This review does contain spoilers, for those who haven't seen the movie yet.

CAST: Sam Worthington as Jake Sully
Eva Saldana as Neytiri
Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine
Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch

PLOT: A paraplegic marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.


Textbook. This movie is absolutely textbook. Now in sports, being textbook is good, great even. A textbook tackle in football, or a textbook shot in basketball. Sports isn't as much about originality and creativity as it is about using the most efficient method to accomplish the job.

Textbook in the arts is bad. Textbooks are used to provide the artist with a basis, a fundamental knowledge from which they grow and let their own ideas be heard/seen. When you write to the letter in the textbook, what you end up with is, at the least, not original, and at the most, a derivative piece of crap that doesn't live up to the source material it nearly plagiarizes.

For Avatar, I would say unoriginal. It isn't a terrible movie by any stretch. Most of it is enjoyable to watch, a good popcorn flick. I feel the story, largely because we know how it's going to end, drags a bit in the middle. The ending made me laugh, not in a good way.

As far as what Avatar takes from the 'textbook', the final battle scene, the macro-battle largely involving the faceless masses, that eventually leads to the showdown between protagonist and antagonist. The colonel, Miles Quaritch (Lang). The Ceo of the company hunting Unobtanium. The 'fish out of water' main character being confronted with the choice between right and wrong. The development of love between two characters despite 'x'. Frankly, the only chapter James Cameron largely misses in this movie is the one on character development.

Now the graphics are beautiful. That is the one place where Avatar may actually have re-written the textbook is the graphics. Chances are I would've enjoyed this movie more if I had scene it in 3-D.

I guess in the end the characters and story feel so one-dimensional. Even The Matrix, a movie I feel Avatar compares best too, had more development. The way Neo struggles with the idea that he might by the one. His denial about it and eventual realization during the final battle scene. The backstory, the scorched sun, what the Matrix actually is, is all explained much better than anything in Avatar.

With Jake Sully ... he has not a single reason to side with the humans in Avatar. Not a single thing that adds conflict to his decision to switch species essentially. The humans, of course, don't present any reasons not to side against them. Never is a reason presented for the apparently immense value of Unobtanium. Would you be so fast to root for the Na'vi if Unobtanium was the only way to save planet Earth?

It helps that the Matrix is also an immensely better popcorn flick too. Those battle scenes are practically legendary at this point. The scenes in Avatar, as pretty as they are, seem more likely to go down as a historical landmark from which better movies will eventually come.

Overall ... 6 out of 10