Avatar : Big Jim's blue movie with a green message
Being dubbed Dancing with Smurfs has rather unfairly reduced the efforts of James Cameron to a punny headline. But it has also rather successfully nailed the story line that this most closely resembles. And by that I mean the Kevin Costner epic rather than the rather obscure Belgian films about cyan coloured cartoon gnomes.
At the heart of Avatar is a fighting man's attempts to integrate with an indigenous species - the Na'vi, ten foot tall tree huggers who live on the planet Pandora - until he is won over so entirely by their lore, their respect for the land and by a particularly feisty female member of the clan that he abandons his mission and takes up arms against his own kind.
This is not the only plot that Cameron appears to have been inspired by. However, given the fact the humans, who have already wrecked their own world, are intent on displacing the Na'vi and destroying their home in order to get at a mineral so rare it doesn't exist on earth (called unobtainium, a gag so bad it would give Goscinny and Uderzo pause), possibly he felt it only appropriate that he plunder as many sources as possible.
There are scenes that call to mind everything from Dances to Fern Gully, Last of the Mohicans, Aliens, The Wizard of Oz, Apocalypse Now, The Lost World, the cringingly awful group mosh scene from Matrix Reloaded and even Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders of Pern.
But Titanic hardly had an original plot line and what matters most about Avatar, even more than its green agenda, was also Titanic's chief selling point - its stunning visuals.
You can see exactly where Cameron has spent an estimated 14 years and hundreds of millions of dollars. The combination of performance capture and 3D gives the film an extraordinary depth and the alien creatures a realism that allows even the most nuanced emotions to show through.
It is richly imaginative with Cameron taking colours and cues from the other-worldliness of the ocean depths that he has explored obsessively on his expeditions to the Bismarck and the Titanic, and for environmental documentaries.
But all this ethereal loveliness leads up to a final flurry of action sequences that out gun (and out bow and arrow) Michael Bay.
The imagery is sometimes playful and at other times haunting, particularly when a sacred tree topples as symbolically as the World Trade Centre towers, or when a horse-like creature writhes in flames as the Na'vi make a stand against the superior weapons, and attitude, of the humans (and for that read Americans).
But there are also other more subtle CGI triumphs. The main protagonist, Jake (Sam Worthington), is a former marine who is now wheelchair bound. As much care has been taken to make his legs look realistically withered as has been lavished on the big set pieces.
Ironically, while Cameron has succeeded in three dimensions his characterizations often feel only two dimensional, in spite of the presence of the peerless Sigourney Weaver and the appealing Aussie charm of Worthington. Giovanni Ribisi, as the company man who gives the go ahead for the destructive 'dozers to move in, is given little to work with while Stephen Lang, as the humans' head of security Col Miles Quaritch, is reduced to a movie stereotype of (virtual) scenery-chewing military aggression and arrogance, lacking only a villain's moustache to twirl.
I was never less then entertained but after being unavoidably delayed (on the M6) and missing the first 25 minutes of the movie, I felt this accidental editing of its demanding 162 minute running time possibly made it a more pleasurable experience.
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Paul Cole - Paul Cole - Lost, Torchwood, Sci-fi, Dr Who and anything worth getting the Anorak on for
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Daniel Smith - Would-be scientist who can't add up. Believes Sisko is the best captain and Ronald D Moore is some sort of god.
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