Review Score:

The MPPC was there, at Comic-Con last July, when director James Cameron unveiled 28 minutes of his epic Avatar for an audience of influentials. Reaction then was mixed. The special effects were clearly game-changing, but the crowd of mostly-male fanboys wondered if they could truly get behind the charge of the blue-cat brigade.

The film opened worldwide on Friday to positive reviews, and the MPCC was there to find out if the other two hours and twelve minutes of the film could finally make us fans. Or if we’d call for those ten-foot kitties to be neutered.

First, instructions for recommended viewing: Avatar is not meant to be seen on some twenty-foot screen at a crumbling twin-cinema. The grand visages of the landscapes, creatures and machines – not to mention the brain-bending 3-D effects – deserve to be viewed in equally grand style. Spend the extra money and get to your nearest IMAX 3-D theatre.

This is Avatar in its natural environment. And it is a spectacle. You don’t go to the circus to see lions lazily lapping their paws in the shade. You go to see dozens of them, all jumping through flaming hoops, right after ten elephants march by, trumpeting on cue.

With the Na’vi, the movie’s race of nature-loving natives, Cameron and effects-studio Weta Workshop have created the greatest digital characters of all time. It’s a feat Weta has accomplished twice already this decade, with The Lord of the Rings’ Gollem and the title character in the recent remake of King Kong. But the Na’vi are there in a way that hasn’t been possible before.

The 3-D effects are even better with live-action characters. When Dr. Grace Augustine (Cameron royalty Sigourney Weaver) tinkers with a microscope or a display screen, the audience believes it’s sitting right there alongside her, in the lab.

Unfortunately, where the effects hit a homerun, the story manages only a line-drive for a single. We got the essence of Cameron’s script from our first set of clips at the Con. The rest of the movie added few layers of plot or intrigue. In Avatar, the human race has exhausted its energy sources and now turns to a mineral-rich moon in a far-flung star system to resupply. Predictably, the moon’s natives are a bunch of greeniacs and hippies opposed to the rape of their natural world. Oh, and sorry climate-change activists, Cameron envisions a future where humans’ lust for natural resources is unabated – even magnified – after sucking Earth dry.

The movie’s title should be understood by all but those fortunate few who avoided Avatar’s ubiquitous marketing blitz. Cameron was even spotted with Al Roker on Good Morning America, an appearance not truly complete without Roker’s turn as a Na’vi. But to explain, several of the movie’s live-action characters double as Na’vi by linking up with genetically engineered proxies, or avatars. This lets hero Jake Sully (Terminator Salvation’s Sam Worthington) infiltrate the Na’vi – and pursue love-interest Neytiri (Star Trek’s Zoe Saldana).

There’s a familiar villain – an evil military/industrial complex with a goofy young executive (Giovanni Ribisi) and a blood-thirsty colonel (marvelously played by Stephen Lang). They spend the first half of the movie planning a trail of tears-style relocation for the Na’vi. Of course, the audience knows it’s really being set up for an epic clash between the Ewoks, armed with sling-shots and superior knowledge of the terrain, and the terrifying technology of the Empire forces. Spoiler alert: the Ewoks win. Oh wait, wasn’t that Return of the Jedi?

An appearance by Wes Studi, playing a Na’vi chief, almost made us dismiss the movie entirely as The Last of the Mohicans in space. But there were pretty flying dragons to look at, and exploding helicopters coming right at us! We got distracted by the spectacle. And after all, isn’t that exactly what a blockbuster movie is supposed to do?