Spectacularly Packaged Mindless Entertainment

Rating: 5/10 (11 January 2010)

This film could be described as the "Star Wars" of its generation. This is a good news/bad news situation. Like the original 1977 "Star Wars" movie, it is a high-spirited, breathtaking feast of cutting-edge special effects. In the present case, the level of detail of the computer animation is astonishing, both in the backgrounds and in the animated humanoid aliens; the expressive flaws that dogged earlier efforts such as "Beowulf", especially in the eyes, have been solved. In this respect, the film has set a new standard. (It is also being widely shown in a stereoscopic (3D) form; it is claimed that this 103-year-old technology has finally gone mainstream in cinema. That remains to be seen; we've heard that before.) But just as the original "Star Wars" hangs its special effects extravaganza on a lame, hackneyed comic-strip of a plot, so similar problems dog "Avatar"; an intellectual, thought-provoking movie this is not. The premise is that a paraplegic Marine from a dead, despoiled home world accepts a posting as a mercenary on the idyllic forest world of Pandora, in a mission to convince the blue humanoid natives to abandon their territory so that the rapacious Company can mine it for precious deposits of "unobtainium" (LOL), whose value is never even explained to the viewer. The protagonist is to act as ambassador to these natives by mind-linking to an alien body called an avatar and piloting it through the Pandoran forest to interact with the natives.
In defter hands something interesting might have been made of this, but what we get is a stale mishmash of themes from "Ferngully", "Dinotopia", "George of the Jungle" and "Dances with Wolves",without even the winsome charm of some of those films. The plot is painfully predictable: the hero goes rogue and rebels against his corporate overlords to take the natives' side;there is the obligatory climactic battle between the good guys and the bad guys; the characters (other than Sigourney Weaver's quirky Dr. Augustine) are cardboard cutouts; there are numerous illogicalities in the film's premises; and there is nary a surprise or plot twist anywhere to be found.
So just turn your brain, off kick back, enjoy the show, and don't bother to think too much about it afterwards.