Watched in the cinema in 4K HFR IMAX 3D (76th visit in 2022)

When I first heard about "Avatar", I was euphoric. Not only is James Cameron shooting again, no, he's even shooting a science fiction film, one of my favorite genres. On top of that came the announcement of an opus magnum of 3D cinema, a "revolution of cinema" as James Cameron himself described it. This stoked expectations that could well flourish with two years to wait.

James Cameron's cinema was made for science fiction. His best works were sci-fi films ("Aliens", "Terminator 2", "Abyss"). After all, I wrote about my previous euphoria, which increased. I didn't expect miracles, but I know that James Cameron can do it. In "Aliens" he gave incredible depth to the character of Ellen Ripley. He understood how to balance action cinema, dramaturgy and character development. Sigourney Weaver was nominated for an Oscar for her performance and again my expectations increased when I heard that Sigourney Weaver was also in "Avatar".

First disillusionment came when I read a short outline of the story. Already this read like eco-kitsch according to old recipe, but I trusted James Cameron's talent as a screenwriter and kept saying to myself: "Aliens! Aliens! Aliens!"

The next damper came with the first trailer, which started the brooding for many. The Smurfs didn't bother me, but the thunderstorm of effects presented looked more like the video game of a mix of "Star Wars" and "The Lord of the Rings". I still kept up with it, intentionally not going to the promo clip show at the cinema, and blamed the video game look on the poor quality of the internet video.

In December 2009, the time had come and I fell into the armchair, put on the "glasses" and began to marvel.

In the beginning, the amazement was real. For the first thirty minutes, you could barely get your jaw up. 3D, which often still looked like staggered cardboard props in space, is really vivid here for the first time. Every object has a real depth, a shape. The camera view becomes your own view, despite the glasses. "Avatar" is captivating simply because it brings the viewer "to itself", into its own world, and perhaps also overtaxes him a little.

The actual revolution takes place, in the context of the 3D film, purely technically. The film has only itself as its subject. The "new" images we get to see excite our senses more than it was the case before. This so-called revolution can also be seen as a step backwards, because in no time at all you feel like you're back in the 19th century, when cinema was still a fairground attraction, people staring enthusiastically into little peepholes and watching contentless motion loops. Form as attraction, we're back to square one, surface cinema. "Avatar" is a fairground attraction of the old, new days.

The story and the characters, on the other hand, might inspire ten-year-olds, but that's about it. Cynically, James Cameron may have left the story so shallow to avoid being overwhelmed by it. After all, that's what 3D technology is for. Otherwise I can't explain why he films a story that has more dust on it than the Andromeda Nebula. All comparisons with "Dances With Wolves" and "Pocahontas" are more than justified. To what extent one can already speak of theft, everyone must decide for himself. On the other hand, the plot patterns, the good-and-evil conflict and the characters themselves have already become pure clichés, so that the copyright for these well-trodden paths no longer applies, I think.

Now, you could consider the story irrelevant, as some euphoric voices did and still do. Those who have reached that point have already lost. Because the sad thing is that James Cameron takes it all quite seriously. That hurts. It's as if he slept through the last twenty years and thinks he's telling us something groundbreaking. What the script screws up, of course, is also felt by the actors. Sam Worthington gets off quite well. Sigourney Weaver, on the other hand, is a walking cliché, as is Michelle Rodriguez. The Na'vi creatures, on the other hand, "act" impressively well, considering that they come from the computer. This new motion-capturing process does make me a little afraid of the future films without actors. I hope the audience is wise enough to continue to see real actors.

Sixty percent of the film is CGI. Does that make me wonder or cry? As expected, the quality of the images is high-end. The initial video game doubt quickly evaporated, but that was certainly due to the overwhelming 3D effect. Technically, the film is a triumph, mostly anyway. Even James Cameron could not solve the still serious disadvantages of digital cinematography. In the many chase scenes, the overview is often lost due to the high motion blur. The slow CMOS sensors of digicams are still no competition for the old 35mm film.

The synthetic world in "Avatar" only has blooming landscapes to offer. Everything is perfect, but the action is not. While James Cameron charges his story with war, terror and genocide, Pandora indirectly becomes proportionally more beautiful and degenerates into wallpaper. The scenery becomes visible and the illusion evaporates. James Cameron's films always deal with the compatibility of technology and nature. His strength so far has been to juxtapose these two sides and choose neither. This was still the case with "Titanic", but "Avatar " breaks with this line. Technology is always dictator here, trimmed to performance, efficiency and perfection. Pandora was created by the same technology, an antiseptic world, merciless against everything that is not perfect. The humanistic undertone intended by James Cameron exposes itself as a big lie. This film is not alive. Not even in the once again improved HFR version, which looks even more like a videogame and has now been released in the course of the second part, which will start in 3 months after a 13-year development.