Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

Let’s talk about James Cameron’s Avatar. If you’re looking for a straight-up review, here’s what you really need to know. This movie is going to make a billion kajillion dollars, and deservedly so. It’s got action, romance, stunning special effects, and a pretty good story, too. Go see it. You won’t come away disappointed. What I’m really interested in is what you won’t find in most (if any) of the copious reviews, namely, a discussion of the points at which the movie either succeeds brilliantly or fails miserably.

On the brilliant side, you’ve got the special effects. Most reviews acknowledge that these are “beautiful,” “amazing,” and even a few might say, “ground-breaking,” but these words don’t really capture the scope of what Cameron has accomplished here. Avatar gives us an alien world so fully realized and an alien civilization so meticulously rendered that you can almost believe they’re real. More importantly, you can get behind them as protagonists. Cooking up a convincing main character in a computer is extremely difficult. I cannot emphasize that enough. Yet Cameron pulls it off without a hitch. Cameron loves to pull out for long, sweeping shots to show off the lush world of Pandora, a place of fantastic glowing trees and floating mountains. Yes, this world pops off the screen in such vividness that 3D glasses seem redundant, and it’s very impressive. But what’s even more ground-breaking is that Cameron’s effects are just as amazing in a simple close-up, as they reveal the tiny twitches and tell-tale signs of individuality that make me believe these non-humans have feelings. If the effects hadn’t been convincing on this level then the entire movie would have been a failure. Instead, Avatar has given us visual effects that, like Terminator 2 and Titanic before it, will change the way films are made.

Now then. Where does Avatar fail? The incessant previews and commercials for this movie give the misleading impression that you’re in for a Michael Bay-ish orgy of explosions and military paraphilia. Thankfully, Cameron is more thoughtful. When things eventually do start blowing up, it all happens for good reason, and the pace is decidedly slower than anything you’ll find in Transformers 2. The movie doesn’t want to be a standard action flick. Nor does it want to be a love story, as so many reviewers mistakenly believe. The love story happens in a way that doesn’t feel forced or stupid, which is all I really wanted from it. The love angle is an important part of the film, but it’s not the point.

The point is rebirth, and here’s where Avatar slips. I don’t think I’m entering spoiler territory by saying that the movie comes down to our hero, Jake Sully, having to choose between the Na’vi world he’s come to love, or the human military that he’s sworn to serve. The problem is that this isn’t really much of a choice. Again, I don’t want to rehash the plot, so I’ll just skip to the executive summary. Jake’s choice in this movie boils down to maintaining his loyalty to a pig-headed human military, a dying home world, his crippled body, and his empty life, or switching sides to defend the bioluminescent wonderland that has re-introduced him to strength, virility, virtue, and, oh yeah, true love. Poor Charlie! Tough decision!

Avatar is about as nuanced in its morality as FernGully. If you want shades of gray, I suggest you go to the paint store. Cameron borrows the friendliest bits of New Age-influenced Native American lore while giving us absolutely no reason to sympathize with those dying Earthlings. The only morally ambiguous characters in the entire movie are the scientists, and this I find very interesting.

James Cameron’s last sci-fi outing was a little movie called Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? Like Avatar, it’s a straightforward good-versus-evil action movie, but there are some notable points of moral ambiguity. John Connor isn’t exactly on great terms with his paranoid, survivalist mother, at least until the liquid metal murder machine shows up. Sarah Connor must put her trust in something that had previously tried to kill her, and once this trust is established, she must betray it by helping the T-800 to self-destruct. You’ve also got Miles Dyson, the scientific genius who will soon invent artificial intelligence. All Miles wanted was a computer chip that would make the world a better place for his children. He certainly didn’t set out to create a cybernetic intelligence that would trigger a nuclear holocaust. Confronted with the evidence of where his research will lead, he resolves to stop his work and destroy the Cyberdyne facility. As he sits in the facility, mortally wounded from a fire fight and gasping his last breaths, he pulls the trigger and obliterates his life’s work. His last act in life is to destroy virtually everything he has ever created. Miles Dyson sits at a truly morally gray point in the film’s world, and in the end he chooses to make the noblest sacrifice imaginable. This is easily one of the film’s best moments.

Avatar has scientists, too, lead by Sigourney Weaver. The scientists are funded by the evil human military but have generally pure intentions regarding the Na’vi (education, cultural exchange, and the scientific understanding of a wholly alien race). As such, the scientists’ position in the story is the only morally ambiguous one: their good intentions are funded by guns and steel. It’s a really interesting conflict of interest, but the film doesn’t address it at all. Why is the military even tolerating this unfathomably expensive program of biogenetically engineered missionaries? How did this small group of scientists get this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in the first place? Sigourney Weaver isn’t given much to work with, but she does a great job with every syllable of it. One wonders how much better this movie might have been if she got a little more attention.

If I had to compress the above into a single sentence, it’d be this: Avatar paints a beautiful, engaging picture with really, really broad strokes.