Blue space monkeys in pro-environmentalist shocker!

Rating: 5/10 (2 April 2014)

'Avatar' is loud and colourful. You get plenty of noise for your money and your eyes will be overloaded by stimuli. Visually, it's gorgeous. Graphics are smooth and elegant.
The 3D is a mixed bag; it seems to fade in and out. Scenes with real actors look best; scenes with a predominance of CGI vary in quality.
This is not ground-breaking, history-making stuff. It's just vanilla 3D with chocolate sauce, in need of some more beta testing.
The CGI tended to disassociate me from the Na'vi (the blue space monkeys who inhabit Pandora).
While I enjoyed the switch between Jake's two 'worlds', the CGI stuff never felt real and the graphics used to create them seem a trifle cartoonish.
Consequently, Avatar looks like it's been pasted together with screencaps from a sophisticated MMORPG.
Sadly, the strongest characters are all heterosexual and enjoy freedom to choose their own destiny, while the gay and lesbian characters are consistently disempowered.
The Na'vi are shamelessly characterised via the classic 'noble savage' stereotype, and consequently I couldn't give a toss about their fate.
A mixture of Native Americans and African Americans (two peoples enslaved and abused by white Americans, ironically) they are so dumb and hippyish that I couldn't take them seriously.
During the rare times when they're not babbling pseudo-mystical nonsense at the humans, they play 'cowboys and Indians' with each other and hang around looking moody.
They have no idea how to mobilise themselves against the humans. It takes Jake (a 'Great White Chief from the Skies') to unite the clans and get them doing what they should have been doing since before the movie even started.
Only Jake can do this because--having spent all of several weeks on Pandora--he has magically become a complete expert in every aspect of their language, culture, society, politics and history. And how? Because he's a white American. Yes it's 'Dances with Wolves' on an alien planet. Huzzah!
Avatar is replete with heavy overtones of cultural imperialism and white supremacy. The movie bizarrely subverts itself by embracing these concepts for the sake of the increasingly ridiculous plot.
There is nothing egalitarian or Na'vi-esque about Jake's rise to power amongst the Na'vi. He's just the biggest kid on the block with the biggest weapon and the smartest mouth.
He's the Great White Chief from the Skies who has to lead the noble savages to glory because they're not smart enough to do it by themselves. He's able to bond with the Toruk despite the fact that he's not even a real Na'vi and has only been on the planet a few weeks.
Jake civilises the Na'vi by introducing human constructs to their society and empowers them by providing human technology. He is a Lawrence of Arabia for blue space monkeys. After all the 'nasty humans hurting lovely natives' business, the Na'vi ultimately find salvation in the very race which attacks them. Subtext: white men rule, OK?
Jake accomplishes a 'once in a lifetime' feat which only five of the clan's greatest Na'vi have ever achieved in the entire history of Pandora. He then leads his new people to war, having become more of a noble savage than the noble savages themselves.
Which we knew he was going to do because the movie blatantly telegraphed it at least an hour beforehand. As it did with all of the plot's crude developments.
Movies based on stereotypical plot elements and stereotypical characters are horribly predictable because everyone already knows what to expect from the stereotypes.
Avatar slavishly adheres to this tired old formula which is why the story just isn't very interesting. It wastes new technology on old cheese.
Some have suggested Jake is successful because he has a different outlook to the Na'vi (e.g. more pragmatic and ruthless), and inside information about the humans' plans. But is this correct?
The Na'vi are already pragmatic and ruthless. They're not all sitting around in communes smoking weed. They attack humans on sight (not to mention each other), hence the need for the Avatars. The only 'different outlook' that Jake has is the one he steadily loses throughout the course of the movie!
Is Jake's 'inside information' a deal-breaker? Nope.
The humans already know where the Na'vi clan are living (Sigourney Weaver's character has been running a school there, remember?)
Sigourney Weaver's character also knows the humans are straining at the leash and might attack at any moment; she could have told them this herself.
From the moment the first bulldozer tries to roll over Jake, it is obvious to everyone that the humans are heading for the tree.
So what exactly did Jake tell people that they didn't already know or couldn't have figured out for themselves? Nothing that I can see. It's just weak scriptwriting.
Some characterisation is quite good. The Muslim scientist guy is a case in point. Sigourney Weaver plays the lesbian doctor convincingly. But it's not enough to rescue this stinker.
I've barely touched on the plot holes. Examples could be multiplied. There were also some dizzying leaps of logic.
I was checking my watch at the 90 minute mark, yawning after 2 hours and wishing I could grow a third buttock for extra coccyx support by the time we entered the final 20 minutes.
That's when I wasn't laughing loudly at the atrocious acting and cringe-worthy dialogue.
In fact there were quite a lot of laughs in the cinema, and when the movie finally ended everyone just sort of shrugged and walked out. Like me, they were simply glad it was over.
I rate 'Avatar' at 16.65 on the Haglee Scale, which works out at a solid 5/10 on IMDb.