A Revised "Avatar"

The public is flocking to “Avatar” this rainy season, despite reports of its stale story and mediocre acting, to witness James Cameron’s visual fireworks. Yes, the film’s technological advances and mesmerizing colors are worth seeing. But don’t be fooled. Cameron uses an innocent Pocahontas-like plot to anchor his new planet of Pandora but, somewhere among the fluorescent verdure, forsakes a meaningful accord for an ending of death and destruction.
Cameron is known for his epic storytelling, as in “Titanic” and “Terminator,” and again dutifully builds up an extensive metaphor of forbidden love amidst invasion. The story seems to drag the humans and the native Na’vi down the path of mutual misunderstanding towards a brutal clash and a peaceful resolution, facilitated by the star-struck couple and a Mother Nature-esque force. Cameron guides “Avatar” to the clash and then switches the formula mid-combat, never reaching the resolution. Instead, Mother Nature puts on battle armor and sacrifices her creatures left and right to finish off the slaughter of the humans.
A lesson about heroic defense of a native culture may have been relevant in 1995 when Cameron wrote the script, but it is not poignant fifteen years later. 2010 America is in need of color, not more bloodbaths. Cameron, unfortunately, cannot manage one without the other. “Avatar” is thus neither a tale of hope for a peaceful solution nor a warning of the terrors of war. It ends up glorifying the methods of Colonel Quaritch, the movie’s trigger-happy villain, in spite of setting out to quench them.
Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana, who portray the love interests from different worlds, do not shine when they are persuaded to speak, but when they are compelled to move. Motion sensors, part of the technology that turns the human forms to the blue, tree-like ones on screen, seem to trace every sinew and demand a deliberate performance. Saldana especially masters the body language, as she did for her sassy Uhura in the recent “Star Trek,” and slips naturally into the earthy grace of her character Neytiri. She intrigues the camera with a nuanced arch of the extended eyebrow or trill of the blue fingers, momentarily presenting a subtle richness that is promptly discarded by the empty dialogue. Similarly, Sigourney Weaver and Michelle Rodriguez, in human supporting roles, have almost enough pluck to save the script. Perhaps it is Cameron’s skilled directing that harnesses the technology for these details, but he leaves the bulk so neglected that it is hard to tell.
There is nothing wrong with a deliberate light show of technology, but Cameron tries for substantial art and fails. When his writing and acting don’t get the job done, he falls back to his stock battle devoid of any thrust of meaning. “Avatar” is ultimately like the auto-tuned songs currently topping the charts: as long as the product is superficially appealing, the artist doesn’t have to have a voice.