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Much to-do has been made of Avatar: the hun­dreds of mil­lions spent on it, the advances in dig­i­tal and 3-D tech­nolo­gies it rep­re­sents and the fact that James Cameron has taken another Titanic–style risk with his career.  It has even become a talk­ing point for right-wing pun­dits.  However, no mat­ter how much ink and blog­space is spilled on Avatar cov­er­age, they all for­get one cru­cial thing: this is the biggest schlock movie ever made.

Think about it: multi-hundred-million dol­lar shoot­ing and mar­ket­ing bud­gets have been spent on pure pulp fic­tion.  It con­sists entirely of instantly famil­iar plot and char­ac­ter arche­types lifted from all over the pop cul­ture spec­trum.  The hero is a Disenfranchised Loner Who Finds His Home With A Different Race (he’s also a Handicapped Person Whose Useless Limbs Symbolize His Broken Soul).  He becomes one-half of a pair of Starcrossed Lovers as he real­izes the Far-Reaching, Nefarious Corporation he works for wants to destroy the Noble Savages he has come to respect and admire.  Of course, it all cul­mi­nates in a Battle Between Technology And Primitivism That Represents The Battle For The Human Spirit.

In short, there are no sur­prises in the plot of Avatar… but that’s actu­ally not an issue.  The film works because it takes its schlocky comic-book arche­types and real­izes them in the most grandiose, heroic style imag­in­able.  Whatever it loses in orig­i­nal­ity, it more than makes up for it with the tremen­dous amounts of imag­i­na­tion and dis­ci­pline put into how it is told.   In other words: it’s the singer, not the song.

For starters, the visual design really does live up to the pre-release hype.  Seeing it in 3-D is a must because Cameron has gen­uinely cre­ated a new world for the audience’s eyes to lux­u­ri­ate in.  His team of CGI artists have woven a com­plex, col­or­ful ecosys­tem that over­flows with eye candy around each cor­ner.  Imagine the most mind-blowing fantasy-planet land­scape you can think of, imag­ine that paint­ing as a neon black-light poster and then imag­ine step­ping into that black-light fan­tasy planet land­scape.  That’s what it is like to watch Avatar in 3D.  It is true cyber-psychedelia; a con­trolled sub­stance in movie form (I can see ston­ers with home the­aters falling in love with it).

It also helps that Cameron was born to direct films like this.  The com­fort­able famil­iar­ity of the sto­ry­line frees Cameron up to have fun with  his sto­ry­telling tech­nique and he takes full advan­tage.  He daz­zles the eye with spec­ta­cle but knows how to keep the spa­tial rela­tion­ships clear within an action set­piece and when to focus in on a par­tic­u­lar bit of action for max­i­mum impact.  The craftsman-like care he takes with the bat­tles and adven­ture sequences ensures that they are sat­is­fy­ing in a way that big-screen action rarely is in our post-Michael Bay cin­e­matic era.

Best of all, Cameron — like all note­wor­thy film­mak­ers, schlock or oth­er­wise -  has invested him­self in his task, heart and soul.  He’s got the money and the juice to make any movie he wants… and he made a sci-fi schlock epic, because that’s what he enjoys mak­ing.   Your Humble Reviewer can’t help but admire when some­one puts their money where their mouth is.  James Cameron has done that with Avatar and my schlock-loving eye­balls thank him for it.


Avatar Trailer — Watch more Funny Videos