James Cameron spared no time or expense to place a giant, two-hour-and-forty-minute, $200-to-$500-Million “L” on humanity’s forehead with his live action/CGI sci-fi epic Avatar, the story of man’s attempt to connect with a tribal alien race in order to exploit its land for profit. Thanks, Jim. At least this bitter pill comes in the form of a movie that is visually rich and, when one turns a blind eye to Cameron’s occasionally sloppy storytelling, is even compelling at times. Best of all, Celine Dion‘s heart does not, at any point, go on.
Avatar is Cameron’s first turn directing a feature film since 1997′s Titanic, which is close to how long it took to develop this movie. Cameron says he had to wait for technology to catch up to the script he wrote in order to bring it to life properly with digital animation. Waiting was a sound decision; the visuals lead the way in this movie from the very beginning, taking the viewer to the far-off planet of Pandora, where the indigenous people are eight feet tall and blue and can literally plug into the plants and animals to communicate with them.
Unobtainium: You can't touch this.
Yes, the planet’s name is Pandora, the same name as the girl with the little box you don’t want to open. Also, the name of the precious metal the humans are on Pandora to try and mine out from under the natives: Unobtainium. Really, Jim? Was MC Hammer unwilling to give up the rights to the word canttouchthisium? Here’s the thing with Cameron’s opus: He’s not sweating little details such as names or, you know, actual science, and if you do an otherwise good movie will slip through your fingers. He’s a director telling a story, not a script writer or even a CGI guru. Avatar is about big visual impact and overarching plot themes, not floating mountains that aren’t snow-capped but still manage to have waterfalls or creatures with regenerating carbon fiber (a man-made substance) for skeletons.
Such is the bizarre world of the Na’vi, the race of eight-foot-tall blue people who inhabit the inhospitable-to-humans Pandora. How, then, to connect with the Na’vi and convince them to stop sitting on their giant kajillion-dollar unobaitium stash? Scientists figure out how to engineer Na’vi bodies and have them telepathically controlled by humans in a control outpost. One of their Na’vi drivers is Jake Sulley (Sam Worthington), a Marine veteran pilot called in because of his genetic similarities to his deceased superpilot brother… except for his legs, which haven’t worked since the accident that sent him out of military life not long before. From the moment he arrives, Sully is the servant of two masters: the scientists, led by Na’vi expert Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), who want him to act as a social experiment while in his Na’vi body, and the military men who want him to do recon on the land so they can plot to extract the Unobtainium. What’s more, both sides mock and degrade him for rolling around in a wheelchair, even as he becomes the prodigy neither side has ever had on Pandora before. Can’t a blue-person pilot get any love around here?
The answer is yes, courtesy of the Na’vi, who take Sulley in and put him in the care of the tribe chief’s daughter, Neytiri (voiced by Zoe Saldana), who spends all of her time teaching Sulley to hunt and how to bond with the plants and animals of Pandora, all of which the Na’vi can plug literally plug into and connect with psychically. What could possibly happen? Yup, they fall in love and get it on in the glowing forest. Since Neytiri is betrothed to the tribe’s best fighter, this might be what one would call “a situation.” Now the man called upon to appease the Na’vi and get them to relocate must do so while convincing them he didn’t do it all for the nookie, all while the humans begin their march on the land to take the Unobtainium by force.
The movie starts treading on Michael Bay territory from here with lots of explosions and grandiose fighting sequences, but the parallels are already set. The Na’vi, hyper-in-tune with the nature around them and sitting on valuable land they’re being pressured off of, are basically Cameron’s sci-fi take on the American Indian. An overacting Giovanni Ribisi plays Parker Selfridge, the government man pushing the button to pillage Pandora and who becomes the epitome of Man the Greedy Planet-Killer. When Sulley tells the Na’vi “they already killed their mother, and they’ll do the same to yours,” he’s talking about Earth. If you pull your 3-D glasses down slightly, you can feel the metaphorical “L” being stamped on your forehead. Cameron puts the viewer firmly on the side of the Na’vi toward the end, even if the viewer isn’t eight feet tall, blue or equipped to plug into his or her planet USB-style. By now, the Na’vi don’t even matter, really; it’s all about watching the humans negotiating via air-to-surface missile at this point. Cameron’s job is done; he’s told a flawed story well, using contrived, sometimes stereotypical characters to get across a penetrating message dressed in flashy, breathtaking CGI. Spend the extra money to see this film in 3-D, as the game-changing graphical presentation is positively absorbing in three dimensions. Being absorbed in Na’vi life in Pandora is all part of Cameron’s storytelling strategy anyway, and it might help that “L” on your forehead hurt a little less.
