'Avatar' review

With Avatar, James Cameron does for 3-D filmmaking what Vincent Van Gogh did for painting.

Like Van Gogh’s canvases, which were layered with thick strokes of paint, Cameron uses technology to enhance the texture of his film as well as contribute both perspective and depth to his fantastic, colorful universe. The result is that instead of numbing audiences to 3-D’s potential with poke-you-in-the-eye amusement park thrills like Robert Zemeckis, Cameron brings viewers closer inside the alien world explored by the characters in his film.

And what a world it is. It might take the human characters in the film six years to get there via spacecraft, but Pandora definitely seems worth the trip. It’s a lush planet with reduced gravity, glowing plants and a cluster of mountains and waterfalls that float in the air. Below the surface, there is also a highly coveted fossil fuel called unobtainium, which the humans are there to retrieve for their home world. Problem is the largest deposit of this precious mineral is located underneath the gigantic tree home of the Na’vi, a powerful humanoid race with blue skin.

To help harvest this cache of fuel, the humans employ Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic former marine who must wire his consciousness inside the body of a biologically engineered Na’vi decoy and learn what he can about the natives so they can be overthrown.

Of course there’s no way for this scenario to play out except for Sully to pal up with the Na’vi, who are noble savages just as Native Americans were in Dances With Wolves or the feudal Japanese in The Last Samurai, before engaging his own people in an epic final battle. But again, these broad, very simplistic strokes are yet another reason that Cameron is like Van Gogh, who seldom delved into intricate details when painting the cityscapes and countryside of France. To expect so much detail is to miss the point. And one need only look at the needless complexities of George Lucas’ “Star Wars” prequels to realize Cameron made a wise choice to keep things simple while juggling the considerable nuts and bolts of this bold technological experiment.

There is also the matter of the film’s alien characters and creatures that were created with the most photo-real CGI I have ever seen. Unlike the supposedly photo-real characters in “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” that looked like lazy-eyed patients from a burn ward, the Na’vi are wholly sympathetic and able to convey the most subtle of emotions. I’m not so sure I will want to see Avatar again on home video (at least in 2-D), but I will probably buy the Blu-Ray just to learn how these characters were made.

Perhaps the only question I am still grappling with today is whether Avatar is primarily an accomplishment of art or science. My opinion currently veers towards the latter, but I’ll need to see the film at least one more time to be sure. That said, there are moments when Cameron does such a good job of using his technology to evoke emotional responses that both the art and science of his film could be intertwined.

Avatar might be more of a first step for digital filmmaking than one of its great destinations, but based on everything Cameron shows us with this film, I cannot wait to see where we’re going next.

*** & 1/2 (out of four)