Avatar

Rating: ***

James Cameron doesn’t believe in small measures,whether it is sinking a ship or creating an inhabited moon. So a world called nothing less than Pandora has everything he and his visualisers could drum up in a creative and wishful frenzy: animals that are a cross between dinosaurs,dragons,horses and dogs (in varying degrees); flowers that fold in on themselves or burst out as floating blossoms; plants that glow in the dark,especially just under your feet in the dense forest,or go dim when somebody dies; a tree that lets you hear your ancestors and sheds lighted seeds which are “pure spirits”; astonishing “floating mountains” in a “flux vortex”; and finally humanoids in blue skin,with shiny,carefully positioned,proportioned spots,and especially plaits with split ends which perform functions as diverse as letting you steer horses,guiding your own flight bird and connecting with the past.

That’s a lot of creativity and a lot of frenzy. Expectations trail Avatar not only because it is one of the costliest movies ever made but also because it is Cameron’s first feature film in a decade since Titanic. Forty per cent live action and 60 per cent “photo-realistic” CGI come at a price — in this case,you come away feeling overawed but underwhelmed.

That you are watching a magnificent achievement in special effects,going where no man has literally gone,is evident quite early on. That the story will progress down a well-trodden path is as obvious.

Let’s see. A disabled,disillusioned Marine,Jake Sully (Worthington),lands up at Pandora in the year 2154 for a unique experiment that entails him going into a machine and coming out looking like a strapping,native Na’vi. A DNA mix of the real Jake and the Na’vi accomplishes this “avatar”.

On the one side are the scientists led by Dr Grace Augustine (Weaver) who believe Project Pandora is humanitarian,and on the other are the corporate greedy types led by Parker (Ribisi) and the trigger-happy types led by Colonel Quaritch who are unapologetic that it all comes down to a mineral worth $20 million a kilo that the Na’vi are sitting on.

Jake goes in his avatar into Pandora,and within the first few hours,manages to be attacked and saved by the beautiful daughter of the chief,Neytiri (Saldana). In another hour,being a Marine and all,he manages to convince the Na’vi of his warrior capabilities,and they take him on to be trained as one of their own.

What follows is a lot of “getting to know the forest”,its “spirits”,and its “network of connected energy”. That Jake and Neytiri discover other connections shouldn’t come as a surprise. Or what would follow when the cruel corporates decide to force their plans and the heroic Marine decides to stand in their way.

One doesn’t need three hours and $500 million (the budget,by some accounts) to figure out this one. Especially if one comes out clueless about how man plus machine equals avatar,and man minus machine means a sleeping avatar just waiting to spring up till the next pop into the magical “transporter”.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com