2154, and ex-Marine Jake Sully, now a paraplegic, steps into his late brother’s role in a military expedition to the planet Pandora, where a priceless element, Unobtanium, is being sourced, the mission being to placate the natives, ten-foot tall blue-skinned aliens called the Na’vi, the mother lode of Unobtanium being under a giant tree which is their home. Jake’s brother’s role was to control an ‘avatar’, a Na’vi ‘grown’ from DNA, Jake being able to link with it and control it, its’ aim being to win the trust and compliance of the other Na’vi, who are known to be warlike and violent when attacked. Although the project, headed by scientist Dr. Grace Augustine wants to settle the matter peacefully, Jake has made a deal with the warhawk Colonel Quaritch, acting as a spy in the mission camp in return for the Colonel authorising the replacement of his legs in a military hospital, the Colonel wanting the excuse to attack the Na’vi and wipe them out, thus eliminating all resistance and hostility. Arriving on the planet in Na’vi form, Jake is attacked by hideous creatures, and his life is only saved by the intervention of Neytiri, a female Na’vi who takes him to the rest of the tribe, who provisionally accept him, agreeing to teach him their ways. As he trains and hunts with the other Na’vi warriors, particularly the suspicious Eytukan, he finds himself drawn towards Neytiri, and after three months he is accepted fully into the tribe, taking Neytiri as his chosen mate. The humans send scout craft down to the surface of the planet, close to the Na’vi lands Jake realises that he has betrayed the Na’vi, now feeling part of them, and confesses to Neytiri, who spurns him as the humans, led by Quaritch, launch a massive aerial assault on the Na’vi, destroying their immense Hometree and destroying their lands, killing many of them although the warriors fight back as best they can against the massive aerial assault by attack helicopters. The remaining Na’vi retreat to their holiest site, the Tree Of Souls, wherein dwells the spirit of their Goddess, Eywa. Knowing that Quaritch will return with yet more troops to destroy the Tree Of Souls, Jake returns to the Na’vi, having tamed the most ferocious and dangerous of the planet’s flying beasts, the Toruk, and manages to persuade some of the human mission, including pilot Trudy Cachon to assist, reuniting the clans of the Na’vi for a final battle for their very existence, as Quaritch and his aerial armada approach, the Na’vi warriors, riding their fierce Toruks, being ready for their final stand-off.
Review:
James Cameron’s first feature for twelve years, passing his time meanwhile with those incredibly self-indulgent underwater documentaries, has essentially become critic-proof simply due to its’ immense box-office take,
Avatar becoming the highest-earning film ever in only six weeks of release, superseding the records set by director’s previous
Titanic, but while the superlatives are thrown around, and a reputed budget of $300 million, although no one is confirming this, one has to say that while
Avatar is a technical marvel, with perfectly released 3D and more interestingly a definite restraint in its’ use, the script is unbelievably hackneyed and puts dialogue into the mouths of its’ characters the actors will be glad is largely spoken by the CGI versions of themselves, since no real live person would ever talk as Cameron writes dialogue. With the film being, at a rough estimate, 45% entirely CGI, it is perhaps difficult to judge just how well the performances, motion-captured, match the rendered versions, the Na’vi being impressive when first seen, when their towering height is most noticable, and which soon dissipates when they are seen in over-extended scenes in their home lands, and although some of Cameron’s early set-pieces, such as the Jake / Na’vi avatar being attacked by a selection of ferocious beasts in the first reel, one of which is the twin brother of the titular creature of Bong Joon-Ho’s
The Host, are superb in design and execution, the middle section, which focuses largely on the Na’vi, and reminds one of the old critics warnings about sci-fi with hyphenated or apostrophed names, is lax and at times the tweeness of the Pandoran landscape, with a listed seventeen art directors, is as tacky as a Chingford disco. Cameron stages the set-pieces brilliantly, and the seamless nature of the integration is even more impressive in the pin-sharp digital 3D, but it is inescapable that the film is essentially
Dances With Aliens, the Na’vi obviously being a parallel with the American Indian, being hounded out of their homelands, and the casting of Wes Studi (
The Last Of The Mohicans / Geronimo) does nothing to alter this, capped by Michelle Rodriguez (who has altered a lot in the past couple of years, for the better) riding into the final aerial battle compete with war paint, a la Kevin Costner’s John Dunbar. Although Cameron has had problems with ‘attribution’ before, and losing a court case with author Harlan Ellison over the original
Terminator, an awful lot of
Avatar comes from other sources, the flying battles and taming of the dragon-like Toruk owing huge amounts to both the very popular
Dragonriders Of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey, and the Hiyao Miyazaki animation
Kaze No Tani No Nauskika / Warriors Of The Wind, and the Na’vi themselves are certainly close cousins of the aliens in the cult animation
Fantastic Planet / La Planete Sauvage, made in 1973 by Rene Laloux, in which towering peaceful blue-skinned yellow-eyed aliens also find themselves under attack. Amid the inestimable terrabytes of CGI, some human performances do manage to emerge,
Aliens returnee Sigourney Weaver being believably brittle as the tough Dr. Augustine, although when a Na’vi avatar herself would she actually look like an alien Sigourney Weaver? Giovanni Ribisi (
Heaven) has a few good lines as the weaselly Parker Selfridge, the head of the mining project looking for the valuable Unobtanium, and someone really should have told Cameron about that name, while the real honours go to the often undervalued Stephen Lang (
Last Exit To Brooklyn) as the ferocious Colonel Quaritch, the Aliens exto-skeletons making another appearance in the final scenes as weapon-toting mech-suits for the advancing soldiers. As with
Titanic, length is once more a problem, and although
Avatar never gets boring, there are definite times in the 161 minute running time where Cameron is dawdling, and just when one believes the final battle is about to commence, there is still another forty minutes of the film left, some remarkably slack and almost needless scenes involving Jake gathering the Na’vi nation as a whole to fight the humans being surprisingly over-extended, and as with
Titanic,
Avatar could probably lose half an hour without anybody really noticing.
Avatar has certainly made its’ own page in film history, setting records it would be hard to beat, even if some industry observers have noted that the box-office figures are heavily bolstered by the sometimes considerable extra cost for 3D screenings, and on a technical level it is certainly remarkable, even if the sheer tackiness of the Pandorian jungle becomes wearing after a while, but the set-pieces, especially the final aerial combat, raises the bar for imaginative high-budget sci-fi, but it certainly isn’t the masterpiece of the genre which some, including the ever-effacing Cameron are claiming, due to the terrible dialogue, flabby length and decidedly second-hand elements. If only Cameron had made a truly radical decision and gone not only with 3D but also made it silent....