R and D

It is generally considered that the job of a reviewer is to give a sober and balanced summary of the good and bad points of a movie and that gushing could be seen as being a little juvenile. But I have to start by saying – Wow, that was amazing! I have never seen a movie that looked like that and I was captivated by the story and major characters.

A lot of people questioned the whereabouts of James Cameron. Other than shooting documentaries and selling his blockbusters to form crappy TV shows, what was he doing? Avatar is your answer. Ten years in the making, James Cameron breaks out with yet another revolution in cinema. 30 years from now, Wookies will be replaced by Na’vi’s, and it will be James Cameron who will be milking his fans with merchandising.

The hero is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a former marine confined to a wheelchair and unable to afford the repairs needed on his spine. Through pure luck (having an identical twin who perished at just the right time) Jake arrives in our story to be sent to an alien planet (well technically it is a moon) called Pandora. His duty is to have his consciousness remotely control a genetic alien analogue to help subject the environmentally friendly aliens to earths environmentally unfriendly corporate greed, with the minimum of inconvenience all round.

Most of the action is depicted in CGI the likes of which you have never seen (or for some people, seen through the eyes of a magic mushroom). Pandora is a fantastic jungle paradise with flying lizards, glowing plants and floating mountains rendered (despite their fantastical appearance) as lifelike as you could hope to imagine. Even the aliens’ facial expressions are faithfully and convincingly transferred from the actors by a new “image-based facial performance capture” developed especially for this movie, but no doubt to be used in many movies to come.

Of course one could quibble about the fact that Avatar follows the standard template of the somewhat two dimensional and flawed hero undergoing a personal journey, and doing so in just the right place and time to be at the centre of visually compelling events that just happen to be of major importance.

One could also quibble that some of the supporting characters are stereotypes (or perhaps one should refer them to archetypes). But none of these things would interfere with the average viewers experience unless they only like movies that include the word “heartwarming” in their sales pitch. Others may also quibble about a pro environmental message in the film. Potential viewers who are keen on destroying the environment consider yourselves warned.