Bone Burnett called us in his song, are the alien invaders. It is a movie in which we, the humans from Earth as T. but with tall blue aliens instead of Native Americans. Cameron can’t even resist brining in a smarmy corporate yuppie that is a dead ringer for Burke, the smarmy corporate yuppie from Aliens. Then there are the moments of self-plagiarism: the military hardware will be familiar to anyone who has seen Terminator (those heli-flyers) and Aliens (the colonial marines and exoskeletal suits). Even those mountains hanging in mid-air are a clichéd anime staple.

The lizard-flying thing started with Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern decades ago. Those blue-skinned aliens (already disparagingly referred to as Smurfs by some SF fans) are a staple of clichéd fantasy art. Much in Avatar is familiar, which is why the movie’s first trailer was met with such disappointment in some quarters earlier this year. In contrast Avatar is more like Star Wars, which cleverly mixed existing visual ideas such as the spaceships from 2001 with anything from Marvel’s Doctor Doom to Disney’s Snow White. That said audiences who found 2001’s art movie aesthetics off-putting will enjoy Avatar much, much more. There is nothing in Avatar that is astoundingly original and fresh in the same way that 2001 was back in 1968 (a year before the moon landing). The movie’s movies influence can still be felt decades later in efforts such as Wall-E and, yes, even Avatar. 2001: A Space Odyssey practically reinvented the visual tropes of the science fiction genre – it was a wholly original work that gave us workable spaceships and enigmatic alien presences instead of the flying hubcaps and green-skinned aliens that came before it. James Cameron promised audiences a 2001: A Space Odyssey for this generation, but Avatar is closer to Star Wars than 2001. After all, Avatar, as you probably know by now, is the director’s first movie in almost 12 years – the director’s first since a little movie you might have heard of called Titanic. However, like Phantom Menace and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull it cannot realistically live up to fan expectations as well as its own hype. Like The Abyss, Avatar is also a one of a kind experience. Films such as the first two Terminator movies, Aliens and, yes, even the flawed original theatrical cut of The Abyss, which was a one-of-a-kind experience.

Īfter all, here is a truly visionary film-maker who has been behind some of science fiction cinema’s most bona fide classics. It is no coincidence that director James Cameron shares the same initials with the other JC. STARRING: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Peter Mensah, Laz Alonso, Wes Studi, Stephen Lang, Matt GeraldĢ009, 161 Minutes, Directed by: James Cameron

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