Susan Granger’s review of “Avatar” (20th Century-Fox)
Not since Dorothy’s Kansas farmhouse landed in “The Wizard of Oz” – 70 years ago – and the screen transformed from black-and-white to color – has there been such a magical, revelatory moment, as the emergence of the planet Pandora in James Cameron’s “Avatar” in IMAX 3-D. To call it a revolution in sci-fi imagery is an understatement.
In 2154, Earth has become dependent on a rare mineral, wryly named Unobtainium, mined by the Resources Development Administration on Pandora in the Alpha Centauri-A star system. To show a profit for RDA shareholders, chief administrator Carter Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) relies on Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and his security force to maintain the safety and productivity of the human mining colony in the hostile atmosphere, while scientists under the leadership of botanist Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) combine half-human, half-alien DNA in genetically-engineered avatars to develop a peaceful bridge-of-trust with the indigenous Na’vi, a deeply spiritual people.
To that end, a paraplegic former Marine, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is recruited to remotely control the avatar that matches his late twin brother’s genome, and when Jake’s avatar gets lost in the forest and is saved by the huntress Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), a Na’vi princess, and he forges a unique friendship with her clan. At the same time, he discovers that RDA forces are determined to strip mine the Na’vi’s revered ancestral home/tribal habitat of 10,000 years, and a titanic battle ensues.
What’s extraordinary is how Cameron and New Zealand’s WETA Digital have created an exotic, paradisiacal, phosphorescent world. The lean, 10’-tall, blue-skinned Na’vi have huge yellow eyes and three-fingered hands and speak their own language. Their ecologically-balanced, harmonious, bio-diverse environment encompasses a lush jungle and floating mountains, dominated by a gargantuan tree, along with wildlife like vicious viperwolves, six-legged direhorses, mighty thanators, gently graceful woodsprites, griffin-like banshees and the predatory leonopteryx. For 166 minutes, it’s so dazzling that one can forgive simplistic storytelling, stereotypical characters and clunky dialogue.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Avatar” is an exciting, spectacularly awesome 10. James Cameron is, once again, “king of the world.”
