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The World of The King

You have to hand it to James Cameron. The man doesn't do anything halfway. The self-proclaimed "King of the World" - who might more accurately be called "King of Hyperbole" - boasts that his new 3-D extravaganza "Avatar" will do no less than "change the way we watch movies." Well, no. It's still all about sitting in a theater, facing front. And, if Mr. Cameron's marketing machine has done its work, it's still all about standing in hair-pullingly annoying lines waiting for the privilege. The 3-D also still requires those silly glasses (though the new ones are far more stylish than the cardboard variety of the past). All that being said, there's no denying that Mr. Cameron is a fine storyteller with a vivid imagination - plus, he could teach Michael Bay a master-class in the art of filming an action sequence. His long-awaited, unspeakably expensive (literally, you can't get anyone to talk about it) epic may not change the way we watch movies, but it's undeniably beautiful, engrossing, and sets a new bar in computer-generated animation. Not bad for a once and future King.

The plot - and there's a ton of it - takes place in 2154 and follows wheelchair-bound ex-Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington). When his Ph. D. twin brother (yes, twin brother) is killed in an accident, Jake is recruited to travel many light-years to the distant moon Pandora to pick up where his brother left off in the Avatar Program. It seems the natives of Pandora, the Na'vi - a race of lean, ten-foot tall, blue-toned tree-people - have not taken kindly to human visitors, which is a shame because they're sitting on a goldmine of rare mineral that will solve the Earth's energy crisis (yep, it's 2154 and we're still at it). In order to integrate with the Na'vi (and survive in Pandora's toxic atmosphere), scientists have found a way to genetically-engineer beings who look just like the Na'vi - "avatars" -and can be controlled by humans (while the human controller is stuck in a kind of deeply-claustrophobic sensory-deprivation tank). With me so far? Good. Because, in a fit of clean, expository storytelling, Mr. Cameron gets this all out of the way in the first five minutes.

The rest of the film - and there's two-and-a-half hours of it - involves Jake (in his avatar body) exploring the world of Pandora and all its many wonders and dangers. Mr. Cameron and his team have gone to great lengths to fully-realize this new world, and it shows (lest we forget, Mr. Cameron has said he wanted to create "the next 'Star Wars'"). Aside from the full Na'vi language and the landscape of forests, cliffs, waterfalls and floating mountains, there is also extensive flora and fauna to discover. Clearly inspired (or perhaps water-logged) from his time spent exploring the ocean depths in "Aliens of the Deep", the many flying, walking and crawling animals on Pandora are beautifully-imagined and not to be trifled with.

The Na'vi themselves are rendered via the kind of performance-capture technology that Peter Jackson used to create Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" series - though Mr. Cameron has added a new actor-mounted head-camera that allows his animators to capture the most subtle nuances of facial expression. The result finally overcomes the "dead-eyed" reputation that has so dogged Robert Zemeckis's perf-cap efforts ("The Polar Express", "Beowulf"). The Na'vi characters truly come alive in "Avatar" and much credit needs to go to the actors on which they were based. Mr. Worthington does a fine job as the everyman, approaching it all with wonder. Sigourney Weaver, as a kind of peace envoy to the Na'vi, hasn't lost any of her edge. But it's Zoë Saldana who, as the Na'vi female that becomes Jake's love interest, all but single-handedly brings this world to life. The physicality and emotion of her performance may finally make the Academy realize what Andy Serkis has been saying for years: performance-capture is still performance.

Of course, the animation itself is mind-boggling to the point of flawlessness. The 3-D is also fantastic. And, to Mr. Cameron's credit (and to my surprise), he doesn't overdo it. There's no showy shots straight at the camera, no cheap jolts out of the darkness. Just pure, immersive visual composition.

If I've stopped explaining the plot, it's because it more-or-less goes by-the-numbers. Jake is torn between his military orders to infiltrate the Na'vi for their rare mineral and his growing love for the people and their "tree-hugging" culture. Yes, it's nature versus machine again, and Jake's choice and the film's final battle aren't likely to surprise you - aside from the fact that it's all 3-D animation, of course.

In the Cameron canon, "Avatar" will likely take its place closer to "The Abyss" than "Aliens" or either "Terminator". And it certainly won't attract the audience - or box office - of "Titanic" (despite a love theme that shamelessly pilfers the opening two notes of that ear-stabber "My Heart Will Go On"). In the end, it's a standard hero story, beautifully rendered in stunning CG 3-D. It's not a game-changer, but the world needs people who'll push the limits of what's possible. Love him or hate him (and I've done both), you have to appreciate that there's someone out there with the vision, the audacity - the money - and the outright gall to do it. If it had to be someone, I'm glad it's James Cameron.