Avatar

An mining company’s plans to bring a prosperous economy, schooling and employment to the inhabitants of a distant world are hampered by a delusional war veteran and his love for a giant blue chick who cries a lot.

Avatar is a 2009 sci fi film directed by James Cameron and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana's CGI tears, Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver.

When I was a kid I used to make this milkshake-type thing by combining every chocolate substance I could find with some milk. I used to throw it all in a giant glass – chocolate syrup, milo, powdered hot chocolate, chocolate ice cream, even sometimes chocolate milk. Then I’d stir it up, often with great difficulty because by then it had ceased to be a liquid and turned into a kind of extremely sugary sludge, and drink it. It’s a wonder I made it to high school. I did it because at the time, it seemed like a great idea. Combining every single delicious thing I could think of seemed like the best way to enjoy them all. Moderation was not something I understood the concept of.

In Avatar, James Cameron takes all the great concepts from his other films, which were fantastic and thought-provoking in moderation throughout The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and combines them all into one giant sugary sludge of a film that is so bogged down in ridiculous pseudo-moralising it forgets to be entertaining and becomes irritating. Yeah Jim, I know that you hate that America bombs other countries back to the stone age on a whim. But if you want me to be anti-violence, show me someone being smashed over the head with a sledgehammer. If you smash me over the head with it, the only result will be that I'll hate you.

And if you want to make some kind of allegorical statement about a US administration that coined the phrase “we will fight terror with terror”, maybe have your villain use a phrase other than “we will fight terror with terror.”

I am making a joke there, but I am also being serious. In the theatre I saw this film in, that moment, which should have been thought-provoking, elicited a mix of chuckles and groans.

Anyway. Quite often in movies, I cheer for the bad guys. I can’t help myself. Villains are often way cooler than the heroes. Avatar was no exception. When the evil corporation sends in the giant helicopter things to blow up the blue dorks’ sacred tree, all I could think was ‘this is gonna be sweet’, while absently humming Ride of the Valkyries. The bad guys are led by a scenery-chewing military stereotype who calmly sips coffee while dishing out the pain. He has cool scars and a Texas drawl. Seriously, the guy is hard to dislike. The giant blue dorks are led by some shaman-chick and are some weird cross between every single Native American character you’ve seen in Dances with Wolves and Last of the Mohicans, and a hippy commune from a 60’s documentary. They sit around in circles moaning about nature and their rallying for war is supposed to be very poignant but because they are giant lanky blue aliens dressed like Mohawk Indians it just ends up being comical.

I am sounding like I hate this movie. I don’t, I actually enjoy it quite a bit. I just enjoy it for the wrong reasons. I enjoy the pyrotechnics when the Naavi are blown off the face of the planet. I enjoy Giovanni Ribisi’s character (he’s basically Avatar's Carter Burke – the corporate sleaze ball you’re supposed to hate), especially his ability to say the word ‘Unobtainium’ while keeping a straight face.

And I really enjoy the film’s first twenty minutes or so. The whole shuttle trip down to the planet, over the massive mine and into the military base. And Sam Worthington wheeling across the tarmac and passing the giant mining truck with arrows embedded harmlessly in its thick tyres is a beautifully subtle moment that speaks volumes.

It’s just a shame that’s where the subtlety ends. These days, as a relatively mature adult I realise that throwing a lot of sugary shit into a glass doesn’t actually end up tasting very good. I wish James Cameron had realised the same thing.