Avatar

Is the most expensive film ever made a good investment of your time, or an overblown flight of James Cameron’s fancy?

How do you even attempt to review something as big, as looked forward to as James Cameron's Avatar? I saw the film on a couple of days ago, and spent all weekend wondering more about whether or not the James Cameron fans amongst the community would kill me right away if I rate it poorly, or if they'll indulge in a little torture first. Even sight-unseen, Avatar is being considered film of the year material, something akin to the Second Coming rather than a film.

And then, there's the film itself, which raises a lot of interesting questions, and that's never a bad thing in cinema.

Of course, one of those questions is "Is it okay to find a giant blue CGI Sigourney Weaver hot, or does that make me worse than a furry?"

Sanity aside, there is one absolute fact that cannot be denied, and that's as good a place to start with as any - Avatar is without doubt the most accomplished feat of cinematic engineering put to celluloid.

From the opening shots of a lush jungle canopy and the stately approach if a very believable starship into Pandora (the planet upon which all the action is set), this is unlike any film you've seen before, especially in 3D. Just the flyby of this ship harks back to the bravura effects work of 2001, or the opening reveal of the Star Destroyer in the original Star Wars - but in such clarity and depth that every detail screams to be examined.

From there we've got shuttles, orbital landers, military walkers, guns-guns-guns, and all manner of computer interfaces and bits of bobs of background hardware. To many in the know, the king of sci-fi mechanical design is Masamune Shirow of Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed fame, but even he would be impressed with some of the great world-building in Avatar.

And then there's Pandora itself, as much a character (in fact, possibly a stronger character) than anyone else in the film. Like the future-tech of humanities expansion into space, this is a fully realised world, with an eco-system so detailed you almost wish Sir David Attenborough would come out of retirement to document it.

Most remarkable of all is the animation of the Na'Vi and the creatures that share their homeworld. You might watch Lord of the Rings and think "Wow, that Gollum is one great piece of CGI", but in Avatar the CGI thought almost never occurs to you. Sun shines on rippling skin and muscle and you believe it wholeheartedly - it's a revelation of CGI quality and commitment that demands multiple viewings.

The only issue is, those multiple viewings are only going to highlight some of the deeper flaws of the film.

When it comes to action set-pieces and technical know-how, Cameron really is king of the world, but for characters, he's a little less nuanced. When met half-way by actors like Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang (who, if you've not seen him in either Gettysburg or Gods and Generals, is a wonderful discovery), there's no issue; both Weaver's irritable scientist and Lang's gung-ho mercenary are never less than enthralling. But so much of the film rests on the less than stellar shoulders of Sam Worthington, and despite his flavour of the month status, he's just not that good. Not only is his character at times unlikeable, but like Harrison Ford in Bladerunner, it's obvious that Worthington doesn't really believe in the voiceover narration that Cameron relies upon for a lot of exposition. Curiously, however, some of Worthington's best work is in a couple of to-camera blog-style pieces - in these you can see some very good work, but at other times Worthington relies more on boyish charm than acting chops.

Probably my biggest gripe, however, is reserved for the story. Essentially, Avatar is little more than a remake of Dances With Wolves, even down to minor characters like the angry-but-noble-betrothed-of-the-romantic-lead, the bigoted-solder-who-gets-his-comeuppance, and the likeable-fuckup-who-comes-good-in-end. Cameron really brings nothing new to the tale of the soldier who goes native, while at the same time really buying into the noble savage stereotype. For all that the effects and world building of Avatar are groundbreaking, there is actually nothing new at all in terms of story and character - corporations are evil, greed is bad, scientists are short-sighted and living with nature is good.

At the end of the day, however, despite its many flaws, I'm still looking forward to seeing Avatar again - and I will. It doesn't come close to the ferocious brilliance of District 9, or hte nuanced melancholy and paranoia of Moon, but it's still an epic of considerable enough scope that you can look past the issues of plot and character. It's less a film than an experience, a chance to step onto alien soil and gape in wonder at strange vistas.

And sometimes, that's all you want from a film.