Film Review: Avatar: An IMax 3D Experience (12A) *****
SINCE Titanic opened on January 23, 1997, directors Tim Burton and Martin Scorsese have each released six movies.
Steven Spielberg has directed ten and Clint Eastwood 12 – making 34 treats between them.
Yet despite James Cameron’s famous ‘I’m the King of the World’ boast after Titanic won 11 Oscars from a record 14 nominations, he hasn’t made a single feature since.
Now, at last, is the real reason why – and seeing is believing.
Avatar is a compelling, 161-minute story about human ‘drivers’ having their consciences linked to remotely-controlled biological bodies.
Their DNA mix enables them to survive poisonous atmospheres and blend in with the natives on the distant moon of Pandora.
Cameron first conceived the story in 1995, when the technology to make the film didn’t exist.
Today it does, thanks to his driven personality helping to make sure it was invented during the four-year production.
Like all ambitious projects, including Titanic, Avatar has already had more than its fair share of doom mongers predicting its demise. It’s an easy target for critics who want to see it flop.
But my guess is that younger punters will be blown away by the film – especially if they see it in DMR format on the giant IMAX screen at Millenniun Point.
After the opening showcases the scale of the operation, we move into territory that has been over-exposed.
August’s 15-minute teaser and subsequent omnipresent trailers are the price of the studio trying to get its reputed £300 million back!
For more than an hour in the mid-section, so little happens you begin to wonder if this really is a James Cameron event movie.
The look is almost like a Disney-themed jungle nightclub, but this is not the result of JC tripping the neon light fantastic with Pocahontas, rather him spending 2,500 hours deep sea diving to previously unchartered depths.
Building on the motion capture work of Robert Zemeckis (Polar Express / Beowulf / A Christmas Carol), Cameron cranks the technology right up to the nth degree.
He’s elongated his characters’ bodies, given them tails and, with eyes double the usual distance apart, rare-breed looks to stir your soul.As well as plundering his own back catalogue whenever it suits, Cameron’s copious references range from Apocalypse Now to Lord of the Rings, Apocalypto and Jurassic Park – with which Spielberg notably also took plenty of time to deliver his own groundbreaking action fest.
By working in different aspects of time and space, Avatar’s story has a genuine depth to match the subtle nature of the genuinely immersive 3D element.
Cameron dares to blend concepts like mile high trees and floating mountains with contemporary, universal references about everything from the environment and scarce mineral resources through to the War on Terror and the plight of badly injured soldiers.
Surrey-born Terminator Salvation star Sam Worthington is terrific as Jake Sully, a wheelchair-bound marine who is given the chance to walk – and fight – again thanks to an avatar surrogate.
The late Superman star Christopher Reeve would have loved that freedom, while Sylvester Stallone will connect with Stephen Lang’s Col Miles Quaritch reprising Richard Crenna’s Col Sam Trautman role from Rambo (Cameron co-wrote First Blood Part II).
Building on his own Terminator 2 (1991), there are some neat plot twists and it’s good to see powerhouse Michelle Rodriguez (Trudy Chacon) acting tough in a major movie nearly a decade after her auspicious debut in Girlfight.
Composer James Horner fails to match Howard Shore’s musical definition of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Although he scored Titanic and Braveheart, Horner later butchered Troy through an unfortunate lack of prep time and he doesn’t quite nail Avatar in the splendid way that he superbly enhances its online trailer.
Oh, and even though this is 2154, soldiers still haven’t learned to shoot straight, winged creatures can’t fly as smoothly as real birds, scientist Dr Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) smokes and, for a 12A, the amount of P-words and other expletives is unnecessary.
Website: www.avatarmovie.com
