Avatar - not all it's cracked up to be

Avatar is a mixed bag. It's not as goofy as some of the early trailers made it out to be. But at the same time, it's not the monumental film that critics and audiences alike are being swept away by, shooting up the all-time earning lists even as it notches acclaim from critics such as the Chicago Tribune's Roger Ebert.

Avatar is a certainly a looker, seamlessly blending CGI and real-life actors in a way that Lucas' Prequel Trilogy failed to (though Cameron has last-movers advantage, and gets to build upon Lucas' recent achievements to boot). Avatar has a straight-forward, if uninspired and completely predictable, plot. The movie leans very heavily on theme, as in get ready to get knocked upside the head. Repeatedly. Still, if you like them pretty, shallow, and in the end, dumb, Avatar may be what you're looking for.

The plot is derivative fair, and within 5 minutes of opening credits, I knew the whole story. Yes, you can call it predictable. I kept sitting there, waiting for something unexpected to happen, only to be disappointed. While I don't expect plot twists / turns in a fantasy movie (and face it, this is not Science Fiction at work here, any more than Star Wars is SF), this movie telegraphed its moves so early that I literally knew what was coming - "The wounded marine pretends to be a native through his avatar, falls in love with a native and ends up siding with them against the evil humans."

The movie didn't work for me for several reasons.

1) Cardboard Cutouts

We don't have characters here - we have archetypes. It is hard to buy into any of these characters emotionally. The main character is the worst, as he is skin-deep. The video journal is a nice way of narrating his journey, but we never really get into what's going on in his head. His journey from human to Na'vi is not a surprise and even worse, had no emotional affect on me. Because we don't see his struggle, it's a non-event, and one that really has no impact.

Cameron tossed in a nice carrot via the Colonel, who essentially says, "Do me right, kid, and you'll get your legs back." This should have been a powerful motivating factor for Sully, but because we don't see the struggle (assuming there is one), it ends up an empty gesture.

The actor did a fine job with the character, I think the material just was not up to snuff. There was a good line in the movie, something to the effect of "I can't tell reality from the dream anymore." But Cameron never went deeper. Everything here is at the surface - there is nothing underneath.

2) The Love Angle

What a surprise! For all of the technical bluster and gee-whiz, graphical buffet, the movie is really a love story! While I have no problem with love stories, the execution was predictable, heavy-handed, and a little sappy. Part of my problem here is one of expectation - though I hadn't sought out the preview trailers, they found me (talk about over-saturation), and had left me with a certain impression.

Going in, I expected a different kind of movie, grimmer film, with more conflict between the two races. Had that been the case, it could have been a redeeming factor in my eyes. From a story standpoint, if there was more conflict between the Na'vi and the humans, Sully's transformation would play differently. As it is, it's more like they're not really getting along but they're not really fighting. Had they been actively at war with one another, Sully's changing sides would have been much more powerful.

3) Heavy handling of theme. There are several themes weaved into the movie, some blatantly obvious, others just under the surface, protruding out just enough to irritate. Watch your step - the allegory has teeth in these hills.

- The Green Movement. This is an out-and-out, unabashedly pro-green statement. When one of the main characters is a never seen but all-knowing, all-powerful spirit of the world (aka mother nature), it's hard to confuse the movie's meaning. I don't have a problem with the green message, and indeed think we'd be a whole lot better off if we took better care of this planet - it is, after all, the only one we've got - the theme was a little too in-your-face for my tastes. I'd rather be told an interesting story with heart than lectured to. That said, if you could ignore the obvious references back to how wrongly humanity lives, the movie's treatment of the Na'vi and their relationship with their world and it's spirit was interesting.

- Echoes of the American Indian. The Na'vi are a people who take what the land gives them. They are a proud people with long traditions. We find out in the final 3rd of the movie that there are various tribes (neatly partitioned into a horse clan, a flying bird clan, and a water clan). They seem to have no thought or motivation for advancement, for science, but instead take only what the land gives them. And when the no-good, land-grabbing white man rolls in with his guns, the Na'vi break out their arrows and war-paint. They are quickly overwhelmed. We sense a potential repeating of history here, on another world, (save for the actions of Sully... revisionist history perhaps?).

- War in the Middle East. Another variation of the powerful white man overwhelming the simple natives, this time against the backdrop of mining for natural resources. The movie spends a fair amount of its narrative explaining how Earth has been stripped bare, and now mankind is off strip-mining the galaxy to fuel it's endless hunger. You can almost hear the human scientists of the film - those who run the Avatar program to facilitate relations between the two species - decrying the practice as "blood for oil." By the same token, the film has a decidedly anti-military slant, portraying the soldiers as emotionless thugs and killers (even here, Cameron manages to work in a not so subtle wink at the Iraqi War, as the bulk of the forces are contractors).

In all of the hundreds (thousands?) of soldiers it seems there is only one with a conscious, a female pilot who bails out on a senseless slaughter of the Na'vi and later ends up helping them fight back. Here at least, in this pilot, a minor character to be sure, we FINALLY get a bit of the conflict that is missing in the protagonist or any other character for that matter. While it seems easy, gradual, almost inevitable that Sully switches sides, there is a clear moment of indecision for this pilot, and when she acts in the right, morally-responsible way, we cheer. It's no surprise that she was the film's best character for my money.

*

In closing, Avatar is a solid movie, definitely popcorn fair. It is not the second coming (of anything). Even Star Wars (which I consider in the same genre) has an element of fun that is missing here. Avatar is a long, plodding movie that looks great, has some nice moments, but in the end leaves you wishing you had the 3 hours back. It's not one I'll look to watch again, or even reflect on all that much, whereas a film like District 9 has been on my mind since I rented it a few weeks ago.