A handicapped Space Marine From The Future joins a Crazy Scientific Project to allow him to Jack In to an Avatar and learn about the Na'vis and how they peacefully coexist on a World Wide Web.  Come with me as we explore the planet Pandora, where our actions create many ills and hardships, but also provide hope.  That, in a nutshell, is JAMES CAMERON'S  Avatar!, a movie 15 years in the making, back when these were cool code words for The Internet.  Pithy!

For a less NERD ATTACK (and less mean spirited) review of JAMES CAMERON'S Avatar!, peer over at my colleague's review:  James Cameron™'s Avatar® in IMAX® 3D (enjoy it with a Big Mac™!).

Having seen the commercials for JAMES CAMERON'S Avatar!, I had pretty much decided to avoid this specific marvel of screen engineering.  The commercials were lame and I was convinced that the movie could not be but lame as well.

Then a friend of mine guilted me into the movie by reminding me that I had hated the commercials for TIM BURTON'S Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a movie I ended up liking incredibly.  As I had a long boring weekday evening available, and the theater a few blocks away was actually playing it, I decided to give the movie a look.  And was pleasantly surprised.

I constantly heard from other people that I had to see the movie if only for the special effects.  And I will admit, the special effects are awesome.  The movie starts out with a jet powered version of the Centrifuge scene from STANLEY KUBRICK'S 2001: A Space Odyssey, with David walking around the circumference of the "gravity generating" centrifuge, or even RON HOWARD'S Apollo 13, with all it's floating about.  Tons of people on screen, floating about, bouncing about, opening doors to release people from cold sleep at all kinds of angles in a huge room in space, I mean it's beautiful.

The scenery was top drawer.  There were many times where I could easily forget that the plants and locations were computer generated.  They were lush and beautiful;  if the location generation pipeline and greenscreen procedures used in JAMES CAMERON'S Avatar! aren't too expensive, I can see this technique being used more and more (note, this is the same technique used in LARRY AND ANDY WACHOWSKI'S Speed Racer for all the sets).

The special effects were good... I'll even say they were quite evolutionary.  But they were no quantum leap that we were promised.  Heck, every scene with a human in a Gundam suit completely broke any suspension of disbelief I had built with the jittery job they did of effects integration.

The commercials did a horrible job of selling the movie, at least to me.  It looked like a cookie cutter Evil White Europeans Invade The New World And Kill Off All The Natives Because They Suck, movie, and I've already seen ARISTOMENIS TSIRBAS' Battle for Terra.  But like I said, I was pleasantly surprised.

From this point of the review forward, I'm going to assume you've seen the movie, or don't mind spoilers, as for me to explain going from "pleasantly surprised" to FAIL is going to take a few spoilers and a half.  You have been warned.

Unlike most Evil White Europeans Invade The New World And Kill Off All The Natives Beacuse They Suck movies, the "invaders" are given quite a bit of character development.  The marines aren't faceless thugs;  they're strong people who do as they are told who are intelligent, if a bit condescending to the newbies.  The Space Marine in a Wheelchair is shown to be an intelligent Marine, who knows his limits but is happy to work forward.  He's not closed minded, but he's not a Space Hippie, either.

The Science Team on the planet is shown to be very intelligent and quite a bit geeky.  They're likable and a bit manic, impressed with their technology's ability but obviously running against the clock.  You come to respect these futuristic computer nerds, trying to communicate and understand the Aliens of the world Pandora.

The Marine Colonel, who's job is to "keep everyone safe" actually turns out to be a nice guy.  He's protective, and more importantly he's a Marine;  he looks after his own.  Unless you're a left coast conspiracy nut, his request for the Space Marine to report tactical information he gets from his sorties into Cyberspace makes perfect sense:  if at any moment it comes down to decisive action to save the human colony, it would be the Marine Colonel's job to do so.

The Big Evil Corporate Conglomerate is big and evil, but they're paying big bucks for the Avatar project because, while Earth needs this planet's Unobtanium, they'd rather do it with a minimum of loss of life.  And besides, the Na'vi aren't using the Unobtanium, and it's not even a vital piece of their ecosystem.  If a mutual agreement could be created, Earth could get it's Unobtanium and the Navi could get just about whatever they want from the Humans.  (I imagine they accidentally cut the scene explaining that Unobtanium was the life force of the planet or whatever, making the Human's mining even more evil.)

All in all, for the first 2/3 of the movie, the characters are well developed, the Na'vi planet is explored, the people are delved into, and things are going just swimmingly.  The Space Marine gets his legs and the girl, becomes an honorary Na'vi, and having finally reached the point where he can enter negotiations...

...JAMES CAMERON apparently gets bored or something.  Because, with a nearly audible snap, the plot clicks into the doldrums of predictability.  Suddenly, with no provocation, and no explanation (on par of the "Nuke the Trees" order in DOUGLAS TRUMBULL'S Silent Running), they decide to throw it all away and kill something.  The Avatar program is working out well, the Corporation has sunk billions of dollars and hundreds of days into it, there might be a future of compromise in reach... given a few more weeks there might have been peace.  But, no, the decision is to launch the attack and burn down the peaceful Na'vi's home tree.

Remember!  They've worked so hard on this Na'vi project.  And they've had the intel they needed to attack the tree for movie weeks.  If the goal was simply to infiltrate for intel, they had the data they needed way back when the Research Director was first escorted around the community (she had time to set up a SCHOOL and teach them ENGLISH).

Suddenly the Marines are mindless robots.  Suddenly the Marine Colonel is a bloodthirsty jarhead who only desires to slaughter and kill.  Suddenly the yuppie Corporation CEO is a ruthless anything goes monster.  Suddenly the Na'vi get all xenophobic.  With the aforementioned audible snap, the characters and situation lose 2 of their three dimensions.

The rest of the movie is spent with the Humans going down in Gundam suits and with infantry  to shoot up the natives, and a giant air floatilla gone to destroy the Mother Tree, the backbone of the planet's World Wide Web.  The Aliens, using nothing but low tech and Hope defeat the evil Humans with their superior technology and hatred for all life that is different than theirs.  The Space Marine overcomes their xenophobia by capturing the Big Scary Bird to use as his Level 70 Mount and impress the poor savages with.

Not to mention everyone dies like chumps.  The helicopter pilot for the Rebels is so awesome she evades attack... until the Marine Colonel's ship fires a dumb rocket at her.  They specifically decide to fight in an area of the planet where interference will scramble tracking systems, and then she allows herself to be hit by a DUMB UNGUIDED ROCKET?  She had enough time to dictate a soliloquy but not enough time to evade?  The mean marine from the beginning of the movie gets trampled by a giant Space Rhino, called forth by Mother Gaia to fight against the Humans on the ground.

The Giant Carrier with The Bomb on it is right over the backbone of the Internet about to drop the bomb when it's downed by some decisive action by The Space Marine.  Which seems kinda late to me.  Yes, let's drop the ENTIRE PLANE on the target.  Miraculously, however, the plane explodes a safe distance away.

The battle is over, and the Na'vi evict the humans on the planet, sending them back to their "polluted ball" to think over how bad they've been.  A few enlightened humans are allowed to stay and join the tribe in their peaceful coexistance on the planet.  And the Handicapped Space Marine is downloaded permanently into his Avatar by The World Wide Web and they live happily ever after.

Avatar started out as a really well written movie.  I was just starting to enjoy it, and thinking maybe I was hasty, and that there would be an interesting and deep plot for me to delve into.  But there wasn't.

Avatar, for the first 2/3s, is an interesting story about what, in Star Trek, would be a hand wringing First Contact mixed with the Prime Directive.  The characters are 3d and interesting.

But when it comes time to wrap up the story, the characters lose their dimension and the movie lapses into a bunch of anti-war cliches and tropes.  It becomes obvious that the whole point of the movie was to artificially construct a situation where we could see just what kind of xenophobic bastards we all are, and just how bloodthirsty and full of hate we are.

They also leave out the real ending of the story.  In the REAL ending, the humans (which are all xenophobic bastards who think nothing of wholesale slaughter for the unobtanium they need) are defeated in the stupid ground war that only the Marine Colonel could love, and the Earth Battle Fleet which comes to pick up the survivors launches an orbital bombardment, well out of range of even the Red God Mode flying animal thing.  Because, what's the use of being technically advanced bastards if you don't actually use your technical advantage?

The movie says more about JAMES CAMERON'S personal view of the human race than any actual social commentary about the real human race.  The human race he specifically engineered for his movie is specifically designed to wipe out the aliens he specifically engineered to make a point...just like the aliens in ROLAND EMMERICH'S Independence Day are specifically designed to be a nearly unstoppable force which the humans overcome anyway.  There's a much social commentary in JAMES CAMERON'S Avatar as there is in GEORGE LUCAS' Star Wars.  In fact, these three movies have a lot in common.

JAMES CAMERON'S Avatar!, ROLAND EMMERICH'S Independence Day, GEORGE LUCAS' Star Wars, and even STEPHEN SPIELBERG'S Jurassic Park are all action/aventure/space operas full of feel good pap and cliche storms of film tropes sure to keep any discerning American in that seat eating popcorn.  This is not to say that they are not entertaining, but they are all in the same category:  thin plot with lots of flashy effects with a "message" which sounds good until you open the refrigerator later that evening.

The movie was entertaining... for the first 2/3s.  The last two thirds were so badly coordinated that it physically pained me to sit through it.  I've seen slash fan fictions with better plot resolution.  As entertainment the movie isn't too bad...

...but JAMES CAMERON, and many others, are acting like JAMES CAMERONS' Avatar! is some kind of deep social commentary.  It's not.  His specifically tailored Human Race isn't the human race we exist as.  His specifically tailored Na'vi, and the specifically tailored planet, Pandora... and the specifically tailored substance Unobanium... the entire situation was specifically designed to build the outcome of the movie.  It would be like being surprised that a specific arrangement of pedals, chain, wheels, and frame produce a bicycle.

I had an agony of indecision about writing this review.  It was so obvious that I had apparently seen a different movie than everyone else who had watched JAMES CAMERONS' Avatar! that I decided to let sleeping dogs lie.  But then JAMES CAMERON said, during the Golden Globe Awards, "You've got a genre that's critically treated as a second-class citizen," he says of science fiction, saying that before "Avatar," "E.T." was the only science fiction movie to win best picture -- drama at the Globes. "Hopefully this is part of a trend as science fiction as a legitimate form...not a genre, but a drama." ( LA Times )

Ooh, JAMES CAMERON, you're so manly!  PLEASE make our genre respectable with your ivory tower friends!

GENE RODDENBERRY'S Star Trek beat you to the punch there, Mister.  It's been delving into the deep issues of slavery, racism, right to life, cold and warm war, ecological disaster, and just about any issue you can bring up.  ROBERT A. HEINLEIN'S Starship Troopers (the book, not the abortion of a movie) discussed the ugly backside of war, and the moral dilemmas of fighting, and was a darn good read.  Science Fiction, as a genre, doesn't lack in drama and deep plots and hard hitting questions.  It's people like you, MR. JAMES CAMERON, who are responsible for "dumbing down" the genre for science fiction movies, assuming that the Human Race couldn't stand the deep stuff.

So take your movie and go packing.  JAMES CAMERONS' Avatar! is the same thin cookie cutter watered down feel good "Science" "Fiction" I've come to expect from Hollywood.  Sure, it sells well, but it's a literary wash.  File it next to GEORGE LUCAS' Star Wars and STEPHANIE MAYER'S Twilight series as something which may be entertaining, and which may sell well... but which contains about the same amount of nutrition as the equally large grossing HOSTESS' Twinkie.

I will give it this, though... I left the theater REALLY wanting a Big Mac and a new Verizon phone.