Visuals ten, script, etc. eight

Rating: 9/10 (28 May 2010)

The eye candy in "Avatar" is admittedly gourmet in quality. I especially enjoyed those luminous Portuguese Men of War (Were Cameron's special effects people inspired by Disney's Fantasia?). However, Cameron himself was understandably afraid to carry the satire too far, lest there be less time and space for the action. The target is obviously the U.S.'s alleged tendency to muscle its way into oil producing countries, whatever the cost to the natives of those countries. But Cameron--or his writers--knew that the juvenile crowd (including those over thirty) could only take so much satire, so the action takes over big time, with an expendable heroic person knocked off, possibly to keep a few hankies damp. The film is formula right down the line: the confused and cynical hero who "learns" thanks to a courageous and wise female, the seemingly indestructible villain who mouths all sorts of funny-mean phrases you know he will eventually eat, the terminator-type gigantic, mobile armor, and of course the monsters inspired by the Jurassic Park dinosaurs.
Having said all that, I must add that I stuck it out to see what would happen, and I was only too happy to put my mind and critical sense into neutral for two and a half hours. The story is unoriginal, a melange of clichés from other sci-fi fantasies; however, the action had more than the usual hypnotic, suspenseful thrills.