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Sam Worthington provides a monotonous narration at the beginning, where he essentially tells you everything you are seeing on screen. He also talks with a certain awareness of what is to come, and maybe this narration is actually part of his final video log. It didn't feel like that to me. Then again, you can move any sequence of the movie to any point and it would still be the same. There is actually one case where a monolog is cut within a thought, a scene stuck in the middle, then continues on as our hero is chased onward by a giant bird-like creature.

This is a "Woo" moment for Worthington, as he only has two settings in this movie- apathetic and woo. No matter how much emotion is in the words, he seems to be reading the script from a teleprompter. Sam Worthington is a much better actor than this movie leads you to believe. Sigourney Weaver manages to steal scene after scene, hopefully earning her an Academy Award Nomination. Zoe Saldana, who recently got the in with the nerd crowd (the same target audience in this film) by playing Uhura in Star Trek, also proves she is more than a pretty face by giving a performance that transcends the many layers of animation.

Worthington's Jake Sully is a disabled officer of the U.S. Marines who is put into this "special project" on a distant planet. He is to put himself into the physical body of a Navi, a member of the native race, and try to win their trust. Though he is working with a group of scientists with good intentions, his loyalties remain to the Marines, who want him to force the Navi out of their homes so the Marines can plunder a rare mineral. That mineral is called "Unobtainium." The mineral doesn't matter, which is why they gave it the only possible name more honest and to the point as "McGuffinium". Perhaps the could have called it "Plotdeviciton".

When he gets in, we have ritual after ritual, while he wanders through a mystical glow in the dark forest. There were times when I wondered if I was actually watching a cartoon. Cameron's CG landscapes are convincing by day, cheesey by night. Not once, however, did the Navi seem even one third as real as District 9's "Prawns".

They say this movie is all about it's graphics. While I will say that they fail to deliver, they are great to look at nonetheless. James Cameron would have you believe that the only way to see this movie is in IMAX, in 3D. Save yourself the up charge and appreciate the beauty without distorting it.

After a while, Jake has a change of heart. Or so he says. Truth is, there is nothing in his character that shows he ever had any allegience to the Marines at all, which robs us of a decent, albeit cliched, character arch. The Marines are vague bad guys. So void of personality, with a lack of a clearly defined motive this might as well be about zombies. We have the Corporate interests telling the Marines to get the Unobtainium. The Marines, however, are simpletons who only want to kill. And if the fact that that's essentially all they do isn't enough, they pretty much say it flat out. Because apparently America can't understand things any other way.

Why does the Colonel hate the Navi so much? If you give him a real motive, it doesn't diffuse your satire. It actually helps bring it to a whole new level. I had the same problem with District 9, but at least you saw the slums, you saw the crime, you can actually imagine how somebody can think of them as subhuman at some stretch. Not even General Custer would treat the Native American's with such disdain.

The evil, cliched Colonel, when given scientific evidence that the ecosystem is actually an intelligence, says "It looks like a bunch of trees to me." That dialog should set the tone of something like "Ferngully: The Last Rain Forest". Not a 300 million dollar action epic. Not a film that has been called an Oscar contender even in pre-production.

The movie isn't without it's high points. There were some sequences that were so fantastic they gave me that sense of awe and wonder that I look for in any great epic. But they were too far, too few. It's a real shame when you can't get into a movie until the Third act.


** out of ****