predictably spectacular...spectacularly predictable

Rating: 8/10 (4 March 2010)

Jake Sully is dispatched to the planet Pandora, he is a disabled marine who luckily is his brother's twin, so he can take part in Avatar program. A program were human's take on grown bodies, part human, part N'aavi (The natives of Pandora) in an effort to interact with and convince the natives it's okay to plunder the planet. As a marine Jake is wooed, coerced, by Major bad-guy to sell out the N'aavi so the humans can do what they want but things don't go quite to plan as the Avatar world becomes more real than the real one.
Apparently James Cameron spent years and years on the technology to bring Avatar to life, but a little less time on the script (Unobtanium? Come on, why not call it hard-to-get-at-ite or virtually-none-of-ix) and after the first fifteen minutes you kind of get sign posted to how the movie will go, after all Hollywood doesn't spend $300 million dollars on a movie that's not predictable, right? So, yes, it's predictable, yes the scripts got holes in it ...BUT, the million dollar question is, is it any good. Well, in spite of these things, yes it is.
It is corny as hell and some of the effects, most notably when Jake is first running about in his Avatar body, aren't brilliant for a film that's had this much spent on it. Also some of the big gun-ships don't look like they would be physically able to fly and these are some of the minor niggles that almost pulled me out of the movie.
That said it is fantastic fun, James Cameron has attempted to carve out of the sci-fi niche, in terms of scale, a film on a level with Frank Herbert's Duen, and although he is no Frank Herbert in terms of writing, as a film-maker he is a master of his craft and you do get taken into this world. Sat there you feel for the N'aavi, and you do feel some remorse for the past sins of generations who wiped out the Native Americans and have seen the Aborigini's also decline. If the film was not successful we would not feel this, it is testament to him that we do.
Where will it all end. Well, more studios will pump money into predictable 3D blockbusters and will see them fail because they don't get that you need more than a few life lessons, big CGI and dots on people's motion capture faces to make a good film, but that takes nothing away from this. It is great fun. It should be seen at the pictures and like the title says, it is predicable, but spectacular!