Big Ships, Blue People and Blind Arrows

In an age where oversized film budgets abound and box offices numbers ticker past us on a daily basis, James Cameron’s behemoth “Avatar” has dominated on all fronts. The film is a 3-D/IMAX and special effects king, but leaves storytelling in the virtual dust clouds of its enormous box office wake. With all of the attention and hype surrounding this film, what it boils down to is a bunch of blue people in a forest, and a bad attempt at trying to be deep and timely with the story. “Enter the World” might be the tagline, but what you’ll really want to do is “Exit the Theater.”

The world of Pandora that Cameron creates is beautiful and entertaining, but its effects are short-lived and the film overall is not a classic story or one that could be seen to last through the ages like some previous Cameron hits, including “Titanic” and “Terminator.” Instead, “Avatar” is the simple tale of man’s greed versus the value of the earth, which is always a worthwhile message, but the overly simplistic nature of its telling, overshadowed by the heavy use of computer generated effects, adds up to little in the way of memorable.

Whilst the audience is being swept away by the effects, which is all in good fun, the real disappointment here is characters; without a connection to the characters, the story is lost in the forest, and the film may be 3-D, but the characters come across as one dimensional.

The film comes to us out of the blue with the story of the Na’vi people (who also happen to be blue), an indigenous tribe on the planet of Pandora who inhabit a land rich with a mineral that humans wish to mine due to its exorbitant resale value. Enter Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington (“Terminator Salvation”), who is a paralyzed Marine replacing his deceased twin brother in an Avatar project, designed to infiltrate the Na’vi people. The Avatars are bodies created to look like the indigenous people of Pandora, but are mind-controlled by the humans.

Sully starts off the mission convinced by over-the-top hardened military man Colonel Miles Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang (“Public Enemies”) that he will report back to the military everything that the Na’vi people do and that he is on the side of the “good guys.” When Sully becomes immersed in the ways of the Na’vi, especially native Neytiri (voiced by Zoe Saldana), he sees the error and destructive ways of his own people. Worthington’s acting is sub-par as Sully, and is offset by Lang in his role as Quaritch, which halfway through the film turns into a complete caricature, as he is a military machine in such a one-dimensional way that his entire performance becomes laughable.

The earth is said to have been long destroyed and robbed of all its greenery, yet it is never explained why the people of earth wouldn’t choose to inhabit the planet of Pandora instead of mining for a useless mineral. This is one of many troubling plot devices of the storyline, which is elementary and lacking any sophistication in terms of character development or relate-ability.

The storyline happens in the most predictable and drawn out way it possible can, with Sully slowly falling for Neytiri and Colonel Quaritch drawing out his attack against the Na’vi to the tune of two and a half hours. The cast also includes Sigourney Weaver who leads the Avatar project, and Giovanni Ribisi who is the greedy corporate head after the mineral. Weaver is a welcome addition to the cast due to her acting abilities, whereas Ribisi leaves much to be desired as a villain with his forced delivery of lines and lack of diabolical disposition. The cast in “Avatar” is mediocre; just as every other element this film endures aside from the visual and special effects.

However, the one saving grace of “Avatar” is the look of it, and it is quite beautiful. The world of Pandora is lush and sweeping, with cliffs and floating mountains. Everything is beautifully green and pops with color. One of the most impressive scenes of the film is when Sully is being trained by Neytiri to ride a dragon-like creature and they soar through canyons and over water that is modern art come to life. These scenes keep the film entertaining and enjoyable on a base level and are indeed improvements over the computer effects of the past.

A good measure of how great any animated film is to substitute any animation for human actors or real environments. Consequently, if the film could still hold its weight, then it’s a worthwhile story. Visualizing that in this scenario, the film falls incredibly short, as the characters would be even less compelling, and the environment would be less impressive. As Cameron himself said in a making-of video for “Avatar,” his main goal was to nail the special effects techniques used in this film (including motion capture); and on that front he succeeds, but in order to be a classic, he needed less dazzle and more substance.

Like the arrows of the Na’vi people in many scenes of “Avatar,” Cameron misses the mark in so many ways. Cameron may be relishing in the success of this film with gamers and special effects geeks around the world, but those of us concerned with story and character as the essential parts of a film will look for “the future of film” elsewhere.