James Cameron has been hailed as the king of the world when it comes to filmmaking. With films like Terminator, Titanic, and Aliens under his built, he has become something of a legend. However, he took a twelve year break to create the gigantic science fiction epic known as Avatar.

Praised as a revolution to filmmaking Avatar, has been coined everything from the next Star Wars to a colossal flop? Where does the film fall, and are its special effects really so spectacular?

Avatar follows the story of a paraplegic marine, named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who is sent to the planet Pandora after his scientist brother is murdered. Jake Sully is drafted into the Avatar program, a scientific initiative which has genetically created alien-human hybrid bodies through which the characters would live vicariously. Jake is met with a wide host of characters in the human encampment stationed in Pandora. On one side is the group of corporate heavy weights such as Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribsi) and the extremist military commander Colonel Quatritch (Stephen Lang), the other is the scientific program lead by the botanist Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and nerdy scientist Norm Spellman (Joel Moore). As Jake progresses through the new world he is met with new beauty in the biology of the world and the natives, particularly the princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). As Jake becomes more and more enchanted with the new world which has given him acceptance a conflict boils around him between the increasing greedy and powerful human encampment and the Na’vi natives.

Avatar is one of those films you want to see succeed, and when it slams a hit it hits out of the park, but then will strike out for two consecutive innings. The special effects truly are revolutionary and offer more beauty and spectacle in a film then ever seen before in the history of film. The sheer emotion shown by the Na’vi and Avatars character models are fantastic. Cameron has truly perfected the art of motion capture meshing human performance and special effects to a new high. If there is anything Cameron has truly exceeded at it is building a believable and breathtaking world. Everything about the world of Pandora looks and feels organic and true. Scenes where Jake flies through the world of Pandora on the back of a dragon like beast are surprisingly poignant and beautiful and are a true spectacle. Cameron excels at drawing you into a world filled with unsurpassed beauty and spectacle. Perhaps never since Oz has a film opened and audiences’ eyes and made their jaws drop in true visual astonishment. The creatures in the film are perhaps the most realistically designed aliens ever created, outside of the overly human Na’vi. They feel like animals that would actually evolve on a world like Pandora’s, and they are real treat to watch on screen, especially the flying Banshees.

Perhaps the area of the film that is called most into scrutiny is its similarity to Native American epics such as Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves. However, this story is a powerful and moving one and has never been told with such vigor and creativity as in Avatar. The one area where the film truly starts to falter is in character. Neytiri and Jake Sully are wonderfully indepth and drawn out characters with numerous moments that make them shine. The acting in this film is for the most part well done and fleshed out. The motion capture performances delivered by Worthington, Weaver, and Saldana are spectacular and perhaps more emotional and heart given the majority of the live action actors. Worthington is surprisingly flat as Jake outside his Avatar, and the contrast between the two is sometimes jarring. Stephen Lang is another actor who stands out in the film for negative reasons. His character of Col. Quatrich is perhaps one of the most interesting in the film, but he is hampered by the awful and cliché military dialogue written for him. The dialogue as a whole feels surprisingly flat and hollow compared to the indepth world in which it takes place. Surprisingly the only lines that truly feel deep are spoken by the Na’vi, who barely speaks English to begin with.

James Cameron’s direction is what saves this potentially fatal flaw to the film. Cameron directs each scene of the film with such vigor, excitement, and visual astonishment that the problems with the script literally melt away around you. Every time you begin to question a character or plot point Cameron fixes it with a new sequence of visual and emotional resonance that few other directors have yet to achieve. His direction saves the clichéd plot and makes it exciting, and it even saves some of the poorly written conversations of the film, but they still stand out like a sore thumb.

James Horner’s score is also a standout. Combining sweeping epic battle hymns, tribal chants, and one of the most memorable film themes I’ve seen in years, it works seamlessly with Cameron’s direction providing powerful and moving moments.
Avatar shines best when you are forced to take a step back and realize its epic scope and scale. The battle scene in the final act is impressive, ground breaking, thrilling, and occasionally emotional. Scenes involving the plight of the Na’vi tribes are also wrenching and breathtaking in scale.

Perhaps comparisons made to films such King Kong, Star Wars, and The Wizard of Oz are correct. Avatar is a film that thrives off of a visual uniqueness and power, epic scale, and smart direction and manages to sweep you along with it despite its flaws. When the original Star Wars premiered over thirty years ago it was a film very similar to Cameron’s labor of love. An expensive and ambitious movie, that relied on effects and scope to draw viewers into a deceptively thin storyline and characters. Although rarely done today, if one were to view Star Wars as a standalone film, people would realize its surprisingly simple plot and 2D characters. The same goes for King Kong. King Kong was a spectacle that unleashed a towering stop motion gorilla upon the streets of New York. Once again a familiar plot filled with simple character archetypes, yet these films became classics for their technological innovation and their ability to capture an audience, which Avatar succeeds in almost every form.

Although falling short of my highest mark, it is hard for me not to appreciate the work that James Cameron has done on what is sure to be on the most remembered films of our time.

Score: A