Review - Avatar (2009)

James Cameron's sci-fi drama about blue aliens is quite an adventure, but it's not as good as it's cracked up to be.

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a military man who goes to the planet of Pandora because underneath the soil is a rich mineral that will make the futuristic (2154 to be exact) humans who haven't changed much very rich. So, an ingenious method of disguising the peoples as the Na'vi, the stereotyped alien Native tribe on the planet and try to coax them out of letting them have this mineral of which the Na'vi know nothing about. But Jake in particular falls in love with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) an alien in the tribe that is striking and a good hunter and soon realizes that Pandora is gorgeous and the people are kind and wonderful, but General Miles Quatrich, the little butthole (Stephen Lang, not implying Lang is one but the character) doesn't listen and soon it's war between the blue man group and the humans.

The plot is crap. Cameron basically is pulling from the plot of such movies as Dances With Wolves, Disney's Pocahontas and countless others. The two star-crossed lovers fall in love amidst feuding clans. While I find Cameron's writing also bad (though his direction is not), it's tolerable compared to other crap screenplays in 2009.

The acting is decent, with the best of all the actors being Sigourney Weaver, but even that is one of her weakest roles, and Stephen Lang is one of THE WORST performances I've ever seen, and yet somehow there are people who think he's good. Making an unsympathetic character is easy, but if James Cameron could've found some way for him to redeem himself, then maybe I would've liked the movie a little better. Sam Worthington does okay in the lead role, but Zoe Saldana is much worse than him with her character barely acting but looking pretty with next-to-nothing on and a ridiculous accent. I see that Worthington and Saldana will be big stars in the near future, just the same that Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet became superstars after Titanic.

Now mind you, I did find the ecological message that was detailed in the movie and that's very noble of James Cameron for putting that in and for him donating the majority of the gross of the two sequels he's making in 2014 & 2015 to charity, but to me it should've been more plainly spoken instead of subtly put in.

Now at this point in the review, I've been pointing out Avatar's flaws ever so many. But this film isn't all bad. The visual effects artists have done a magnificent job in detailing the realism of Pandora and the aliens living there as well. The Oscar was theirs to lose. Another good thing I found about the movie was the orchestral score that James Horner did. Horner had won an Oscar in 1997 for the music in Cameron's other megahit Titanic, and for this film he focuses on a score that ranges from the subtle to the bombastic with the drums being the major instruments. The action is also quite thrilling, but if Cameron would only focus on making the characters more likable then I could relate to them much more, like them much more and worry about them when the awesome final battle comes which by the way, is has an incredible sound mix to it.

With an awful plot, bad writing, decent acting, a subtle eco-message but great visual effects and great score, Avatar is a feast for any action lover and even film-lover, but for me it wasn't as blazingly crazy as a film it was. Maybe I should've seen it in 3D...

Rating: **1/2 out of ****