Avatar

Ding-dong, the flat old movie screen is dead. So sayeth writer/director James Cameron’s new movie, Avatar, the first feature ever filmed in High Definition 3D. No question, it nails the 3rd D, adding unprecedented depth to scenes. Unfortunately, it also shrinks its plot and characters to 1D, a departure from the darkly, richly layered films for which Cameron is justly celebrated: Terminator, Aliens, Abyss and Titanic.

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Avatar is a cinematic platypus, improbable but fun to watch. It feels like Lord of the Rings in spirit and Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain in concept with a story line somewhere between Last Samurai and Pocahontas. There’s more fantasy in Avatar than previous Cameron films and less sci-fi, more beating heart, less fevered chase. The looming apocalypse typically hogging center stage in Cameron films has been replaced by the magic of life. The Terminator has become Tinkerbelle.

JC conceived and built HD 3D technology for this film, his first since Titanic 10 years ago. In his hands it’s digital silly putty and the film bursts with the excitement of pure play. There are, for example, a seemingly endless supply of gigantic flying lizards colored like Japanese kites that serve as transit for the locals and mysterious sea polyp-like creatures that seem to swim in the air, quietly radiating benign intelligence. All this and much, much more keeps coming at you all the time from every possible angle, Pixar on steroids, basically.

Of course, IMAX has long delivered this kind of cinematic wow with the overwhelming force of its size and sound, and some truly amazing camera work. Ditto innovative CGI films such as Jurassic Park and King Kong. But HD 3D does something new: it comes right off the screen, seemingly close enough to touch. At times, it really made me feel like I was part of the movie. The characters and landscapes have a palpable gravity to them, more real and surreal at the same time, another small step towards holograms. Trippy, without ingesting any psychedelics. We can only hope that this powerful technology doesn’t fall into the hands of advertising executives or terrorists.

Oh, and then there’s a story, too. It goes something like this: a twenty-something Marine named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a likable, mid-22^nd Century paraplegic, signs up for a mission on the planet Pandora. He meets a young Na’vi woman with big, round Smurf eyes and cat-like features named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). She takes him under her wing, teaching him her people’s ways, and they fall in love. Meanwhile, Jake’s employer, an intergalactic mining corporation, is using his reconnaissance to blast and bulldoze the Na'vi off land which sits atop a rare mineral worth zillions back on earth.

And so it goes. The Na’vi live in peaceful, Native American-like harmony with their planet, a tropical paradise where nature is sacred and healing. The military people and their corporate masters are either shallow and cunning or mean spirited and cunning. They seem to live only to make obscene profit and bash the Na’vi. It’s a message you can’t miss even if you’re watching in 2D.

Near the end of the film, the Na’vi flee the advancing armies, gathering around a huge tree with drooping branches, entwining their hands with exposed root tendrils. It’s a kind of organic Internet link connecting them with each other and their planet. They chant and sway together, one people, one body, one planet, a Live Aid concert with set design by Apocalyto. In connecting this way, they start events in motion which ultimately rout the bad guys and save Pandora from destruction.

It’s a hokey but powerfully moving scene because it says something that Al Gore et.al. feel but cannot convey: Human beings are unconscious Terminators and we’ve got to wake up.

I hope that this scene becomes the Woodstock moment of the early 21^st Century, what Richie Haven’s Freedom was to the ‘60’s generation, a direction home.

It might work, given the film’s world-wide release and the star power of its messenger. Think about it: a guy who loves blowing stuff up and scaring us to death has morphed into a prince of peace, a sensitive poet of life’s miracles and wonders. If Cameron can make this transformation, rebalancing the earth’s overheated atmosphere should be a piece of cake. Maybe love will conquer all, after all, and that’s a consummation devoutly to be wished.