Avatar

What can anyone say about Avatar that won't have already been said in triplicate? The world's most expensive movie earned the world's biggest box office gross. It raised its creator, James Cameron, onto a new pedestal raised above his old pedestal (Titanic). Does anything else need saying?

Maybe no one's noted that some contrarians, and moviegoers with queasy stomachs or eye problems, prefer the 2-D version. Has anyone else also remarked how shrewd Cameron was in developing a 3-D format that would also play immaculately on 2-D screens and therefore transfer well to the lucrative dvd market?

After three viewings in one week, twice in 3-D, my admiration for Cameron's technical aplomb expanded. He's amalgamated so many of the best tricks in his cinematic repertoire, from giant lift-loaders with robotic arms (Aliens) to the mesmerising beauty of undersea creatures (two 3-D IMAX documentaries and The Abyss). Fellow-Canadian Sigourney (Ripley) Weaver re-appears, as a Greek tragic figure and the traditional anti-Establishment heroine in a Cameron script -- and Wikipedia's review of his life and work suggest that Cameron often felt he was the unjustly scorned outsider in the cliquish worlds of Hollywood's producers, "talents" and production crews.

The slights he perceived in Hollywood might well have buttressed an innate anti-US attitude in him. His movie scripts, even for fun-filled True Lies and maudlin Titanic, often weave in valid pot shots at the American political, social and military systems. The decision to make Weaver's scientist a nicotine addict was clearly a deliberate provocation to the PC caucus. The gratuitous character trait's retention is just one sign of Cameron's power of persuasion, or bullying. He may be a prima donna, but he's also a proven premium dollar generator.

Maybe Hollywood itself helped to create its latest little-loved genius, by trying to cold-shoulder him. Hollywood worships Spielberg, grudgingly respects Scorsese, didn't like Hitchcock, Orwell or Chaplin, and really detests Cameron? We're lucky he, like other real talents, was so offended that he beat Hollywood at its own games : creating blockbusters and winning awards.