Honestly, I want to have a strong opinion one way or another about James Cameron’s epic, Avatar. I really do. I love Star Wars, Starcraft, and any other movie, video game, or book that incorporates the future*, aliens, or spaceships in pretty much any combination of the three. I figured I would eat this delicious sci-fi epic up like a hot fudge sundae on a Ramadan night. Then I watched it, the credits rolled, and I left the theater trying to figure out what I thought about it. Sure, I like Avatar. But I don’t love it and that’s what worries me.
The movie begins with Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex marine whose brother has recently died. He is recruited by a corporate entity mining the lush planet of Pandora for a resource not found on earth, in order to participate in a program that will allow him to control the body of a genetically engineered Na’vi (the indigenous humanoid race that lives on Pandora). He uses his remotely controlled body to learn about the Na’vi and report back to his commanding officers. Suffice it to say, Sully has a change of heart (surprise!) and fights the humans alongside his new Na’vi family mates.
The look and style of this film is unarguably a technical achievement in and of itself. Trust me you’ve never seen anything like it. James Cameron has pushed the medium forward with a jolt that will take a few years for the rest of the industry to catch up to. The last 30 minutes of the film are especially gorgeous. But everyone was expecting that to happen. Although amazing, it’s uninteresting to talk about past a certain point.
Maybe it would have helped to walk away from the movie angry at and disgusted by the portrayal of the smurf-esque denizens of the planet Pandora. For some reason, this would have enhanced the experience of the film in my mind. Judging by the trailer, It seemed that it would be obvious that the humans represented the U.S.’s foreign policy and the native’s village represented anywhere in the Muslim world. I thought myself clever for this astute observation.
However, as the movie fleshed itself out over more than two and a half hours, I could not draw any connections that meant anything substantial. All of the characters were far too simple and straightforward to make any provocative or interesting analogies. Sure, you could say Pandora is a metaphor for Iraq, Palestine, or even pre-colonial America. But that’s the problem. The story is so generic that you could apply the Avatar plot to literally dozens of human conflicts over the last six centuries. Does that make it universal and engaging? Maybe. Does it make it redundant and trite? Probably. The story it most closely resembles is Pocahontas, except there’s more blue and bizarre.
The film’s writing is so poor that the only semi-memorable lines of dialogue from the film could have easily been ripped from any other action movie of the last decade. The movie oozes with such dulcet gems as “I didn’t sign up for this sh*t!” and “You’re not in Kansas anymore.” All in all, the script feels uninspired and lazy. The problem isn’t even that the dialogue feels overly contrived. That might have been charming. It’s the exact opposite; it feels completely uncontrived, as if the film was written to obstruct the characters from accidentally saying anything smart or cool.
But, I enjoyed the whole movie from start to finish although not to the point of zealotry. Perhaps I’m now reaching an age where everything just meshes together into a grey blur of “eh”. Or maybe my mind has been blown too many times to care anymore about anything new. Or (most probably) it’s just an OK movie wrapped in baroque wrapping paper.
Anyway, you need to see this film; it’s no doubt a cinematic landmark that closes off the 2000’s with a bang. In fact, now that I think about it, the loud explosion of CGI, human arrogance, and the excessive, overblown budget sum up this decade quite well.
* I am aware that Star Wars technically takes place in the past.
This article originally appeared in Elan.
