Avatar

Despite taking a lengthy break from feature fiction filmmaking that puts the gap between Titanic and his latest movie at twelve years, self-proclaimed "King of the World" James Cameron hasn't forgotten any of his old tricks, but he hasn't exactly learned any new ones either. The strengths and weaknesses of Avatar, the hugely expensive sci-fi epic he's been planning for over fifteen years, majestically mirror the strengths and weaknesses of Titanic, which was marred by a sloppy script and some ham-fisted acting, but ultimately saved by Cameron's stunning ability to craft an engaging sensory experience.

Avatar is a veritable treasure trove of visual goodies, boasting some of the most accomplished special effects ever committed to celluloid, but it is also a clumsy story populated with mostly awful acting and a rusty collection of clichés that try to pass for dialogue. The Cameron of today looks and sounds a lot like the Cameron of twelve years ago, except now he's working with 3D technology and blowing up trees instead of sinking a boat.

Returning to the science fiction genre for the first time since his brilliantly bombastic 1991 sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Cameron sets his focus on paralyzed ex-marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington, one of the main performers responsible for that aforementioned awful acting), who travels to an alien moon called Pandora, where a greedy corporation has teamed up with the trigger-happy military to mine a valuable resource.

Apparently, Earth has fallen into disrepair over the last hundred years or so (the story is set in the 22nd century) and Pandora offers a mineral referred to as Unobtainium (an actual term that is used to jokingly describe any material that is heavily desired, but incredibly rare) that sells for a lot of money back home. Eager to cash in, the greedy corporation known as RDA sets up shop on Pandora and begins searching for rich deposits of Unobtainium. The only snag in their plan is that the lushly forested moon has an indigenous population known as the Na'Vi, a group of twelve-foot-tall blue aliens with lanky features and a very serious love for nature.

Jake's job is to virtually inhabit a manufactured Na'Vi body modelled just for him. This will be his avatar and his way of making friends with the Na'Vi, a move that will hopefully allow the humans to convince the Na'Vi that they must relocate or suffer a horrible death. RDA has discovered that the greatest wealth of Unobtainium is buried underneath the Na'Vi village and they've decided that a "relocate or die" policy is best. So Jake enters his avatar body and runs off to make new friends.

Matters are made considerably more complicated when Jake meets Neytiri, a sweet and powerful female Na'Vi with whom he quickly develops a romantic relationship. Before long, Jake is seeing the Na'Vi as the heroes of this story and those bloodthirsty humans as the villains. The Na'Vi's plight can be seen as a thinly veiled metaphor for a number of historical experiences, especially that of the North American Aboriginal peoples. Since Cameron kicks subtlety to the curb right from the start, the narrative trajectory is rather obvious from the moment that we are introduced to the Na'Vi.

Once the pieces are in place, Cameron wastes no time making the good guys look really good and the bad guys look really bad. The humans have some nice scientists who actually care about the Na'Vi, but RDA and the military are represented by a soulless executive (Giovanni Ribisi, more ridiculous than intimidating) and a beefy colonel (Stephen Lang, all testosterone and scenery-chewing silliness). When the villains are so stiffly one-dimensional (in a 3D movie, no less!), it's pretty easy to cheer for the heroes, except that cheering for Jake is a pretty rotten alternative.

Worthington exhibits the same inability to mask his Australian accent that he did in last summer's Terminator Salvation, which wouldn't be such an issue if the guy ever managed to deliver a line with confidence and charisma. It's tough to stay attentive whenever Worthington speaks. His sleepy line deliveries are severely underwhelming, as if he's perpetually auditioning for a role he doesn't deserve. Jake's journey is impossible to connect with on an emotional level and I blame the majority of that shortcoming on Worthington's performance.

But as he has done so often in the past, Cameron reserves his sole fantastic character for a woman. As the other half of the romantic plot, Zoe Saldana brings a fascinating, deeply felt spirit to the role of Neytiri. Considering her entire performance is done using motion capture technology (her physical actions and recorded voice work are completely mapped over using state-of-the-art CGI), it is astonishing how strongly Saldana pushes through the technology and creates a beautiful character with genuine soul.

Neytiri is one of the greatest CGI characters I have ever seen and that Saldana's acting abilities match the groundbreaking effects work so seamlessly is one of Avatar's greatest pleasures. For every bad word I can conjure to describe Worthington's performance, I can think of ten glowing ones to describe Saldana's work. She is breathtaking in every moment that she appears on screen and she ends up shouldering the entire emotional weight of the story.

Cameron has long since shown an interest in strong women doing extraordinary things and he continues the trend with Neytiri. Casting Worthington was a colossal mistake, but casting Saldana was a stroke of genius. And in those two casting decisions exists a microcosm of the filmmaking enigma that is James Cameron. He can no longer deliver the good without the bad, nor the bad without the good. His strengths and weaknesses have become endlessly entwined, a marriage of triumphs and stumbles that demands attention.

Avatar is a movie stuffed with flaws, but the sheer joy of watching Cameron direct large-scale action sequences on a massive budget is difficult to ignore. The futuristic military come equipped with loads of advanced weaponry, including a gigantic mechanical suit that will remind Cameron fans of the Power Loader that Ripley famously used to battle the Queen in Cameron's crowning achievement, the 1986 sequel Aliens. The military might is all about brute force, while the nature-obsessed Na'Vi represent a more archaic approach to doing battle.

But even though they fight with bows and arrows and spears, the Na'Vi know how to put up a fight. Riding on the backs of winged beasts that may just be the greatest fictional pets ever imagined, the Na'Vi prove that their warrior sensibilities can best the abilities of the humans, who must rely on technology to get the job done. Cameron shoots every action sequence on such an impressive scale and with such boisterous bravado that it is relatively easy to feel the adrenaline rush of excitement even in the midst of such a dramatically impotent story. Nobody delivers blockbuster brawn like he does.

Due to the efforts of Cameron, Saldana, cinematographer Mauro Fiore, and the effects team at Weta Digital, Avatar is a success. But Cameron plays the role of both hero and villain in his own story, using his visual imagination and directorial determination to build the movie up, while simultaneously stripping it down with his achingly predictable writing. The presence of James Horner's intrusive, irritatingly generic score is another blemish on the finished product.

Few filmmakers could rescue their movie from such a mountain of flaws and make the mixture of positive and negative so effectively intriguing, but Cameron pulls off another amazing feat with Avatar. Somehow, all of that visual magic punctuated by Saldana's enchanting performance adds up to a movie that emerges victorious. It may be beaten and bloody, bruised and broken, but it still escapes the narrative rubble standing tall and proud. What a glorious mess, what an eccentric endeavour, so unique, so redundant, so clumsily contradictory, all packaged and delivered by no less than the King of the World.