Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has a new world awaiting him in James Cameron’s AVATAR
AVATAR (James Cameron, 2009)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Sunday, June 15, free with museum admission of $12, 5:30
Series continues through July 12
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.avatarmovie.com
Canadian-born director James Cameron (The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and some movie about a big sinking ship) crafts an expensive, high-tech apology to native people the world over in the futuristic adventure thriller Avatar. Borrowing elements from such films as The Matrix, Alien, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Star Wars saga, Disney’s animated Pocohantas, Reign of Fire, and many a cowboy-and-Indian tale, Cameron propels audiences into 2154, where a team of scientists join up with military troops on Pandora, home to the invaluable mineral unobtainium as well as a native race known alternately as the na’vi, or the People. In the middle of it all is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a wheelchair-bound former Marine who takes the place of his brilliant brother, who was recently murdered. While head researcher Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) thinks bringing Jake on board is a mistake, Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) sees it as an opportunity to make use of Jake’s expert reconnaissance skills, so Jake takes over what would have been his brother’s avatar — a giant creation modeled after the na’vi that humans can operate from a pod while asleep and that gives Jake the opportunity to walk again through this tall blue being. Quaritch secretly promises Jake that he will get him the costly procedure that will give him back the use of his real legs if he infiltrates the na’vi and sends intel back to the colonel as the military prepares an all-out assault on the People, but when Jake falls for the beautiful Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), he undergoes a change of heart. As with most Cameron films, the visual splendor is thwarted by a tired, clichéd script that devolves into complete silliness in the last half hour, spurred on by James Horner’s treacly score and plenty of poorly delivered lines. But Avatar is still lots of stupid fun, especially if you see it in 3D, which is how it’s being shown June 15 at the Museum of the Moving Image as part of the “See It Big! Science Fiction (Part Two)” series, which continues through July 12 with such other sci-fi flicks as Cameron’s The Abyss and The Terminator, Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still.