If you haven't read the review I wrote yesterday, check it out first or this might be a bit incomprehensible.
The review was written in a rush and I had to hurry it towards the end as Susan rang, wanting me down at our charity shop. Now I've had a little more time to process it so here are my thoughts on certain aspects.
One possible criticism is that it takes a human (white man) to save the noble savages and it is something which occurred to me (cf Dances with Wolves, though in this case he ultimately fails). However the archetype of the Man of Two Worlds is common in SF and probably in myth (though I haven't checked and it's decades since I read Fraser's The Golden Bough) and, in the context of the movie, it's only the Man of Two Worlds who is in a position to save the Na'vi as they can't comprehend the nature of their enemy -to them, the humans are insane. Only the Man of Two Worlds understands both and, ideally, should be able to mediate between the two; but then the movie would have a massive anticlimax.
What I like is that Avatar is a genuinely Science Fiction film which takes as its premise that the alien world has a unifying environmental intelligence. When our hero attempts to get it to attack the human invaders, his lover Neftiri tells him it would only act when the balance is upset -so when the humans blow the shit out of the Na'vi, it's no real surprise what happens next. Cameron develops everything consistently with the premise -though I'm still waiting for an explanation of the floating mountains.
There are subtle references to other Cameron movies, most notably reversing the situation whereby it's the villain in the loader type robot and it's the alien (in this case Neftiri mounted on a savage carnivore) who is the goodie and it's a thrilling sequence as you're urging Neftiri to kill the bastard.
Once open warfare is declared by the humans the result is a series of the most exciting action scenes I have ever watched. That's it. They are and even attempting to describe them would be pointless. But what makes them even better is that Cameron has dragged you into the movie so much that you genuinely care about the characters and those scenes with the leads completely involve your emotions -the scene cited above is a perfect example.
Hmm, maybe it does deserve the Oscar for Best Picture after all, and maybe it is one of the best SF movies ever made. Whatever, I can only echo what millions of other people have discovered: go and see it at the cinema on the biggest screen you can find -it's worth it.
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