“Avatar” (2009)

Though it may seem obvious to compare James Cameron with the likes of fellow science fiction auteurs Steven Spielberg and George Lucas I see the writer/director/producer/mini-mogul more in terms of an older film making tradition.  Cameron’s desire to turn his every film into an event, raising the special effects bar to the point where a paradigmatic shift in cinematic aesthetics is achieved, is the stuff of Cecil B de Mille or David O. Selznick.  His simple, melodramatic narratives, with their black and white morality, crystal clear if not heavy handed messages, are also a throw back to Hollywood’s golden age.  If “Titanic” was the “Gone With the Wind” of its day, a populist success that transcended the box office, becoming a cultural reference point, a comparison with de Mille’s “The Ten Commandments” is also not entirely out of order, the CGI work involved in the sinking of the ship being the equivalent of CB’s parting of the Red Sea.

“Avatar” certainly gets closer to its predecessor from 12 years ago than Selznick was ever able to achieve with any of his attempts to replicate the saga of Rhett and Scarlet.  Returning to his science fiction roots, Cameron fashions an allegory about both environmental despoilment and post 9/11 American foreign policy.  That he comes down on the side of the indigenous, against corporate and imperialist exploitation is in someways remarkable given that “Avatar” is itself, as the most expensive film ever made, an exemplar of capitalistic excess.

There is a touch of the Ewoks vs the Empire in the story of a rapacious mining company, backed by military might, who come to the planet of Pandora to plunder natural resources at the expense of the Na’vi, the highly intelligent if technologically underdeveloped local inhabitants.  Lead character Jack Sully is a paraplegic career marine who is recruited to replace his deceased brother in a scientific project to both study and win over the Na’vi, one that involves the use of especially created hybrid beings that allow humans to pose by proxy as the giant blue creatures.  When he is secretly recruited by the ranking officer - a battle scared Colonel Quaritch - to gather intelligence for a potential all out assault on the Na’vi sacred sites the internal conflict within Sully mirrors the wider ethical issues involved in the rape of the planet.

Cameron’s dramaturgy has not achieved added levels of subtlety during his film making hiatus.  Sully’s romance with a Na’vi princess who discovers she’s got a taste for the rough suffers from the same predictability and clunky dialogue that bedevilled the “Titanic” lovers.  At the same time the director retains his mastery of the visual and the set piece, the digital creation of an entirely new, credible environment providing even the most cynical viewer with a fresh experience and leading to some heart stopping chase and action sequences.  That the climactic fight owes a thing or two to that in “Aliens” in no way detracts from its excitement.

The acting is never that much of a concern in Cameron’s films and “Avatar” isn’t an exception to the rule.  It is well cast and unfussily performed. Sigourney Weaver plays the part of the chief scientist as though she has been studying alien life forms for thirty years - which, of course, she has - and Michelle Rodriguez trots out her slightly dykey, stock tough girl characterisation for umpteenth time.  Sam Worthington does his job in the lead role of Sully and Stephen Lang chews the scenery appropriately as the one dimensional Quaritch.  Best of all is Zoe Saldana as Sully’s Na’vi lover Neytiri, delivering the most warm performance of the movie from inside a motion capture suit.  The part nicely complements her other iconic sci fi role from earlier in the year: that of Uhura in “Star Trek”.

While it hardly deserves any but the most populist awards “Avatar” is a difficult film to fault on its own terms.  James Cameron’s epic proves worth the wait and you cannot say that of many blockbusters.