FILM FRENZY

Avatar (Photo: Fox)

By Matt Brunson

AVATAR
★★★ (out of four)
DIRECTED BY James Cameron
STARS Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana

The notion that James Cameron’s heavily promoted Avatar represents the next revolution — and evolution — in cinema is nothing more than studio-driven hyperbole, because while the 3-D visuals might rate four stars, Cameron’s steady but unexceptional screenplay guarantees that this falls well below more compatible marriages of substance and style found in such celluloid ground-breakers as the original King Kong, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Toy Story, and Cameron’s own Terminator films.

Here, the story meshes Dances With Wolves and Pocahontas with, amusingly enough, this year’s animated flop Battle for Terra — it’s the year 2154, and the Americans have decided to destroy the indigenous people on a distant planet in order to plunder the land and make off with its riches (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose). Employing technology that allows humans to look like the blue-skinned locals, the Earthlings send in a Marine (Sam Worthington) to gain their trust, but as the jarhead gets to know these aliens better, he finds himself conflicted.

For all its swagger, Avatar is rarely deeper than an average Garfield strip, but Cameron’s creation of a new world demands to be seen at least once.