitious tale Cameron has ever told.
Avatar is a fun, exciting film to watch. I can recommend it with no reservationsbut unless you're obsessed with the latest advances in CGI technology, I can't really call it a "must see".