Avatar was made over a good part of last decade. This development time is clearly reflected in the visuals, which are still hard to beat and ensured its legendary box office. The action scenes are also spectacular: a shot of the helicopter armada to scale with Dragon flagship and the mining shuttle is breathtaking. However, everything else disappoints.
Jake Sully as a protagonist is technically a cripple in a wheelchair, yet acts no different to an able walker in his avatar form. Suddenly regaining motion doesn’t have a profound effect or generate internal conflict you would expect. In fact, Jake’s only character arc is going from a cripple and an outcast amongst humans to a Mighty Whitey savior of Na’vi. It’s not enough for him to just learn all their customs and become a rider: no, he has to gain the biggest flyer on the planet in an off-screen, anticlimactic way. Other characters are no better. Neytiri has no role in the story beyond being Jake’s mentor and love interest: their romance has little chemistry and her agreeing to mate for life with someone she knows for a couple of months is a WTF moment that is again pure Mighty Whitey wish fulfilment. Quaritch and Selfridge act well in their roles but have no characterisation beyond “badass immoral colonel” and “selfish uncaring executive” respectively. Trudy has few spoken lines and is more of a plot device and Grace’s only role is to deliver exposition and put up token resistance.
The plot is serviceable by itself, but fails on thematic level. It preaches against pillaging nature, displacing native cultures and urges living sustainably without relying on technology, but all of this is badly underwritten. Na’vi culture is a transparent stand-in for the Native American one, and the film fails to make an engaging case for leaving them alone when the Earth is apparently doomed without Pandora’s resources. There’s no clear push for social reform to temper consumption, reduce the birth rate or divide resources more-or-less equitably: you must live like Na’vi because their condition is already perfect and needs no technology, and if you cannot, you deserve to be doomed. It has little real-world relevance or staying power: in 20 years’ time, it will be consigned to film archives unless the sequels somehow gain in depth. Given that Cameron has already retconned several character deaths, I doubt it'll happen.
Once the effects fade, a mediocre blockbuster is revealed
Avatar was made over a good part of last decade. This development time is clearly reflected in the visuals, which are still hard to beat and ensured its legendary box office. The action scenes are also spectacular: a shot of the helicopter armada to scale with Dragon flagship and the mining shuttle is breathtaking. However, everything else disappoints.
Jake Sully as a protagonist is technically a cripple in a wheelchair, yet acts no different to an able walker in his avatar form. Suddenly regaining motion doesn’t have a profound effect or generate internal conflict you would expect. In fact, Jake’s only character arc is going from a cripple and an outcast amongst humans to a Mighty Whitey savior of Na’vi. It’s not enough for him to just learn all their customs and become a rider: no, he has to gain the biggest flyer on the planet in an off-screen, anticlimactic way. Other characters are no better. Neytiri has no role in the story beyond being Jake’s mentor and love interest: their romance has little chemistry and her agreeing to mate for life with someone she knows for a couple of months is a WTF moment that is again pure Mighty Whitey wish fulfilment. Quaritch and Selfridge act well in their roles but have no characterisation beyond “badass immoral colonel” and “selfish uncaring executive” respectively. Trudy has few spoken lines and is more of a plot device and Grace’s only role is to deliver exposition and put up token resistance.
The plot is serviceable by itself, but fails on thematic level. It preaches against pillaging nature, displacing native cultures and urges living sustainably without relying on technology, but all of this is badly underwritten. Na’vi culture is a transparent stand-in for the Native American one, and the film fails to make an engaging case for leaving them alone when the Earth is apparently doomed without Pandora’s resources. There’s no clear push for social reform to temper consumption, reduce the birth rate or divide resources more-or-less equitably: you must live like Na’vi because their condition is already perfect and needs no technology, and if you cannot, you deserve to be doomed. It has little real-world relevance or staying power: in 20 years’ time, it will be consigned to film archives unless the sequels somehow gain in depth. Given that Cameron has already retconned several character deaths, I doubt it'll happen.