Note: It wasn't my intention to write a movie review of Avatar, I recently attended a screening in order to put into context my review of Avatar the video game and the Augmented Reality-enabled toys while also gaining research on other potential tech-related stories, but interest in Avatar has reached an all-time high, film reviewers across the industry are breaking Fox's embargo and publishing their reviews a week earlier. That along with some requests from readers on Twitter has inspired me to write one anyway. Avatar hits theatres on December 18th and is presented in 3D. 

CTV's film critic Richard Crouse has his review posted online too, you can read it here. 

With Avatar James Cameron performs an astonishing balance, teetering delicately through an array of bold elements that would easily drag any other film down into self-mockery. 3D effects, blue-skinned cat people, macho marines, noble natives, and an environmental plot involving a threatened rainforest all seem like perfectly reasonable pitfalls for a movie to fall into (indeed that’s exactly where the video game went), and yet with surprising skill Cameron’s tale rises above, delivering a perceptive, thoughtful adventure about the limits we’ll reach if we push ourselves, both good and bad.

Our survival instinct is a strong force. When our lives are threatened we’re willing to do just about anything to preserve it, something that comes up again and again in Avatar. The RDA Corporation uses it as a rationale for bulldozing its way through the rainforests of Pandora, an untouched moon rich in unique mineral deposits. Company executives make it clear that without these deposits, without the profits they bring to appease shareholders, the corporation will fail.

The military, hired to quash the moon’s untamed wildlife, use it to motivate its troops. As squads of soldiers arrive they are told they must enter a hostile state of mind as every plant, creature, and native in the forest is ready to kill them in an instant.

It’s also in the story’s unlikely hero, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington). Unlikely because he’s a marine who has lost the use of his legs and his initial interest is merely to get back into the fight and serve again. He gets his chance through the company’s science division where a unique genome he carries makes him a candidate to share an alien body. Although Pandora’s natives are incredibly tall, tailed, blue-skinned, and rather feline in nature, they bear a strong enough resemblance with humans that new technology can allow a person’s consciousness to leave and enter into that of a Na’vi.

The idea of being able to upload and download yourself from one body to another is the movie’s most intriguing and original idea. Jake lays down into a special bed and falls asleep only to immediately wake-up as a Na’vi. His human body rests while he runs around amongst the trees and then when he falls asleep he awakens back as a human. The two bodies get their rest, but Jake’s consciousness remains always awake, challenging his sanity and coping skills.

The science division is run by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) who doesn’t really care about the company’s mining interests and instead is driven to use their great technical resources to study the moon for breakthrough discoveries. In return the company doesn’t care about her interests, but supports her because breakthroughs can often be profitable and there’s hope that she might find a diplomatic way to move the Na’vi away from those lucrative mineral deposits.

Diplomacy has a problem, of course. The Na’vi have no intention of leaving their sacred homes and they find Augustine’s researchers rather boring. They are a warrior society and so it’s Jake, a marine, that they find compelling instead and so his relationship with them becomes the focus of everyone’s interests as they try to leverage him towards their own goals.

If you saw the trailer and thought that Avatar might be an action film, you may be disappointed to learn that most of the movie follows Jake’s relationship with the Na’vi. To him it’s like joining the military all over again as they have their own ranks, status, and system of physical challenges, the very thing he thrives on.

Cameron knows how to do action extremely well and here he uses his skills to give these training moments a physicality that makes them engaging as Jake learns to ride various beasts and accomplish death-defying tasks, while keeping the movie centred on his growing relationship with his blue-skinned comrades. It’s a tribute to Worthington and Zoe Saldana who plays Jake’s Na’vi trainer Neytiri that you actually feel a part of their group and can experience the way they enjoy each other’s company.

Again, these scenes could have easily become laughable, but Cameron manages to keep an even keel, showing his characters enjoying each other through their interaction with the world around them. Although he has blue, fairie-like characters in his movie, he stays away from any idea of magical powers or supernatural sentiment. There are spiritual expressions of interconnectivity and an energy that runs through everything, but it’s all crafted with actual ideas that tie back to the people themselves.

Avatar is an extraordinary special effects film, but not in the usual blockbuster manner of ear-shattering pyrotechnics and epic displays of destruction. Top effects companies Weta, ILM, Stan Winston Studios, and Giant Inc. have instead gone to a new end of the barometer by creating a luminous nature film that dazzles with a sense of wonder and surprise. A great deal of the movie spends its time enjoying the inventive wildlife, from beautiful plants that react in surprising ways to small insects and larger animals that seem to emanate power and emotion. When night falls the forest comes alive with dazzling luminosity, creating a special effects spectacle unlike any in other movies.

Avatar is presented in 3D and while there are many scenes that provide neat effects and camera movements, particularly ones involving holographic touchscreen displays and lab stations, to play with depth and perception in a creative manner, it quickly becomes lost compared to all the other visual effects on the screen and really, doesn’t play enough of a role to be needed.

One of the issues with a movie heavy with computer-generated imagery is that the acting can feel disjointed and this is, again, something Cameron avoids. Who else is better suited to slip into a CGI world than Sigourney Weaver? She has a few effects-enabled appearances that are the most convincing I’ve ever seen. As the movie’s villains, Stephen Lang plays the ageing Duke Nukem-styled Colonel Qauritch with believable bullying severity while Giovanni Ribisi has the hapless tasks of being a corporate flack and doing so with burning intolerance.

As you must surely guess, the movie builds towards an inevitable confrontation, leading to a finale that most-certainly brings the epic battle action fans will be looking for, but without any sense of glory or celebration. The Na’vi fight with bows and arrows while the 22nd century military has gunships, exoskeletons, and tanks, bringing about a sense of atrocity to explosions and gunfire.

As I write this I find I’m still uncertain how I feel about the ending, which I expect might be the weakest point in the film for many. Avatar may deal with serious issues, but it is in the end an adventure story and like many finds a resolution that serves our fantasies better than the issues at hand.