Genre: Sci-Fi Action
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Laz Alonso, Joel David Moore, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Dileep Rao
Running Time: 161 minutes (plus trailers)
"They've sent us a message... that they can take whatever they want. Well we will send them a message. That this... this is our land!"
How do you follow up the biggest movie of all time? Time has not been kind to Titanic, but with a $1.8 billion worldwide gross and 11 academy awards, it didn’t really need to be. James Cameron, whose filmography also includes Aliens, The Abyss, True Lies and the first two Terminator movies has not made a feature film since Titanic’s release in 1997, choosing instead to focus on IMAX documentaries and the development of what he claimed would be a game-changing new 3D camera system. Well, he developed it all right!. The self proclaimed king of the world has followed up Titanic with a science fiction epic called Avatar, a film scripted in the early nineties and then shelved for over ten years because the technology to make it simply didn’t exist until now. Using his own experimental camera system and revolutionary motion capture technology, James Cameron has made a movie unlike anything ever seen before, and may have once again turned the movie world on its head. Avatar is one of the most awe inspiring movies of the year.
Australian actor Sam Worthington, who exploded onto the Hollywood scene earlier in the year with his role in Terminator Salvation, plays Jake Sully, a paraplegic ex-marine who gets offered the chance to get his legs back. Only they’re not exactly his legs. Jake is transported to Pandora, a forest covered moon light years away from earth, home to exotic fauna, incredible wildlife and a race of 10 foot tall blue alien beings known as the Na’vi. The Na’vi are a primitive tribal people highly in tune with the forests around them who just want to be left alone. Unfortunately for them Pandora is also rich in minerals and is a potential goldmine for greedy human mining corporations. In an attempt to establish diplomatic relations with the natives, the avatar program is developed, allowing human “pilots” like Jake to remotely operate genetically developed Na’vi/human hybrid bodies called “avatars”
Jake is overjoyed at having regained the ability to walk, and begins to explore Pandora, coming face to face with some of its most beautiful and dangerous inhabitants, including the Na’vi themselves. After some trepidation, he is welcomed into the Na’vi tribe and taught to become a warrior by the beautiful princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). Head of the Avatar program Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) hopes Jake will be able to help form an alliance between the two species and thus avoid any bloodshed, whilst security officer Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and corporate lackey Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) want to use Jake to gather as much information on the Na’vi so they can co-ordinate an all out military assault. But as Jake slowly comes to understand the ways of the Na’vi he begins to have second thoughts about where his loyalties and his heart truly lie.
Whilst the concept behind Avatar is somewhat unique, the way that the story plays out is certainly not. Nothing much happens in terms of plot that you won’t see coming a mile away, and the dialogue, while not bad, it's nothing you haven’t seen a variation of 100 times before. And yet while you sit in the audience, none of this matters. Because Avatar is an epic, and while it paints in broad strokes, the final picture is so wondrous, so gorgeous to behold that you completely embrace it. Quaritch is exactly what you’d expect the evil military character in a film like this to be, right down to the grizzly facial scaring. We also have evil corporate guy, noble science lady, and jealous douche bag rival love interest. These aren’t new characters; hell, they’ve all appeared in one or another of Cameron's films. But they elicit the exact emotional response from the audience that is required of them; you hate Quaritch, loath Selfridge and root for Jake and Neytiri to fall in love. And of course, they do.
Whatever Avatar may (or may not) lack in depth of character and story, it more than makes up for with its astounding visuals. Never before have you seen special effects this good; the motion capture that allows Worthington, Saldana and the other actors who play computer generated character for some or all of the film is as revolutionary a filmmaking technology as Technicolor. The 3D (if you see it in 3D) may distract in some of the early scenes or with the more frenetic camera movements, but more often than not it only aids you in becoming lost in the world that Cameron has created. And that's the best thing about this film. Avatar has it's own universe: plants, animals, machinery, all so detailed, so beautiful and so real. This movie doesn’t look like James Cameron spent $300 million on state of the art special effects; it looks like he spent $300 million dollars on a spaceship that he used to fly to Pandora and shoot the movie there. Seems like he blew a fair amount of stuff up while he was there too; the climax of Avatar delivers everything you could hope for in balls out action, a masterfully paced and directed assault on your brain from one of the all time masters.
I cannot recommend Avatar highly enough. The action and effects are out of this world, and the story isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination; it’s just not new. In all honestly though, I’m kind of glad. This is an epic film, and it needed an epic story to go with it. Archetypes are archetypes for a reason, and James Cameron has utilized them to their full potential. See this film. See it in 3D. In IMAX. Be overwhelmed, be amazed, be blown away by what this man has accomplished once again. Titanic is no longer his biggest film.
Avatar is now playing worldwide on both 2D and 3D screens
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Laz Alonso, Joel David Moore, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Dileep Rao
Running Time: 161 minutes (plus trailers)
"They've sent us a message... that they can take whatever they want. Well we will send them a message. That this... this is our land!"
How do you follow up the biggest movie of all time? Time has not been kind to Titanic, but with a $1.8 billion worldwide gross and 11 academy awards, it didn’t really need to be. James Cameron, whose filmography also includes Aliens, The Abyss, True Lies and the first two Terminator movies has not made a feature film since Titanic’s release in 1997, choosing instead to focus on IMAX documentaries and the development of what he claimed would be a game-changing new 3D camera system. Well, he developed it all right!. The self proclaimed king of the world has followed up Titanic with a science fiction epic called Avatar, a film scripted in the early nineties and then shelved for over ten years because the technology to make it simply didn’t exist until now. Using his own experimental camera system and revolutionary motion capture technology, James Cameron has made a movie unlike anything ever seen before, and may have once again turned the movie world on its head. Avatar is one of the most awe inspiring movies of the year.
Australian actor Sam Worthington, who exploded onto the Hollywood scene earlier in the year with his role in Terminator Salvation, plays Jake Sully, a paraplegic ex-marine who gets offered the chance to get his legs back. Only they’re not exactly his legs. Jake is transported to Pandora, a forest covered moon light years away from earth, home to exotic fauna, incredible wildlife and a race of 10 foot tall blue alien beings known as the Na’vi. The Na’vi are a primitive tribal people highly in tune with the forests around them who just want to be left alone. Unfortunately for them Pandora is also rich in minerals and is a potential goldmine for greedy human mining corporations. In an attempt to establish diplomatic relations with the natives, the avatar program is developed, allowing human “pilots” like Jake to remotely operate genetically developed Na’vi/human hybrid bodies called “avatars”Jake is overjoyed at having regained the ability to walk, and begins to explore Pandora, coming face to face with some of its most beautiful and dangerous inhabitants, including the Na’vi themselves. After some trepidation, he is welcomed into the Na’vi tribe and taught to become a warrior by the beautiful princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). Head of the Avatar program Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) hopes Jake will be able to help form an alliance between the two species and thus avoid any bloodshed, whilst security officer Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and corporate lackey Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) want to use Jake to gather as much information on the Na’vi so they can co-ordinate an all out military assault. But as Jake slowly comes to understand the ways of the Na’vi he begins to have second thoughts about where his loyalties and his heart truly lie.
Whilst the concept behind Avatar is somewhat unique, the way that the story plays out is certainly not. Nothing much happens in terms of plot that you won’t see coming a mile away, and the dialogue, while not bad, it's nothing you haven’t seen a variation of 100 times before. And yet while you sit in the audience, none of this matters. Because Avatar is an epic, and while it paints in broad strokes, the final picture is so wondrous, so gorgeous to behold that you completely embrace it. Quaritch is exactly what you’d expect the evil military character in a film like this to be, right down to the grizzly facial scaring. We also have evil corporate guy, noble science lady, and jealous douche bag rival love interest. These aren’t new characters; hell, they’ve all appeared in one or another of Cameron's films. But they elicit the exact emotional response from the audience that is required of them; you hate Quaritch, loath Selfridge and root for Jake and Neytiri to fall in love. And of course, they do.Whatever Avatar may (or may not) lack in depth of character and story, it more than makes up for with its astounding visuals. Never before have you seen special effects this good; the motion capture that allows Worthington, Saldana and the other actors who play computer generated character for some or all of the film is as revolutionary a filmmaking technology as Technicolor. The 3D (if you see it in 3D) may distract in some of the early scenes or with the more frenetic camera movements, but more often than not it only aids you in becoming lost in the world that Cameron has created. And that's the best thing about this film. Avatar has it's own universe: plants, animals, machinery, all so detailed, so beautiful and so real. This movie doesn’t look like James Cameron spent $300 million on state of the art special effects; it looks like he spent $300 million dollars on a spaceship that he used to fly to Pandora and shoot the movie there. Seems like he blew a fair amount of stuff up while he was there too; the climax of Avatar delivers everything you could hope for in balls out action, a masterfully paced and directed assault on your brain from one of the all time masters.
I cannot recommend Avatar highly enough. The action and effects are out of this world, and the story isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination; it’s just not new. In all honestly though, I’m kind of glad. This is an epic film, and it needed an epic story to go with it. Archetypes are archetypes for a reason, and James Cameron has utilized them to their full potential. See this film. See it in 3D. In IMAX. Be overwhelmed, be amazed, be blown away by what this man has accomplished once again. Titanic is no longer his biggest film.
Avatar is now playing worldwide on both 2D and 3D screens
