Avatar

What to say about a film that will receive more media coverage than any other last year or this? What to say when everyone will see it anyway?

So, rather than a standard review, what follows is a series of notes, a string of observations - read it in conjunction with a more conventional review that will supply a plot summary and studied consideration to the acting, cinematography, pacing, etc. Probably the most interesting thing I can say about Avatar is how it relates to past films James Cameron has directed. There are clear connections.

The scenario for Avatar itself seems like a variation on Aliens; as before, the main human characters are a military-backed corporate colonising force facing an aggressive indigenous population, but here the natives are blue, not black, cat-like rather than skeletal, and given a human face (specifically, big eyes), so we can identify with them instead. In fact, Avatar could co-exist entirely in the same fictional universe; the mechanoid suits are refined developments of the Power Loader exo-skeletons from Aliens (remember the showdown between Ripley and the Alien Queen at the climax), and RPA (the money-minded mining company in Avatar) seems a close corporate cousin of Weyland-Yutani. Meanwhile, the design of the Na'vi bears some semblance to the aliens in The Abyss, and the home planet Pandora is similarly styled: the luminescent foliage, and the fact it frequently resembles an underwater world rendered without the water (epitomised by the floating jelly-fish like Woodsprites seen early on in the film).

A few reviews (and/or the presspack for the film itself) have marvelled that the world of Pandora we see boasts a fully fleshed and working eco-system, but this is just not true. Pandoran nature is either dangerous or wondrous (each personified by specific creatures), and demonstrated as such on cue, as required by the plot. Otherwise it recedes to the background for most of the film once the scene setting is done in the first act (to return in "stirring" re-appearance at the final battle).

The plot is Pocahontas (the Disney film), or Dances with Wolves; plain, simple, unoriginal. Did Cameron or anyone else think that such a visually sophisticated and highly detailed film needed a simple plot because the audience would otherwise be overwhelmed? That, or it feels like it's reaching for the purity of a parable, but the film contains far too many cliches and overly familiar plot structures to be that. It's a credit to the film's skillful pacing, and its visual inventiveness, that it doesn't drag through its 161 minute running time.

Still, given the length, it seems odd that another ten minutes couldn't be spared to properly lay down a back story to explain how the planet, its precious mineral, the miners, and the overall ecology of the planet fit together. The film uses a voice-over (in a familiar "new recruit induction" framework that gives information piecemeal) and still isn't clear! And so there is confusion about exactly why there are floating mountains - do they float because it looks good, or because they're loaded with the gravity-defying mineral. And said mineral is unbelievably named unobtainium - neither a subtle cue if taken literally, nor well known enough as a scientific/engineering in-joke to be appreciated. Nevertheless, plot-wise, the biggest beef (and insult to the audience's intelligence) is that the Na'vi are basically sidelined in their own story - it takes a human surrogate to rise up as their great inspirational leader and spur them to victory. Annalee Newitz has more to say about this (with another's comment on the same issue here).

The most interesting thing Cameron could have done is remove the character of Sully altogether (keeping the other avatar'ed Na'vi in support roles) and cast a native Na'vi as hero to lead and beat back the humans colonisers (it could even have been - gasp - Neytiri herself). Then, he would been applying this massed-machinery of cutting edge film technology to do something quite interesting - make the audience leap the identity gap from human to alien and wilfully side directly with alien characters (no surrogates). It's not without precedent (E.T., for one) but unusual in an action film, and I imagine would stir up some strong mixed feelings in scenes of direct violent conflict between colonisers and Na'vi.

Characters are, in keeping with the plot, two dimensional across the board, but not without some basic oedipal dynamics for our hero Sully: he has a kind mother (Sigourney Weaver's Dr Grace) and demon father (Colonel Quaritch) and works out his beefs with each as you would expect. Sigourney Weaver seems to be cast mostly to please fanboys like me (and Cameron, no doubt), who just love to see her in anything approaching her iconic Ripley role. I suspect it's also the reason we see so much of her as a avatar'ed Na'vi - so she can be youthful and lithe and run around in tank top and skimpy shorts once more.

Easily the most interesting aspect of the film is that it incorporates many spiritual themes and ideas, which really signposts just how far these ideas have (and can) be integrated into mainstream culture. However, they are treated in a perfunctory manner, without an attempt to really connect them together into a coherent whole or apply them rigorously enough in their details. While the interconnectedness of all things is indeed one of the film's central messages, the Na'vi are still given a grand temple of sorts to serve as a target and focal point for the final battle - isn't everywhere a place of worship? However, Cameron is a visual communicator, and so the way he visualises some of these themes is very gratifying; for example, showing the Na'vi's connectedness to nature in the most literal way works surprisingly well. Still, somebody will come along and make a film that perfectly integrates and extends spiritual themes into the storyline, a work that is touching and intellectually engaging and gratifying. Films like Avatar pave the way for that moment.

I cannot deny that Avatar is a technical achievement, something I only fully realised when I read that Pandora is not a wholly digitally rendered world, but an amalgam of CGI and miniatures, integrated with some live-action footage too, and that the Na'vi character animation was achieved by whole-body motion capture to transpose an actor's performance onto their digital proxy. It is a seamless stitching of parts, which makes me wonder if releasing it in 3D is really that much of a deal - a number of times I removed my 3D glasses to notice that the depth illusion didn't make that much of a difference, so visually lush was the imagery on its own. Certainly (and in stark contrast to the 3D previews that came before the film) the 3D effect is treated subtly, pushing planes of focus back into the screen (rather like what Disney did using the multiplane camera setup in Snow White), rather than having too many objects protrude out toward the audience (and certainly nothing so gauche as spears and arrows). But since this is the first "new millennium" (post 2000) 3D film I've seen, I'm in no position to judge; perhaps the impact of 3D used sensitively like this is cumulative.

This could be the least interesting of any of Cameron's major films. But, I liked it more than I thought (by quite a lot). And there's no better place to see it than the cinema (in 3D). But you've already made up your mind to see it, right? (Or, more likely, seen it already.)