AVATAR

Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington in AVATAR

James Cameron’s film is a big, showy entertainment which rolls over its own weaknesses and comes out a winner. No masterpiece, that’s for sure, but in the end this doesn’t matter. You get way-out scenery, tough-guy marines, blue-skinned aliens, big battles, a love story, a few laughs- why else do we watch movies, anyway?

Our hero is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a wheelchair confined Marine (‘just a dumb grunt’, he calls himself). Jake gets the chance to go to the alien world Pandora, where the Marines are helping a large mining company to subdue the Na’vi, indigenous people who, for some oblique reason, are trying to stop the Earth people from ripping their planet to shreds.

A group of scientists, led by Sigourney Weaver, are trying to talk the Na’vi out of their rebellion, before the Marines step in with their bomb and laser base negotiating techniques.

Jake gets to put his consciousness into an avatar, a human Na’vi hybrid body, especially developed by Sigourney and her friends. (The atmosphere is poisonous for humans, you see). Jake is sent out into the jungles of Pandora where he meets the sexy, blue, cat=faced, greyhound-bodied Neytiri and her tribe. Now, cliché lovers, what do you expect to happen next?!

Whilst the plot is grinding its way along, I’d like to make a few observations- Sigourney stay sensibly dressed, as a mature lady is expected to, even when she’s in her avatar body.

The sexy chick-in-a-singlet duties are given to Michelle Rodriguez, who previously starred in LOST. Time flies, doesn’t it Sigourney?!
The animation sometime has a video game quality to it. The Na’Vi leap around the jungle just a little too smoothly! And sometimes, in the battle scenes, characters slow down in the middle of a jump and pause in mid-air for no good reason (unless it’s because that’s what they do in Asian martial-arts films). This breaks the films spell- these people are supposed to seem real.

You will be waiting a long time in this film to see an original idea to come forward. The military characters say macho, hard-bitten things like, ‘Nobody will be dead today. It will look bad on my report’. Or, ‘if there’ a hell there, you might want to go there for some R and R’. Or, on seeing Jake in his wheelchair, ‘Hey, meals on wheel!’. Wooden dialogue is prescient.

The scientists go in for techno-talk, ‘Watch out for that Flux Vortex! And the Na’vi spout New Age mysticism (Hometree hold their memories inside it). The tribe has an elderly healer woman and a touch young rival for Jake to defeat before he finally does get the girl.

The flying pterodactyl/dragons, the floating mountains straight from a 1970’s record cover; the tough guy Commander who is, of-course, from the deep south, people shouting, ‘let’s go!’. The long headache inducing battle sequence at the end…
There’s so much to be annoyed by, and yet….

AVATAR has that something special. Call it ‘heart’ perhaps. Call it classic story-telling. The wow factor. Whatever it is, the 14 year old boy inside of me loved it and the critical adult also inside of me can go an eat a dictionary!

Also, yes I have got a crush on that blue alien girl. I wouldn’t mind some of those military super weapons either. Or, for that matter, a giant tree that hold our memories safely inside it. Perhaps a chance to go hunting with a bunch of touch native warriors…A large, multi-coloured, prehistoric dragon bird….Well, that’ my Christmas wish sorted out now!

The more I think about AVATAR, unlike so many other movies, the more I like it. Such a nice change, these days!

© Peter Morrison

22 September, 2012

Tags: Sydney Movie Reviews- AVATAR, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, James Cameron, Sydney Arts Guide, Peter Morrison