REVIEW: Avatar

Reportedly pioneering new technology to not only create the visual effects and creatures, but also the way in which we experience the film as new ground has been broken with the use of a new type of 3D.

Cameron’s lead this time around is Jake Sully, a paraplegic marine who lost the use of his legs in a war, being transported to Pandora: a fictional earth-like planet inhabited by ten foot tall natives known as the Na’vi.

The Na’vi are gigantic blue humanoid creatures who live in tribes similar to those of the Native Americans before the twentieth century. Sully’s mission is to infiltrate their culture, form diplomatic negotiations and spy for the mining corporation wishing to exploit Pandora’s resources.

To do this Sully uses an ‘Avatar’: a Na’vi bred for the purpose of containing a human mind through the use of a machine that allows him to control the body while his human body sleeps. After encountering a female Na’vi who takes pity on him, Sully’s whole perception of the situation on Pandora is called into question.

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Costing over two hundred million dollars to produce (in comparison to 2009’s earlier science fiction epic District 9, which cost only thirty million), the results are very much on screen as the groundbreaking visuals look fantastic.

Whereas enduring the action scenes in summer guff such as Tranformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) was like watching the death throes of a dying blender, the action in Avatar is slick and uncompromised; and despite comparisons to the Star Wars prequels (1999), every alien life form looks like it belongs in the habitat in which it is shown, not just thrown in for the sake of filling the screen or to please an existing fan-base.

The story may be walking fairly well trodden ground, see Dances With Wolves (1990) or Last Samurai (2003), and the script contains cliché after cliché in terms of dialog; but despite this the film is almost unrelentingly exciting and entertaining.

The battles are intense and because of the startlingly effective cast (Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, plus Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldaña and Stephen Lang to name but a few), the film progresses without the frankly rather silly narrative being called into question.

The movie never drags its feet despite its rather long one hundred and sixty one minutes and the story, characters and visuals and all very impressive.

As a film, Avatar falls short of the almost perfect heights of District 9: its politics too one-sided and its characters without moral ambiguity, but as a fun, exciting, affecting and immersive experience, Avatar worth every penny. Well, nearly.