Reel Critic; Avatar - 1/14/10

Given the technical ground broken by James Cameron’s newest release, it is difficult to leave the theater unimpressed by the special effects: surprising stereoscopic filming advances leave the gimmicks of the last decade’s 3-D craze to be lost in a shimmering wake of striking color and subtle depth.

However, despite the on-screen eye-candy of the film’s 162-minute runtime, it is clear that the blockbuster’s success depends upon more than visual titillation.  After 15 years in production, the director of “Terminator” and “Titanic” has learned to avoid simply making a 3-D movie, and begun to use his medium in a new way.

The story is not a new one: a stranger comes to a foreign land with a façade of friendliness, while actually holding an ulterior motive and ends up tied in knots of introspection and conflicting loyalties.

In this case, the stranger is Jake Sully, a crippled ex-marine; the strange land is Pandora, where he is sent on a semi-biological, semi-militant and semi-commercial mission in the place of his recently deceased scientist brother.

Using the technology granted by the futuristic setting, Jake is able to move about the planet and among the native Pandorans in a part-human, part-Na’vi body.

The greatest strength of Cameron’s writing is perhaps contained in this seamless fusion, as Jake is dynamic in both race and character.

With effective and poignant narration, Cameron manages to build a relationship between the main character and the audience without much effort.

This is done initially using Jake’s voiceover, and later naturally segues into video-blog narration.

With such heavy emphasis on technology, this direct interface between Jake and the audience does a surprising amount to ground the story.

Considering the frequent shifts between the delightful and fantastic Na’vi world, the scientists’ environmentally-centered agenda and the ruthless actions of a faceless corporation, the human element necessary to a successful piece of science fiction could have easily fallen by the wayside.

Cameron is to be congratulated, not only for preserving the appealing relatability of the human species, but for the creation of an alien race that champions the defining qualities of the human spirit without caricature.

At the same time, the Na’vi do not seem to be carbon copies of a generic tribal ideal: they are distinct in their own right, with customs and reactions both carefully and subtly crafted to realize a collective identity.

While these undoubtedly invite familiar parallels, their construction implies a self-cognizance; however, with the use of stereoscopic filming to produce dazzling scenery and effects, the story’s message embraces the necessary human quality of the aliens and becomes better for it.

Had Cameron been wary of the opportunities offered by three-dimensional filming, his reward would have been a limping self-conscious compromise, leaving promise of cinematic breakthrough for some other film yet to come. Instead, diving headfirst into the altered medium and plumbing the depths of its possibility, Cameron emerges with a harvest of stirring beauty and visual splendor that continuously complements without once detracting from the entirety of the work.

Moreover, had he developed the Na’vi with constant fear of mimicking man, it would have made them strange and irreconcilable, and a subsequent failure of the main character’s purpose. It would have blurred the line between the species to the point of natural and inevitable crossover.

The work is not without fault, however. Certain elements clearly need development, such as the character of Nitiri, the narrative’s main heroine.

The ultimate romance has the quality of the unavoidable, as is evident from her first appearance to save Jake’s life. But its development depends too heavily on this expectation, and one wonders if it was avoided or simply overlooked.

Her character also feels disappointingly shallow at times, perhaps for lack of comparison given the small number of female characters within her society. The corporate characters, headed by Parker Selfridge, seem at times overwrought to the point of cliché; it is forgivable, however, considering a need for despicable counterpoint to the almost untouchable character of the Pandoran world.

But none of these faults lie at the heart of the film’s focus, and thus do not detract from its core integrity. Its beauty is undeniable, but it is most certainly not a movie for everyone. It has much to offer, but for some it will not be enough. This reviewer will give it four of five stars, with the strong recommendation to see it in 3-D.