So this is it, then. Over a decade in the making, the film that would change cinema as we know it is finally here. Or maybe self-proclaimed “king of the world” James Cameron has just spent fifteen years and hundreds of millions of dollars setting us up for the biggest, preachiest let down of the year. Yeah, that sounds more like it.Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Avatar is a bad film. The concept behind it – humans controlling synthetic beings, or Avatars, with their mind – is fairly ingenious, the setting is suitably epic and the technology used to create what is undoubtedly the best looking CGI so far may well change how future blockbusters are produced. But despite all this, Avatar still manages to fall short of expectations.
This is partly down to the plot, which Liege Cameron insisted would win over initial scepticism, being so contrived. It’s that old future-humanity-has-exhausted-Earth’s-resources- so-is-invading-a-peaceful-planet-and-warring-with-the-indigeanous-populace chestnut (a climate change message so glaringly obvious it’d make the audience blind if it wasn’t for the funky 3D sunglasses), with a few sympathetic humans taking up the natives’ banner. Sympathetic human du jour is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic former marine who is drafted into the Avatar programme, and under the instruction of chief meat-head Colonel Quaritch is sent to spy on the local Na’vi – a species of giant, blue cat-people that look vaguely like Angelina Jolie after she’s been smacked around with a frying pan. But it’s not long before he falls in love with the Na’vi princess, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and the planet itself, causing him to turn on his own people and their reckless, greed-driven destruction of the planet (we get it Jim, global warming is bad). Essentially, Avatar is one Na’vi rendition of "Colours of the Wind" away from being Pocahontas in Space, which isn’t about to win over the thousands of keyboard-mashing sceptics that were Cameron’s target audience.
Neither will the characters, who are ironically two-dimensional considering Avatar is supposedly the benchmark for 3D cinema. It’s not that any of the supporting characters are particularly bad, they’re just never properly fleshed out, probably because there’s so much time spent on wide-frame panning shots of the planet’s undergrowth, which makes it a little difficult to muster up any sympathy when they start dropping like flies in the climactic final battle. Maybe they just wanted to get the boring human characters out of the way so they could introduce a greedy, six legged racoon in the sequel.
Still, the story of Avatar was never really the selling point, even if Tzar Cameron has convinced himself it is. It was the promise of the incredible new technology, which never fails to impress. As much as the endless shots of the planet’s environment detract from the story and its characters, they don’t half look good. Making this alien world and its creatures look entirely natural is a colossal achievement in itself. It’s safe to say that, if this is the future of CGI, then the future does look pretty damn awesome.
The 3D, however, still leaves a little to be desired, due largely to the restriction of cinema screens. The beautiful fluttering of insects or falling leaves is often cut short as it goes beyond the limits of the multiplex screen, and there was even a moment where the barrel of a gun poking into the audience was lopped off, probably poking out of the ceiling somewhere. Times like these make 3D look genuinely poor, and no arrow-flying-out-of-the-screen gimmick is going to compensate for that.
It goes without saying that Shah Cameron’s gajillion dollar masterpiece doesn’t live up to expectations. It’s an incredible visual achievement, one that may well go down in cinema history, but there’s precious little else to it. It might be worth seeing, if only for a glimpse of what blockbusters will look like for the next decade or so, but as a story it’s nothing you wouldn’t get from playing "Just Around the River Bend" over a Halo 3 cutscene while someone behind you shouts Lion-O quotes every five minutes. THUNDER CATS HO.
