Bloated and uninvolving effort that piles on dopey allegorical content and the over reliance on the creation of a world, whilst running on wafer thin plotting.

Rating: 5/10 (7 March 2010)

The moment in Avatar you know the whole thing is a load of nonsense, and is more preoccupied with all things visual, is the moment the lead has a conversation with a superior clambering into a thirty foot tall robot amidst a hangar full of them. What banal dialogue follows could have unfolded in an office, or anywhere else; but no, it's in a large hangar with lots of other 'stuff' going on as well. The pinch is right there; the statement that Cameron is more interested in delivering things as big and as brash as possible, no matter how routine the actual detail going on therein is. Avatar is a plodding; numbing; stumbling; fumbling chore of an experience, a heavy; wavy film which stomps from one thing to another in a self-reflective, clumsily plotted manner; all the while pandering to a crowd whom, it seems, are thick enough to fall in love with a picture if it quenches the attention span but additionally carries some kind of coherent narrative complete with light substance. In short, it's a whole lot of fuss over absolutely nothing. Throughout the film, certain winged creatures that can be flown around on have something plugged into them enabling their taming, and under the rider's control. A similar process has happened to Avatar's fans: they've been caught, re-tuned to writer/director Cameron's vision and now they're all dancing to his music.
Twelve years had past between 1997's Titanic and Avatar, if another twelve goes by before Cameron again graces the silver screen then it may well be too short-a time. But, the film covers the exploits of paraplegic American grunt Jake Sully (Worthington), an individual who touches down on a jungle-clad moon known as Pandora in true Platoon fashion, what with the coming down of an aircraft; the lowering of a ramp and the bleary eyed entrance into a world of violence and vegetation. Cameron shoots the new world through their eyes for our benefit, exemplified by way of the distinct, eye-level point of view shot that we get of the marines jogging down off the aircraft for the first time; a world just as strange and scary to him as it is to us with the odd buildings; vehicles and general mise-en-scene that surrounds the base camp, so we're plunged into this guy's shoes very early on.
Avatar begins with Jake waking up out a long period of space rest; a fitting, metaphorical re-birthing into a new world (there's a lot of clumsy talk of "birth" and being "reborn"). Then all the build up of the locale begins. Local head of operations Miles Quaritch (Lang) spends most of the film strutting around debriefing rooms, barking dialogue. Also, he lifts weights; flexes his muscles; sits on chairs the wrong way around in an attempt to intimidate and stomps about in large, mechanical fighting units that act as an extension of his own power and masculinity. His warnings of the location of Pandora and of the things that lurk within see him make us aware of an off screen threat, an attempt to build pressure and an aura of both mystery and danger – "There are things that can kill you and that are tough to kill" he informs, as the horrid scars of his own day one here act as a further reminder of the dangers. The principle threat is from the "Na'vi"; a tall, blue alien species.
Then there is the location, the lush and dense location of Pandora; a mixture of the jungles of East Asia with what it's like being in some of the more larger greenhouses at the site of London's Kew Gardens. People have come away awe struck, their defences of the film have revolved around the effects and the visual factor but slap the film on a television screen, in two dimensions, and maybe have it play out in black and white and you and your argument would be lost, as there's barely anything to support the visuals. Indeed, there's a sequence when one character is piloting a craft with another and exclaims: "Oh my God!" in sheer awe at what's around him, in what is a truly dopey 'knowing' moment; this time on what the audience reaction OUGHT to be to the same sight. Cameron's retort is: "You should see the look on your faces." but the look on mine was of a frown.
Jake gets lost on Pandora, so much so that after we've had a little interaction with some native beasties Skull Island style, Zoe Saldana's native moon dwelling Na'vi girl Neytiri bumps into him with intent to put a poisonous arrow through him. Hark, a floating jellyfish-come-dandelion lands on the nib and saves him – it' s a sign; he's a 'chosen one' and Cameron's soft storytelling makes itself painfully known. When Jake meets her, everything on Pandora lights up; the plants glow and the intimidating atmosphere vanishes; foreshadowing the connection they have and the arc of their relationship.
The would-be all-conquering American tyrant figure of Quaritch, a man gunning for his 'unobtanium' supply located within, is nothing more than a dopey parable while towards the end, I was distracted: it's a wonder the Na'vi aren't already extinct, as they've barely anything to eat; spend most of their time leaping from branch to branch a mile up purely to journey somewhere else and they go on cliff side suicide missions in trying to tame flying beasts. I can imagine the tongue-in-cheek on-set conversations Cameron had with Worthington over the recent Terminator sequel debacle being more interesting than most of Avatar, a film that has burrowed its way into its audience's subconscious in that the lead 'leaves' his current existence to become someone/thing else, much like you 'leave' your real existence and become someone/thing else when booting up a video game. Avatar exists to sell action figures and Pandora themed top trumps playing cards. I agree that Avatar was spectacular: a spectacular disappointment.