Good, but far from the next step in entertainment since it borrows so much from what has gone before

Rating: 6/10 (26 December 2009)

Lord I miss the Last Air bender....
James Cameron's half a BILLION dollar film (figure in the promotion its around that figure) is a huge animated film masquerading as a live action feature film. Its, like most of Cameron's super productions, a self serving over hyped monstrosity that is neither as good as he thinks it is or as bad as we hoped it would be.
Billed as the next step in entertainment I'm left wondering what makes the film different then anything thats gone before other than the motion capture characters. The Next step? only if you go to the movie on rare occasions and never read fantasy or Science Fiction. Ursula Le Guin, Piers Anthony, EE Doc Smith and everyone else working in genre has been there before. Is it really worth the effort to count down the long list of films this borrows from Quigley Down Under to A Man Called Horse to the Matrix to Aliens to Dances with Wolves to anything I've read people have compared it to. Its a plot as well worn as they come. Even the music is lifted from tribal chants to Star Trek The Motion Picture to anything with soaring choral music. Its's also clear Wayne Barlowe designed the look of the creatures since they seem similar to numerous creatures he's painted over the years.(Had they wanted to be radical they would have had Barlowe go off the board) Okay I could go on ripping the film to shreds but lets try and take it on its own terms.
Lets say it, the film is neither original nor ground breaking. Its an over hyped film that is much too in love itself. It is painfully overlong at seventeen...er almost three hours.
The plot has a cripple ex-marine taking his twin brothers place as an avatar pilot on a distant world. He is assigned to infiltrate the locals and find out as much as he can. he does so and in the process falls in love with the people and one girl in particular. He then has to fight with his new people to save them and their way of life.
On the most basic of levels the plot is fine but on a detailed level there are lots of plot holes and plot questions. Thankfully Cameron in his wonderful junior high school way has set up outs for many things that don't make sense like how will the good guys win when they have bows and arrows and the humans have explosives and bullets.( Cameron is not a stupid man as anyone who has heard him talk or seen his documentaries can attest, however his story construction has always been stunted and simplistic at best) How the simplicity will survive in two planned sequels is beyond me.
There are lots of long "look isn't this great" sequences which are meant to show off. On the plus side they look good in 2D on the down side the film slows way down as a result.
The performances are fine but out side of the main two characters everyone is cardboard. Its fine because they aren't given much to really do but at the same time they all blur together.
The action scenes are good but not great with many of the oh cool sequences in the TV commercials. Also some sequences seem stretched out for no good reason with lots of slow motion to make everything look "Cool".
In all honesty had this film lost an hour it would have been a much better film, but at two hours forty something minutes this film is a soul killer. My Dad and I just looked at each other at about the half way point an wondered how much longer this had to go and we both groaned when we realized it was almost it was eighty something minutes.
Its not a bad film. Its worth seeing, but I don't know that I needed to see it on a big screen, and while I didn't see it in 3D I don't think I really would have liked it more if I had. Personally I think you can wait for DVD or cable.
(A friend of a a friend who didn't like the film said that he now understands how people who don't get Star Wars feel. Frankly there is a difference. Love of Star Wars comes from a real place, a place that wasn't mass media created. All of the hype to Avatar is PR created hype put together to sell tickets. Star Wars is a film that is about characters moving in a simplistic story where things just are, the worlds of Luke Skywalker were not pushed in our faces until the marketing machines took over with Return of the Jedi and by that time the characters and the story had taken hold because they were good. Avatar is a simple story pumped up to sell tickets and sell toys.Its had the marketing machine from the first moment.. Star Wars has been out for almost 33 years, spawned 6 films, numerous novels, comics and TV shows. Avatar has been out a week and has spawned little more than some mixed box office and a budget debt bigger than many countries GNP. I'll wait 33 Years before I assess how successful Avatar is.) 6 out of 10