Avatar B

In theatres, PG-13, 160 minutes
Where to start? Avatar would be one heck of a video game, which is what it most reminded me of. A very, very fun video game. It’s got the requisite big name actor or two coupled with top shelf voice actors, all shoe-horned into one-dimensional characters meeting occasionally to exchange clichés and dramatic speeches and set-up the next action sequence. But, and here’s the kicker, very, very good video games are a ton of fun. And so is Avatar. It’s a blast, actually, pretty much every minute except those that involve bloviating some Ferngully-brand spirituality (and, yes, you crazy panentheists, I realize Cameron’s suggesting some somewhat interesting things here).

I caught Avatar on an IMAX, 3-D screen, which I gladly endorse to anyone planning to see it. I think this was an extra $3, worth it if only for the pre-movie NASA Hubble telescope documentary trailer. The 3-D in Avatar was pretty seamless and not gimmicky, especially the CGI stuff (which is to say, almost the whole film). Speaking of that, this marks the first time I’ve seen computer-animated humans that I couldn’t tell from the real things. Instead of being creepy zombies, these were dead on.

As for the plot, 150 years in the future the moon Pandora (yes, the names are as subtle as the dialogue) has a super-valuable mineral that an earth mining company is attempting to mine. Problem is, they’ve also got 9-foot tall, blue, naked humanoids (the Navi) that live in a massive tree right over the biggest deposit. A team of scientists led by Sigourney Weaver (has anyone ever aged less?) have created “Avatars”-- biological robots that look just like the natives-- controllable via humans by patching into their brain activity. Paraplegic Marine Jake Scully (a good Sam Worthington) is one such avatar who is ostensibly there to help the scientists gather information but is really working for the para-military end of the mining business. His avatar is taken in by the Navi and he soon falls for the local princess (an excellent Zoe Saldana, the recent Star Trek) compromising his allegiance just as the miners determine to take significant military action. Of course, the real plot is whether the earthlings will completely destroy Pandora’s ecosystem as they have their own. A good chunk of pagan-style Mother Earth (or Mother Pandora, as it were) religious talk is thrown in, with a quasi-interesting notion of their local goddess being the sum total of the living things on their moon.

The entire world of Pandora is a visual feast, from the gorgeous undergrowth to the vast array of animals. Director James Cameron reportedly designed every piece of this flora and fauna. It does appear that we’ve reached a place with computerized graphics that if someone can dream it, they can make it, and make it look real. Speaking of gorgeous, the Navi are good-looking people, but so runway-model thin, they can’t be doing anything positive for the self-image of earthlings. And they are naked pretty much the whole time. Granted they aren’t humans, but for PG-13 both brother-of-Priest and myself felt like it was a bit ridiculous.

Still, there are some interesting notions here. In pretty much every other movie involving humans and aliens life meeting, the aliens come to earth and they attack us. This is because we make our aliens in our own image. But in this movie, we go to their land, and we attack them. It’s nice to think that we wouldn’t attack sentient beings just because they had something we wanted, but there is nothing in the history of humanity to make us think we wouldn’t. The idea of the Avatars, although not new to this film, is interesting as well and does seem to be inevitable.
To review: dialogue, sub-par; religion, schmaltzy; eco-message, heavy-handed; action, unbelievable; CGI, mind-blowing; acting, as good as the dialogue allowed; fun-quotient, off-the-charts; sociology, dead-on. B