Borrowed a friend’s Avatar DVD and frankly I wish she had paid me for my time. 2 1/2 hours of Dances With wolves IN SPACE!!! crossed with the graphics engine from Far Cry 2 churning furiously behind the blandest, most cliched white-man-meets-hot-alien-babe plot since James T. Kirk put the Captain’s Log whatever green-skinned B-list starlet needed cabfare that week. The visual fx and strong performances by the supporting cast made it look better than it actually was, but once the wow factor of giant blue spacekitties and flying dinosaurs wore off, the threadbare plot elements and dialogue that clunked like lead weights were brought into sharp relief like the knees in a hobo’s pants. The only character that made any kind of impression on me was the kill-happy Colonel Quaritch, whom I would like to nominate as this decade’s new Chuck Norris. Honestly, if the movie was all about him and his raw, manly badassery, I’d go without rent just to buy a Blu-Ray player and wear the DVD down to a puddle watching it every day. But of course, this being James Cameron’s pet project of a Gary-Stu self insert Anvillicious eco-fantasy, the villains have to be cartoonishly evil while the oh-so-perfect peaceful aliens are portrayed as having the only correct point of view, without any shades of gray or any middle ground to reach. If you’re not a Na’vi, avatar, or Na’vi sympathetic scientist, prepare to get pwned by a Deus Ex Gaia that just sweeps in out of nowhere in the final reel.
What’s worse, the final shooting script for Avatar contains several pages of fleshing-out backstory that was cut from the film for time, scenes which would have helped fill in the blanks as to why it was so important to mine the miracle mineral unobtanium, the event that led to the school being closed and the open hostilities between the Na’vi and the mining company, the fact that the Na’Vi were running guerilla raids on RDA property, and so on. What could have been a great miniseries or even an hour long dramatic series ends up playing like a press kit for its own franchise.
Final thought: A- for effects, D for plot, though when the sequel is inevitably made, hopefully Cameron will clear up some of these plot holes.