James Cameron's "Avatar" is an astronomically explosive experience of a movie. It is also far more explosively imaginative when dealing with a fictional planet called Pandora than with some rudimentary military grunts and businessmen whose vested interest in Pandora is not in its sensual beauty or florid environments but, rather, what they can mine from that planet. Putting it plainly, those with financial considerations don't deserve Pandora.
Disabled Marine vet, Jake (Sam Worthington), is being used as a substitute for his deceased twin brother to assume the body of an avatar and explore the delicate, dangerous jungles of Pandora - a planet on the Alpha Centauri star system. Jake is told right from the start by a corporate stooge (Giovanni Ribisi) from RDA, known as Resources Development Administration, that the purpose behind Pandora is to mine it for a precious mineral called unobtanium. The focus is for Jake to inhabit a human-hybrid, extremely tall blue-skinned creature from the N'avi tribe (the avatar) and get the tribe to relocate to a different part of the planet so the mineral can be obtained. Further stipulating these orders is Marine Colonel Miles Quaritch (proudly battle-scarred and formidable villain played by Stephen Lang) who says that if the N'avi do not move away, a firefight will be incurred. So corporate and military forces make no bones about annihilating with missiles and explosives on a tribe armed only with bows and arrows.
The N'avi are quite an extraordinary tribe of 12-foot giants who are at one with nature (the Native American allegory is unmistakable). They have many precious bioluminescent flora and fauna in this amazing biosphere of floating rocks with springs of water, and many dangerous creatures such as predatory dragon-like banshees who fly across the skies and waterways - the N'avi require a bonding with the rider that is also a rite of passage. There is also a Tree of Voices that contains the ancestral voices of the past, the Hometree which is housed where the large deposit of the precious mineral of unobtanium exists, and The Tree of Souls where one's consciousness can be transmitted from one organism to another. Such intoxicating beauty should not be destroyed or messed with.
"Avatar" also contains a rather mute love story between Jake's avatar (claiming rather humorously to be with the Jarhead Clan!) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who is a fierce warrior in her own right and daughter of the Omaticaya clan (clearly a real clan in this environment which is inhospitable to humans). I was never really convinced by this love story but it doesn't hurt the film. "Avatar" is at its best during the exploration of Pandora and these are sights and sounds I've never seen in the movies before. A combination of dark and bright turquoise colors that kept me so absorbed that I wanted to visit this mysterious moon and soak it all in. Less riveting are the cliches of the military wanting to demolish something so beautiful if necessary - it leads to an elaborate action climax that is still something to behold and has real-world politics written all over it (Iraq, for one, and no doubt the plight of the Native Americans in USA). Still, the Colonel is just pure evil, thinking with his head not his heart. War is still something of an answer in movies like this coming from an American military and, though I understand how it leads to violence, it is still cliche ridden.
Nevertheless, "Avatar" has too much to recommend and I found it smoothly compelling in all its 162 minutes. From a wunderkind director like James Cameron, he can still craft watchable, imaginative entertainment better than most. Despite all the cliches and somewhat half-hearted love story, "Avatar" is often a wonder to behold. Nothing half-hearted about the depiction of this lovely world of Pandora.
