Avatar (2009)

Director: James Cameron                              Writer: James Cameron
Film Score: James Horner                             Cinematography: Mauro Fiore
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver & Stephen Lang

Ah, yes, James Cameron, the poet who brought us immortal line: “So, what are you, some kind of artist or something?” And who can forget the gripping drama of hocking loogies off the starboard deck? And now, from the beat-you-over-the-head-with-a-baseball-bat school of figurative writing he gives us the rare element . . . unobtanium. I guess it’s appropriate that, since Cameron’s writing seems to be geared toward fifth graders, that is the same audience that Avatar seems to be aimed at as well. If you like to play video games and watch Saturday morning cartoons, I suppose it might be interesting, but as an adult I just don’t see anything in the film that is even remotely original or entertaining.

First of all, the film is highly derivative of numerous others, most notably Dances with Wolves. But the story has nowhere near the sophistication or the character development. In fact, it is a far more juvenile approach along the lines of Atlantis or FernGully. The story begins on one of the moons of Jupiter. How there happens to be enough heat and water that far beyond the Sun is cheerfully ignored. A company attempting to obtain . . . you know, soon realizes that there is a huge deposit under a giant tree where a clan of the indigenous people live. In order to smooth the way for takeover clones are made, part human part aboriginal, that the humans can operate remotely. The hope is that the avatars will be able to convince the natives to leave without the need for military action.

Sam Worthington is an injured marine, a paraplegic, who is sent in and is able to make an actual connection with the natives. Sigourney Weaver is the scientist aboard responsible for the liaison with the natives. While he’s there, Worthington falls in love with Zoe Saldana and begins to question his mission objectives. She teaches him the people’s ways and he excels. And when the head of the mission, Giovanni Ribisi, and his military leader, Stephen Lang, begin to get impatient and decide to take the tree by force, he rebels. It’s a highly simplistic tale that is so clichéd that there is almost no suspense whatsoever. Everything you’ve seen before in similar tales happens exactly the same way.

One of the things I really hate about supposed science-fiction is when it treats alien civilizations exactly like Native-Americans. There’s nothing “fictional” about that at all. You can say the film is an allegory, but it’s so thinly veiled I don’t think it qualifies. The one good part of the film, doesn’t even happen until the very end. There’s a point in Dances with Wolves when Kevin Costner simply becomes a native himself, unable to go back to the life he lived before. How much more powerful then, if that transition were visible? There was a brilliant opportunity for Worthington to transition permanently to his aboriginal body well before the final battle. With no going back, it would have been tremendously satisfying. But Cameron goes for the cheap suspense, by keeping him human, though it’s about as suspenseful as whether or not Batman or Superman will die. Yawn.

There’s no denying the visual beauty of the film, but ultimately that’s all the viewer is left with and, for me, it simply wasn’t enough. Cameron had a string of hits early in his career, Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and those stories were more satisfying--with the exception of the ending of The Abyss--because of their originality. But ever since Titanic, Cameron has seeming thrown away any pretense of originality and fallen back on the banal. And yet, still managed to rake in unprecedented amounts of cash in the process. It used to be that great films were the ones that made huge money at the box office. With Avatar, that trend has obviously changed. Evidently audiences only want to pay money for the familiar. Well, as long as James Cameron is alive, they’ll have plenty of that.