First review: Avatar is a jaw-dropping 3D spectacular epic

"Mind-blowing": Avatar received a highly favourable reaction at its world premiere in Leicester Square
10 April 2012

I have seen the future, and it's three-dimensional. James Cameron's dazzling, exhilarating, 3D sci-fi epic Avatar, which had its premiere in Leicester Square last night, represents a dramatic leap in film technology.

The director of Titanic has also set a benchmark for blockbusters in terms of sheer spectacle. The detail, the depth, the jaw-dropping boldness of Avatar simply bowl you over.

As he did in Aliens and his Terminator films, Cameron fuses an action picture, a love story and a critique of human - primarily American - military-industrial folly. Here, earth is dying, and a corporation backed by mercenary marines is on the lush but hostile planet Pandora looking for a mineral called, amusingly, Unobtanium.

Problem is, the 8ft-tall, blue-skinned native Na'vi live right on top of the stuff, in prelapsarian harmony with savage nature.

So Jake Sully, a crippled ex-marine, is mentally transported into an avatar - a sort of remote-controlled Na'vi - to win their hearts and minds. Or force them off their land. The film is effectively a western, until Jake falls for the lithe and deadly Neytiri and goes native. After that, it turns into a full-throated Vietnam flick.

Cameron paints in bold colours, using his 3D cameras to create a universe of almost overwhelming vibrancy, full of purple birds, floating mountains and garish flying dinosaurs.

The opulence sucks you in. Bullets and snapping predators lunge from the screen, startled insects and embers from a massacre dance before our eyes.

Epic: Aussie Sam Worthington recalls the young Mel Gibson

Plenty of ordnance flies at us too, as Cameron pits gunships and napalm against arrows and teeth.
The detail is immaculate, the images pin-sharp.

The first lizard-back flight is heart-in-throat thrilling, the final battle a textbook example of Cameron's ability to bring down a war to a one-on-one slugfest. The Na'vi may look as cute and elfin as New Age figurines but they are utterly convincing and extremely expressive.

The romance between Neytiri and Jake, which cruel previewers labelled "smurf porn", works. I stopped noticing the technological sophistication because I was immersed in Cameron's roaring imagination.

As Jake, Aussie Sam Worthington recalls the young Mel Gibson in his blend of grim and soft. Jake's delight at regaining full movement through his Na'vi avatar is powerfully communicated.

Zoe Saldana, recognisable despite her blue CGI tiger-stripes, is wonderful as the sharp-tongued, soft-eyed Neytiri. Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang contribute typically hard-bitten, Cameronesque character studies, respectively good and evil.

Although Cameron has gestated this film for 20 years, some may dislike its apparently fashionable ecological bent. Some may decry its broad narrative and emotions, though that didn't hurt Titanic. But what really matters is that Cameron has raised the visual bar by several notches, and has produced a stirring, spectacular story. As a friend said on leaving: "You'll never want to watch 2D again."
Avatar is on general release from Thursday 17 December.

Avatar 3D
Cert: 12A

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