James Cameron's eagerly awaited sci-fi epic Avatar is a very green movie in every sense: almost everything in it is recycled. A budget rumoured to be well in excess of 300 million USD has not unearthed a single original idea. The script re-tools themes of anthropology and imperialism that were handled with far more subtlety and insight in films such as Dances With Wolves, Apocalypse Now, Jurassic Park and a large part of John Boorman's body of work; the production design, though realised with great expertise, draws heavily both from Cameron's own Aliens and any number of teen SF blockbusters from the Lord Of The Rings trilogy to Ferngully; the look, themes and devices of a slew of predecessors from The Matrix to 2001: A Space Odyssey form a glorious visual tableaux for Avatar, but cannot hide its derivative brand of cynicism, its poorly-developed characters or the ambiguity of its confused political outlook. There's plenty to see here, but nothing new.



That said, Hollywood was never interested in the new or untried anyway, and many utterly spellbinding movies have been wrought from a mix-and-match of old and trusted templates. Usually, however, with far more imagination, enthusiasm and insight than Avatar displays.



A century hence, paraplegic marine Sam Worthington gets an unexpected chance to walk again when his egghead twin brother dies shortly before a field experiment on a distant jungle-planet called Pandora. Head scientist Sigourney Weaver's programme mind-melds test subjects with nine-foot tall genetically created creatures that are semi-indigenous to Pandora, and are able to breathe its toxic atmosphere. The controlling minds stay asleep in Matrix-style coffins while their consciousness animates the gigantic blue creatures out on the planet's surface. Since he shares his brother's genome, Worthington is the only possible stand-in for the specially-grown avatar body.



But this is no casual science project - the wicked old Aliens-style company is only on Pandora at all to get its hands on a rare and precious mineral called Unobtainium (I know, I know...). The major impediment to this are the tribal natives called the Na'avi, who have built their ancient wooden culture right on top of the biggest deposits on the planet. The company is a semi-military organisation, and evil, battle-scarred Colonel Stephen Lang would like to just blow the pesky blue tree-huggers away and have done with it. Weaver instead holds out hope of persuading the Na'avi to move, teaching them English and learning their ways.



When Worthington gets lost in Pandora's fiercely hostile jungle-environment and is rescued by Na'avi warrior Zoe Saldana, it's a great chance for him to immerse himself with the tribe and negotiate a peaceful re-settlement before the deadline comes up to begin mining. Trouble is, after a few months of learning the atavistic ways of his hosts, he has fallen in love with Saldana and is starting to see the situation from the Na'avi's perspective...



It's hard to pinpoint James Cameron's political message, if any, in Avatar. Much as the director has always idolised strong female characters, he can't help but idolise too the very military might that he is criticising as the mindless agent of imperialism in this movie. Much as he fetishises the she-warriors of his films, likewise does Cameron seem to worship the destructive technology that he labours so lovingly to depict. This has a tendency to undermine the anti-imperialist motif of the movie, which propounds a 'better' society (the Na'avi) that is in touch with nature, apologises to the creatures that it must kill to eat, and holds communion with intelligent tree-gods.



In broad narrative terms, both character and plot development seem anemic compared to the enormous effort that has gone into realising the lush 3D environments of Pandora. The worst offender is Worthington's character. When he first meets Saldana, Worthington is accused of being 'a child' by her. Indeed he is - and putting this fact into the dialogue doesn't justify its jarring effect on the verisimilitude of the central story.



The fact that Worthington is disabled turns out to have no major significance in terms of plot or motivation for his character throughout the movie. As soon as he is mind-projected out of his wheelchair, Worthington becomes dumber than the dumbest bag of hammers, bludgeoning his way into every situation without thought, consideration or insight. Even Disney's earliest protagonists were more complicated and ambiguous. Yes, we get it: he's a twelve year-old boy. We get Cameron's bid for his target market. Problem is, I don't know any twelve-year old boys that naive or reckless. Worthington's frequent feats of heroism and derring-do become worthless because he is as without thought as he is without fear. When he finally does have a smart idea (which regards taming one of Pandora's fiercest avian creatures), it reads as 'out-of-character'.



Of the actor himself, I must reserve judgment, as he is given little to work with in Avatar. Likewise Zoe Saldana does all she can in her captured performance as the boringly noble savage. On the human side, Stephen Lang acquits himself admirably in a role of limited scope whilst Weaver is as magnetic as ever, her performance easily penetrating the CGI that masks 50% of it.



Ultimately Avatar is James Cameron's biggest bid ever for the juve-female market that made him a Hollywood certainty again with Titanic. The bright and colourful world of Pandora blends with the mythical-looking Na'avi to make a major assault on the lunchbox-livery of 13 year-old girls. Avatar is the most colourful film you will ever see.



The much-vaunted 3D is effective but occasionally problematic: for one thing, don't sit too near the front row, as the supplied glasses are likely to crop off the sides of the frame (unless you're thirteen). Not too much is 'thrust out' at the viewer, a common temptation in previous 3D-movies, but limited depth-of-field (where the background is out of focus) is employed throughout Avatar to leverage the 3D technique. This means that you need to constantly guess where the focus is going to be in the frame and settle your eyes there - get it wrong too often and you will start trying to compensate, and that's when the real headache begins.



There are some astonishing set-pieces in the movie: the scene where Worthington is awoken from suspended animation in a vast zero-gravity chamber is jaw-dropping, and would have Kubrick green with envy. Likewise a battle between an exo-skeletoned Lang and our hero Worthington gives us an idea how Cameron would have concluded Aliens if he had had today's CGI technology at his disposal. The Vietnam-style resistance at the movie's climax is also a wondrous achievement by Weta Digital, whose CGI characters unfortunately don't solve the 'dead eye' problem as well as Digital Domain did for Benjamin Button.



Sometimes, however, things are done simply because they can be, and without any precedent or semi-scientific rationale. Why, for instance, do great rock-islands float above the surface of Pandora, against all the laws of nature? Is it 'art' that holds them there, as Douglas Adams proposed in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy? Who knows? We are certainly given no other explanation. I suspect the advice from the film-makers would be to 'not worry about it'.



Avatar is short on laughs, as are most Cameron films (barring the 'landlord' scene in The Terminator), and is hobbled to some extent by the director's unwise and continuing determination to tell love-stories that he is incapable of writing well; but it has enough spectacle and eye-candy to cater to an undemanding audience. Personally, my inner child deserves better.