Cameron does it again with Avatar

The nine-foot-tall blue Navi of the distant moon Pandora convey an enchanting ecological message in James Cameron's new film, Avatar. Maybe blue is the new green.

The other notable green in this would-be blockbuster is a total production and marketing cost estimated at $400 million (Dh1.4 billion), possibly more. The question is whether the director whose fabled Titanic bill of $200m paid off with $1.8bn in sales at the global box office can do it again in this sci-fi extravaganza.

The answer is probably. The special effects, including 3-D where available, are dazzling and serve the story well. Advanced motion-capture technology gives the Na'vi – tall, lithe, somewhat feline and very soulful creatures of human shape – persuasive movement in body and especially in face. Think of Gollum with more than a scowl and a pout.

Different environments, from floating mountains to rainforest floor, are filled with fantastic plants and creatures. The setting alone is a major grabber, and the 3-D adds a lot: I had a row of undulating Na'vi in the seats right in front of me.

With all that's new here, the story is an old one, of industry versus nature, corporate meanies versus tree huggers, with romance, science, monsters and massive weaponry thrown in to reach all demographics. The action takes place on Pandora around the middle of the 22nd century, when humankind has depleted most of the Earth's natural resources. A company called the Resource Development Administration has discovered a fuel-supplying mineral cutely called Unobtainium on Pandora, five years' flight away. The strip-mining RDA gets nowhere with the Na'vi, who consider all nature sacred.

They inhabit a 1,000-foot-tall Hometree, atop a huge Unobtainium deposit. Here they move about with athletic grace, on foot or mounted on six-legged Direhorses. They also fly on a kind of pterodactyl called a Banshee.

A research team attached to the RDA has developed clones of the Na'vi that can be mentally linked with humans. While a person lies in a kind of tanning pod, his or her mind occupies a clone's body and can move freely about Pandora, whose atmosphere is toxic to people. A paraplegic former Marine named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) agrees to become such an avatar.

Jake soon finds himself serving two masters: Grace Augustine, a hard-edged chief researcher and Na'vi sympathiser played by Sigourney Weaver, and the head of security, a military caricature named Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who promises Jake working legs if he gets information the troops can use to take out the blue tree-huggers.

On his first foray into the rainforest as an Avatar, Jake gets separated from the research team, is chased by the nasty panther-like Thanator and saved from a pack of Viperwolves by the Na'vi chieftain's daughter, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). He eventually joins her clan after much training and a final test.

Jake and Neytiri fall in love. (Na'vi link mentally with animals and plants through tendrils in their long braids, so perhaps the couple made the beast with two braids).

Unable to persuade the Na'vi to leave the Hometree, the RDA's corporate honcho, a coldly clever suit played by Giovanni Ribisi, orders an all-out assault.

There's a plot glitch in having a pilot go Awol during a military operation without being punished (she plays a key role later on). Good as the technology is, I felt much more expressiveness from the human Worthington than from the Avatar. The closing confrontation, where Cameron had a chance to dodge a few cliches, brings in far more violence than the film needed to satisfy the young-male demographic or suit the story. Finally, Cameron makes straw men of the military and corporate personnel, flat cartoonish types devoid of moral subtlety – a dubious tack for anyone trying to preach beyond the choir.

It's a worthy message, after all. A similar one ripples through all the broken treaties and stolen lands on the American frontier. It's sometimes heard these days in the Amazon. Cameron takes it to the final frontier and enriches it with the depth of the Na'vi's nature-love and the sheer beauty of his imagined world.


- Avatar premieres tonight

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