At the beginning, as Cameron takes us through a murky and mysterious rainforest, his most ingenious images are genuinely surprising. But the film runs 163 minutes, getting on for three hours, which means many special effects are repeated so often they cease to be special. There are moments when we look down a cliff into a valley that seems impossibly deep. It’s breathtaking the first time but routine the fourth.
The 3-D version has been so well promoted that we’re ready for a spectacular experience when we put on the special glasses. But 3-D proves, as it has often before, a disappointment. We seem to be looking at two different pictures, one in two dimensions, the other pasted on top. This technique has been elaborately refined over more than half a century but it remains limited in the same way that Bwana Devil (1952) was limited when a Kenyan tribesman threw a spear into the audience. The audience ducked but found the 3-D effects otherwise boring.
It’s clear that Cameron stoutly opposes war (nothing on earth or Pandora could be more obvious), but it’s hard to imagine how a film like this could possibly get along without it. A battle between the natives of Pandora and the American soldiers fills the last third of the film. It’s the hardest part to watch, an eye-straining, ear-abusing ordeal, complete with aerial dogfights that recall Top Gun and every other fighter-pilot movie. In this case, 3-D confuses more than it excites. Cameron’s inspiration fails him with his tanks and helicopters, awkward-looking contraptions. Perhaps Cameron wants to express the ugliness of American war-making, but these sequences feel more like a computer game.
Avatar has been cited as a possible winner of the Academy Award for best picture, but it’s not even the best of James Cameron’s films. On almost every level, Avatar is a sub-prime performance. His Terminator 2: Judgment Day looks like a masterpiece by comparison with Avatar. Titanic, a weepy puddle of bathos, at least offers some attractive and interesting actors, of whom Avatar has none. James Cameron exhibits remarkable talents in Avatar, but the greatest by far is his spectacular knack for generating publicity.
