Avatar: A feast for the eyes – but not for the mind

James Cameron's film Avatar, his first full-scale movie since 1997's Titanic, is the most expensive film ever made and the buzz about it has been relentless thanks to the state-of-the-art 3D technology Cameron spent much of his rumoured $300 million budget on.

Days after its world premiere in London last Thursday, Avatar is already up for four nominations at the Golden Globes, including best director and best drama, raising hopes for the Oscars.

Yet while the film works on a visual level, its script is disappointingly one-dimensional and many critics have found the film's environmental message laboured and unsubtle.
 
Set in 2154, Avatar tells the story of Jake Sully (Australian actor Sam Worthington), a paraplegic Marine, who is sent to infiltrate and win the trust of the Na'vi, a race of 10-feet-tall, blue-skinned humanoids.

The Na'vi are the natives of Pandora, a planet containing a valuable mineral. Because Pandora's atmosphere is toxic, humans must venture out in the form of avatars - Na'vi lookalikes that have been grown organically. The avatars are mind-controlled by their operators, who remain in a trance-like state back on board their ship.
 
When Sully is rescued by the warrior princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and embraced by her Na'vi clan, he must choose between this peaceful race and the hawkish mission of Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who wants to uproot the Na'vi in order to mine their land.
 
As promised, after four years of post-production, Avatar is a visual tour de force - its psychedelic 3D landscapes, phantasmagorical Garden of Eden-style rainforests and mind-boggling menagerie of alien life-forms are truly spectacular. Cameron reportedly conceived the idea for Avatar in 1995 and then waited a decade for the technology to catch up with his dream.
 
But unlike Cameron's engaging and ground-breaking scripts for Terminators 1 and 2 and Aliens, with Avatar the storyline and character development play a definite second fiddle to the spectacle. Although the 163 minutes pass enjoyably, cinema-goers are far more likely to come out talking about what they have seen rather than quoting instantly classic sound-bites.
 
Cameron is known for his iconic screen heroines such as Aliens' Ellen Ripley and Terminator's Sarah Connor. There are strong women characters in Avatar too - in the form of Zoe Saldana's warrior Neytiri, Sigourney Weaver's chain-smoking botanist Grace Augustine and Michelle Rodriguez's maverick pilot Trudy Chacon. But in the idealised world of Pandora, women - although athletic and warrior-like - are ultimately confined to a spiritual role while the men take on the political jobs.
 
In his avatar form on Pandora, the wheelchair-bound Sully can walk again. But before he gets used to his new agile Na'vi body he is just like the teenage boys who are arguably the film's core demographic - tall, clumsy and gangly. "You are like a baby, an infant!" hisses Neytiri - who is part Catwoman, part Dusky Maiden - after she saves his life.

For Cameron, the Na'vi - who live in harmony with nature wearing tribal-chic cornrows and spouting a hippyish brand of spirituality - are a more advanced form of race than human beings. They are in sharp contrast to the evil mining executives and the bigoted colonialist Commander Quaritch who urges his soldiers to "fight terror with terror". Hence the accusations of a heavy-handed environmental parable.
 
WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:
 
Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter: "What a glory Cameron has created for Jake to romp in, all in a crisp 3D realism. It's every fairy tale about flying dragons, magic plants, weirdly hypnotic creepy-crawlies and feral dogs rolled up into a rain forest with a highly advanced spiritual design. It seems - although the scientists led by Sigourney Weaver's top doc have barely scratched the surface - a flow of energy ripples through the roots of trees and the spores of the plants, which the Na'vi know how to tap into."
 
Chris Hewitt, Empire: "As much as technology aids and defines Avatar, it's also a love letter to humanity and the glory of mother nature. The analogy with the Vietnam and Iraq wars is obvious, but Cameron, in siding with the insurgents (hardly an all-American move, but then again he is Canadian), is also asking fairly complex questions about what it means to be human." (Verdict: five stars out of five, assuming you wear the 3-D glasses)
 
Todd McCarthy, Variety: "Thematically, the film plays too simplistically into stereotypical evil-white-empire/virtuous-native cliches, especially since the invaders are presumably on an environmental rescue mission on behalf of the entire world, not just the US. [The] script is rooted very much in a contemporary eco-green mindset, which makes its positions and the sympathies it encourages entirely predictable and unchallenging... On an experimential level, however, Avatar is all-enveloping and transporting." (Verdict: 4.5/5 stars)
 
Richard Corliss, Time magazine: "Cameron has devised a romance similar to Titanic's - a grunt falls in love with a princess - but this time with far more emotive power. Instead of embracing on a ship's prow, Sully and Neyfiri ride their banshee steeds in ecstatic communion across the Pandoran sky. Think of them as the prince and princess of the world... But unlike the tryst between DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, this love affair has consequences. It is not a footnote to history; it makes history, as two species merge to save a planet."
 
Nick Curtis, Evening Standard: "Although Cameron has gestated this film for 20 years, some may dislike its apparently fashionable ecological bent. Some may decry its broad narrative and emotions, though that didn't hurt Titanic. But what really matters is that Cameron has raised the visual bar by several notches, and has produced a stirring, spectacular story. As a friend said on leaving: 'You'll never want to watch 2D again'." (Verdict: 4/5 stars)
 
Andrew Pulver, the Guardian: "Avatar tries to have it both ways, to be preachy and a thrill-ride at the same time. I can't in all honesty say it pulls it off – it's baggy, longwinded and, for all the light-speed imagery, just not quick on its feet. Cameron used to be the tautest film-maker around, but he just got slack." (Verdict: 2/5 stars) ·