'Avatar'

There are many tried-and-true formulas for movie making. Some have been repeated so often they stink to high heavens, but continue to be used still. Hollywood is all about cash, movies with a gigantic budget need to originate equally gigantic box office income. No matter how much innovation you're willing to put into a movie, when the chips are down and the dollars must somehow show up, you'll open the movie plot drawer to seek something you know from the start will work for you.

Avatar is one of these cases of tried-and-true formulas used on a different context. You may in fact have seen this movie already, only with less special effects. It goes more or less like this: a wheelchair-bound Marine is sent to a far-away planet called Pandora to participate in a special program that will have him control a fake body that slightly resembles the ones of natives (the Na'Vi) as if it was his own. While his mission is to make friends with the natives so he can peacefully kick them out of their home later, he ends up turning bravely against his own species in defense of this amazing new world.

James Cameron is the man behind it all... you may remember him from awesome things like Aliens (1986) and Terminator 2 (1991), and from not so great things like Titanic (1997). Playing our paraplegic Marine is Sam Worthington from (oh crow!) Terminator Salvation (2009), Zoe Saldana, who was Uhura in the new Star Trek (2009) plays the chief's daughter. You will see also Sigourney Weaver (from Aliens and a shitload other movies) and Stephen Lang (who was Charles Winstead in Public Enemies, 2009) as the colonel Miles Quaritch. Watch out for SPOILERS in fake Na'Vi bodies from here on, by the way, because I don't plan on being merciful either.

When I say the movie is predictable, I mean predictable. Let's put it like this: you can tell the end of Avatar, as well as its whole development, based on the first fifteen minutes of the flick. Hell, you can go at it from the trailer alone. They tell you there's this wheelchair-bound Marine called Jake Sully who will be given the chance to use legs again (instead of his own, those of a giant furry blue cat-like creature, but legs nonetheless). Right here, you know he'll be biased when it comes to his mission. Even the promise that he will have his legs again after the mission is completed seems futile in comparison to the body-switch: this guy has legs the size of toothpicks, atrophy has clearly installed and it'll take him months, years of recovery to be able to walk again. In seconds, he can be inside the body of an athletic, fully functional, strong as a bull creature. Imagine your PC is busted, and you know it'll take months to fix and will never be like it was before the bust. You can have a new one - are you really gonna try to fix the later? Of course you're not! You're gonna go out running like a crazy blue furry instead!

One of the biggest failures of this film was convincing the audience that Jake actually had an interest, at some point, in completing his mission to the end. From movie start, you know he'll kick the army in the ass at the first chance. And the first chance comes soon enough, when Jake gets lost in the woods and is conveniently found by the chief's daughter, Pocahontas-style. Naytiri is her name and although she doesn't jump down waterfalls, she can go around the tree branches like Prince of Persia on a good day. Now, let's approach this first meeting and all the bullshit it brings.

First and foremost, and since Jake doesn't speak a word of the Na'Vi language, Naytiri conveniently learned English from the first visiting humans, like several of the young adult members of her tribe. Then, she is set to kill Jake, only she never gets around to it because she receives a message from.... the Tree of Souls (gee, didn't Pocahontas receive a hint from her grandma, who happens to be a willow?), which seemingly gave her a "This guy is alright!" heads-up, and so she takes him to the tribe instead. Once there, you find out something you already knew as well: she's the chief's daughter! Of course she is. How else would Jake be accepted into the tribe, if he didn't have the chief's daughter on his side? If she was just some girl, he'd have been killed straight away! Furthermore, Naytiri is promised to a warrior of her tribe she doesn't love, and he and Jake don't exactly hit it off, on the contrary. Because this guy seemingly watched Pocahontas as well and knows Naytiri is gonna fall for the handsome white devil. We're a raccoon short of a Disney movie here, at this point.

And so Jake begins to learn the customs, religion, language and life philosophy of the tribe. Again, we know already Jake has pretty much abandoned his mission unofficially by now. He tells Naytiri, further ahead, that he came here to do this and that but then fell in love with the forest and with her... don't give me any of that. Either this is a very rookie actor who couldn't transmit the message clearly, or the plotline itself told us so. He can be a paraplegic Marine in a concrete jungle or a fully functional Na'Vi in an awesome landscape. Not a difficult choice at all. Not much room for indecision. At any moment of this flick is our hero torn between his duty and his calling.

They say it's very unlikely for him to become a full-fledged member of the tribe. He pulls it.

Then they say that long ago someone tamed the biggest bird in the sky and became top dog of the Na'Vi people in the blink of an eye. Jake does that too.

Even when the cat's out of the bag and the Marines march in to drill, and Jake's kicked out of the tribe for being a snitch, you know very well they will accept him back when he comes flying in, triumphant, atop the largest bird in the crow-damn planet. It's not just accepting him back, either: the only reason why he doesn't order the tribe around already, seeing as Naytiri's father died because of Jake's betrayal, is-

... wait. Naytiri's father died when the Marines marched in? Because at any moment Jake could have told them why they sent him in and kept quiet instead? So... all those Na'Vi, including the father of the one Jake supposedly loves, died because of him, and he's welcome into the tribe no hard feelings? Oh for crow's sake! This is leading the plot where you want it to go. It's not logical at all. Mid-movie, Jake is given the get-out-of-trouble hint, and when he returns with the bird, the Na'Vi forget this is the son of a bitch who got them into trouble in the first place! Naytiri, sister, wake the fuck up. Your daddy died because of this ass, you're A-OK with that just because he brought you back the biggest flyer in the sky and that means, in your tribe, he's cool? This line of plot suggests the Na'Vi are completely dense as their customs are concerned, they don't think or feel, they have traditions and guidelines and those speak louder than everything else! What the eff?!

Finally, we come to the movie's climax: Jake joins up all tribes of Na'Vi and goes against his own people in defense of Pandora. Our stereotype Marine colonel is killed after a long and arduous fight. Jake asks for the aid of the whole nature, and he gets it because he's that awesome. The humans leave Pandora with the exception of Jake and a couple friends who helped him throughout this ordeal, they find a way for Jake to stay in the Na'Vi body forever, it's a wrap.

For you maybe. I'm not easily impressed. It's a bunch of crap, that's what it is.

And sure, effects are awesome. But the movie is 60% CGI and in some places, namely where I saw it, they have it on 3D only. If the effects weren't at least great, Avatar wouldn't have gotten its feet off the ground. Depending on plot only, it would have been a mediocre movie at best. And James Cameron knew this more than well, folks. Avatar was delayed over 15 years precisely because CGI technology couldn't make it good enough for it to have any success. Plenty of people told me the sole reason for watching this was special effects, and I'm tempted to consider it vallid. The plot is a bore, effects are the only thing you came in to see, right?

Well... effects, and one curious approach, which managed to keep me fairly interested for at least twenty minutes out of the whole thing.

The idea that we are all connected and being one with Nature is not new at all, but in Avatar, it was made so that everyone and anyone can grasp it. The connection isn't merely spiritual, it's a physical, palpable thing. Every Na'Vi has a tentacle or sorts protruding from the back of their heads and usually covered in a tress of hair. As do most trees and animals from their environment. What they can basically do, is physically connect themselves with almost everything around them at any given time. This allows them to easily domesticate animals and even control them telepathically. If I want to make a comparison, I could say every Na'Vi is born with a standard USB cable on the back of their heads through which they can interact with anything else that has a similar one.

At some point, they even manage to connect the whole tribe to the planet itself! So... is this like the Internet or what? It's a pretty good approach of the concept, given the movie is intended for people more likely to work with USB than to know something or another about being one with Nature. I speak for myself: it is hard for me to grasp the concept of spiritual connection with everything, but I - and pretty much anyone else - can grasp a physical connection which leads to this spiritual one. Good job here, Cameron! The rest of the plot was recycled from Pocahontas with some Dances With Wolves tossed in for good measure. And you thought we wouldn't notice because most moviegoers these days were born after Dances With Wolves came out. Silly Cameron.

What the Hell. Go watch it. They say some stories are timeless... I say I bore easily. But that's me: Avatar has that nice concept and overall was well-executed, visual effect wise. Try not to think of Pocahontas while you're at it and you'll be okay.