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Rating: There’s a bit of everything in this new chapter of James Cameron’s “Avatar” saga. Yet, in the end, the feeling is one of magnificent emptiness, a lack of ideas dressed up with the most astonishing special effects. The film is far too long—three and a half hours for this story feels excessive—because only three or four main events occur, while the rest of the runtime is devoted to showcasing scenery, battles, and explorations in lavish detail with a massive deployment of computer graphics.
Avatar 3 is not a disaster; it’s watchable. What puzzles me, however, is the little care given to certain aspects of the writing in these Hollywood productions, where budgets are enormous and the workforce countless. Is it really possible that no one noticed the story struggles a bit to captivate the viewer? That the “good guys” side, with Jake Sully and his family, doesn’t seem to have a real objective, so that the whole plot revolves around the “bad guys’” schemes to achieve their goals? This is one of the film’s main flaws.
Overall, it feels like a story built up as it goes along, without an underlying organic idea, without a strong overarching vision. Everything hinges on individual initiatives and reactions, attacks and escapes, captures and releases, battles and counterattacks. The narrative grammar is minimal; there is no broader scope. Some good things come from the characters: the mystic who connects with the deity, the human boy who wants to live among the aliens, the Na’vi tribe devoted to violence and fire, who allow themselves to be co-opted by the human invader thanks to their weapons. But major doubts remain: the protagonist and his rival lack depth, the high military command is a caricature in their inhuman pragmatism.
Easy metaphors, familiar tropes well-rooted in our imagination, almost worn out by now. Everything is well-made and carefully directed, mind you, with an excellent pace in the first half. In the second half, however, there’s a feeling of unnecessary prolongation, with too many action sequences—albeit successful ones—which, piling up like this, end up becoming redundant. Also, as I said, the ideas stick more or less to the tried and tested patterns of the Hollywood sci-fi fairytale.
You have to wait until the end for a couple of more interesting twists—I wouldn’t call them original, since thirty years ago Miyazaki in “Mononoke” did them much better—but at least they’re more energetic and exciting compared to the vast sea that came before.
The overwhelming impression remains that this film was born from a few mainly aesthetic ideas, around which a capable director and some decent writers built a corollary of stories that, however, never really feel like the true heart of the narrative, but just an embellishment to justify the directorial-aesthetic-technical tour de force. About which there is really nothing to complain—then again, maybe there is.
There was a whole world to invent, but ultimately, the creatures we’re presented with are imitators of those we already know, from whales to octopuses to this sort of pterodactyls. What I mean is that, even here, considering the resources employed, they could have invented something better.
Avatar 3 is not worse than the previous ones; in certain ways, it tones down the predetermined fairytale elements, but it still fails to fully deliver an authentic and heartfelt narrative, remaining a victim of its own extraordinary technical and aesthetic scope.
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