Avatar- written in crayon.

Rating: 4/10 (27 January 2011)

I'll start by saying that Avatar is a great action movie. James Cameron served notice to George Lucas and ILM that they aren't the major players in the Sci-Fi film making anymore. The action in this movie puts the Star Wars franchise to shame with the exception of The Empire Strikes Back. The final 40 minutes are a 3D CGI tour-De-force of breath-taking battles, explosions and war machines that will leave your jaw swinging in the breeze!
"So much for the prince, now about the monster."- Suetonius, The Twelve Ceasars, in reference to Caligula.
Ever wonder what would happen if you put the cartoon: "Smurfs", script elements of the Space Marines from "Aliens", the Broadway play, "Cats", Richard Dreyfus's character from "Whose Life Is It Anyway", and the hollow tree from the Keebler cookie commercials, and tossed the lot into a blender? Well, you would get "Avatar"! This is probably the most half-assed, lazy script in Sci-Fi I have seen; clichéd and over wrought with cardboard characters, a five year old on cough syrup could have written better. Let's delve into why, shall we?
Poor Jake Sully! He's a paraplegic who has lived in the shadow of his more talented brother; a scientist in a military operation that gets killed in a robbery. The military perceives Jake as a F___up, irresponsible, childish, not military material, unlike his more popular, deceased brother. So for whatever reason(I know; he's gonna use the money to buy legs) the military decides to place him in the Avatar project his brother worked on. WHY? No one believes he can do anything productive in it, even head scientist Augustine thinks he's unsuitable initially. Jake Sully is depressed and trying to find a place in a world that doesn't need a cripple. (Whose Life Is It Anyway?!) At this point forward, things get stupid and kooky.
See, the Earth needs a mineral called "Unobtanaium" that will save humanity from some misfortune; the point is laid out out by a greedy lil' executive lifted directly from the "Aliens" script. And the only place to get it is from Pandora, and its sentient race, the Na'vi(Smurfs, 10 ft tall ones with prehensile tails)don't know where its located. Cameron probably gave the script to one of his children at this time because the idiocy just piles up like a stack of pancakes. You see, if your planet needs some valuable mineral to save humanity, the last thing you do is put Gomer Pyle on your team, and while objections abound toward allowing Sully on board, no one in a MILITARY OPERATION stops him. My temples were throbbing at this point. They'll explode later!
Everything else, you see coming from a country mile! Sully digs getting to walk with his new avatar body and proceeds to screw the project up. He isn't supposed to get too cozy with the Na'vi, yet does anyway. Falls in love, etc. But, of course! He doesn't fit in with the humans in the program; he is rolling in the fantasy of being something that he isn't. We know it won't take long for him to fall in love with his new body- he's a paraplegic. It's an obvious plot point. That's what I mean by Cameron's script being a heap of laziness. He doesn't even try to be creative, just derivative. He robs his movies and other works and hammers them together even though they don't mesh, and he doesn't care if you notice.
The vistas are ripped off from old YES album covers(artist Roger Dean), Sully has a fall from grace after falling for Neytiri, daughter of the clan chief. Natch- its always a princess! The head of the project is an crusty, hard core Marine who only wants to wipe the Na'vi out because they are in the way of his mission. You know he's going to try to decimate them after he talks for 2 minutes. The Na'vi have been compared to the Smurfs, but they are more like an off-Broadway production of Cats; look closely. There's even a mythical beast that only Sully can tame, which he uses on the Marines. Of course! Then, there's Hometree(Keebler elves and their hollow magical tree). So, all the unobtanium is conveniently located under the most sacred thing in the Na'vi's lives- how effing obvious! On the whole of Pandora, there is just one Hometree, but the Na'vi are spread like peanut butter across the planet- WHY? And why is a mineral only under a tree, and one tree at that? I do remember my HS geology, shouldn't old plant material be like oil? The Na'vi have no idea that its the mineral the humans are after, why not just mine it out from under them? Guess because we would be deprived of some excellent action at the near end of the movie. It's like "Titanic", really. You revel in the carnage as the Na'vi's tree is toppled. And of course, our hero gets to keep his new body and live happily ever after.
This is a bubble gum movie, nothing more. It has no real depth, no honesty, no meaning; save that war is the answer to a mineral shortage. But the make believe world is awesome; maybe thats enough to redeem it. But to be honest, I can't sit through another viewing of the thing. It makes your mind go numb. Do yourself a favor, watch "The Terminator", or "Aliens" again. This movie will go stale on you fast!