Review of Avatar (2011) by Cameron H — 23 Jan 2015

Thirteen years, James Cameron dedicated to the world of Pandora, a moon filled with various Warcraft-inspired creatures living in harmony until those cruel humans showed up. One human marine Jake (Sam Worthington), whose legs are severely impaired, is assigned the job of embodying a lab-grown Na'vi, the blue, tailed and most humanlike creature that lives on Pandora, to make peace with the native creatures while the humans tear down their forests to mine for precious minerals. To simplify the situation, it's the good environmentalists versus the evil corporations. Regardless of my "side," I wasn't expecting a thirteen-year project to amount to, beyond the visuals, painting one side black and the other white. I've already read a few articles that compare this story to Dances with Wolves, which is not far off. The native Na'vi love interest Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) is tougher and less naive than the native lady of the other film. I find this to be detrimental to the character. Before love is established, she's simply teaching Jake the ways of the Na'vi warrior. Romance is to be expected with most movies with a male and female lead, though it's not that common for James Cameron. Dialogue isn't substantial either. The more serious moment only serve to emphasis good versus evil, one rallying speech ripping from Braveheart. The "humorous" moments are low in quantity and quality, like leftovers from the funnies of Titanic and Aliens.

Forget the writing. Performances from Worthington, Saldana, and Signourney Weaver are as committed as I expected, but without any unique story elements, no single actor truly shone for me. Similar to Titanic, I spent most of my time gazing mindlessly at the visual effects. Pandora has compact forestation, and many of the flora and fauna emit bright, colourful lights. The Na'vi ride winged dragon-like beasts and animals similar to reptilian horses. I'm not a great judge of creature design, but past the reminders of Warcraft, I had many thrills in discovering new things in Pandora. Cameron has once again not screwed around with his visual effects budget. The team does an excellent, groundbreaking job in creating a world and displaying in a finely detailed way that looks and feels like I could live in Pandora. If only the story engaged me enough for me to live there.