Having spend countless years in development, pre-production, production and post-production, partly due to the groundbreaking technology being developed for Avatar, there was substantial amount of hype and expectation ahead of it's release. Especially considering the man behind all of this, James Cameron, was finally going to return to the world of narrative film.
Obviously, the imagery and visuals of Avatar are flawless, countless months have gone into creating this beautifully detailed world of Pandora, and all it's inhabitants. Every piece of the world has come from the sci-fi drenched mind of Cameron. The 3D elements of the film show just how effective 3D technology can be, if used properly, and planned from the beginning, unlike so many other films, that now just choose to convert it into 3D. Unfortunately, the visuals are the only clearly unique piece of this film.
Where Avatar's weaknesses are most noticeable, are in two of the most important areas of any film. Character and Story. Firstly, the characters all come across as stock characters lifted directly from text books, prime examples of this is the ruthless army commander, the corrupt company man, the later is almost a carbon copy of Aliens company man Burke.
Whilst the actors all give good performances, it does feel as though, given more to work with, some of the characters could have flourished more, especially Sam Worthington's Jake, who received some luke warm reviews, yet you have to ask, what more could he do with a considerably one dimensional character.
Finally, the story, which Cameron stated he felt "had to be told", is very formulaic, and considering the amount of technology both used and created for this film, boils to a classic 'reject technology and the big corporation' story line, of a group of fighters, trying to save what is rightfully theirs. Now many other sci-fi films have used this idea, but the truly great ones have expanded on it, introduced new ideas to it as well as using other story lines and interesting characters to make the story unique and something that hasn't come before, an example of this is the excellent sci-fi classic, The Matrix.
Avatar is without doubt an enjoyable piece of entertainment, which I'm sure is exactly what James Cameron set out to do, and it is what he is known for, big blockbuster films.
Verdict: ***(3 out of 5)
