James Cameron’s “Avatar” did not disappoint

James Cameron’s “Avatar” did not disappoint.  There was some concern prior to its release that “Avatar” might not live up to the quality of James Cameron’s considerable oeuvre.  Specifically, fans were worried that “Avatar” might lack one of the elements that have made James Cameron’s films the ageless masterpieces they are, namely, incredibly compelling stories with strong humanist elements.  Like Steven Spielberg and Terrence Malick, James Cameron is fundamentally in love with humans, and he is able to weave this love into his stories in a most effective fashion.

Think about all the movies James Cameron has made: cool stuff happens in all of them, and the films are shot and edited with James Cameron’s inimitable style, but what really clinched their success was James Cameron’s ability to build fascinating characters and make us care about them.

It is understandable, then, that when fans saw the trailer for “Avatar”, replete with tall blue alien creatures, they freaked out: they thought it might be a soulless science-fiction movie whose characters we do not care about; a movie, in short, worthy of the many journeyman directors out there, but not worthy of James Cameron.

We need not have worried.  James Cameron has delivered a masterpiece yet again: fascinating characters in a fascinating world, with a story that is genuinely interesting and makes sense at all times, including a climactic battle scene at the end which, together with the battles in Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” has surely got to be one of the best battle scenes ever.  As I have written in the past, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron are the only directors who are able to direct battle scenes that actually make sense and are not merely a random assembly of explosions and mayhem.

There are also some shots that will make cinematic history, such as the one in which passengers are woken up on the spaceship shortly before arriving on Pandora.  That scene itself was comfortably worth the price of admission!

The haters also love to say that the whole film was based on 3-D movie technology and that it would fail to hold up in 2-D.  Of course this is spectacularly incorrect and the film retains almost all of its entertainment and cinematic value when watched in 2-D.

Avatar won the Golden globes for best drama and best director. If it goes on to win the Academy Awards in those categories, they will be amply deserved.

Oh, and it made 1.6 billion dollars in a single month. Quod erat demonstrandum.

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