The weaknesses as a film are there, but yes, it is still an experience like no other

Rating: 9/10 (6 February 2010)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
When his scientist brother dies, crippled marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) becomes his stand in for his extensive knowledge of his brother's plans. This puts him in the firing line of Dr.Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and her team, for his lack of scientific knowledge, as they try and mould a way for humans to enter the world of the Na'vi, the indigenous people of a planet that Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and businessman Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) want to conquer for personal gain. As Sully forms a close alliance with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) a female na'vi warrior and begins to be accepted by the rest of the clan, it becomes a battle between ethics and power, humanity and evil and a climactic battle to end it all.
James Cameron has to keep going and making the most expensive film ever made, what with Terminator 2, True Lies and, most recently (like, 1997 recently) Titanic...and now his latest, Avatar, stretching at just under three hours again, has gone and gained the accolade again as well as becoming the fastest grossing film of all time. Some people always have to do bigger and better, but the two don't go hand in hand that often. Luckily, as a filmic experience in itself, Avatar will stay memorable for a while.
Since the effects are the main thing that's making it, it has to be seen in 3D, which you will note has improved greatly over the years, to where it can still be seen perfectly without the 'special glasses.' But wearing them really does improve the experience, to where you really do feel yourself being sucked from your seat into the world of the film itself. But note, the effects are what make the film such an amazing, unforgettable experience. Surely enough, the massive hype has seen the film sprung up to number 46 on the IMDb top 250, which is low if you remember where The Dark Knight went, but I think people need to step back and see things more clearly. All I noticed aside from the effects were a lot of trite dialogue, thin characterization and long, meaningless stretches. Some have tried to make the film out to be some sort of study of the cruel, destructive nature of humans but I noticed nothing so dramatic driving the film. The performances hardly make things any better, Worthington interchangeable from his role in Terminator: Salvation and Lang and Ribisi rather cardboard villains. The female cast actually make it better, Saldana highly emotive as the na'vi warrior and Weaver impassioned as the scientist with a heart.
Yes, if you look beneath the surface there are a lot of weaknesses in the fundamentals of the film. But as a breath taking, special effects spectacle, Cameron has gone and done it again, giving us a blast of million dollar magic that are part of making a film such a wonderous experience. For this reason alone, it really cannot be missed on the big screen, in the best 3D screen you can find. ****