AVATAR
Avataris an eye-popping, wondrous, groundbreaking shot of pure movie magic. Many years in the making (Cameron did the story treatment over ten years ago), Avatar is in several respects a bold film. It uses advanced technology, developed for the film, to tell a large-scale pulp adventure that asks us to sympathize with a species of blue-skinned humanoid aliens. That the film succeeds so well is a testament to Cameron’s storytelling and filmmaking prowess.
The story is a meshing of several influences, from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ pulp SF stories like A Princess of Mars to Frank Herbert’s Dune. The script is tight, with vigorous momentum, and also creates several engaging characters.The protagonist, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is an interesting and sympathetic hero, a crippled soldier caught between two worlds. His story arc is the stuff of heroic myth as he discovers the wonderous world of Pandora while projecting his consciousness into an avatar, an alien body grown with the combined DNA of the Naavi, the inhabitants of Pandora, and Sully’s dead twin brother. Like most stories of this kind, his journey is as much internal as external, as he finds purpose as a leader/warrior of the Naavi against the militaristic might of the company that aims to expel the Naavi from their lands to strip mine it for a valuable mineral. Worthington heads a strong cast that bring their roles to life in brisk and effective character sketches. Stephen Lang is a standout as typical Cameron villain Colonel Quarich, and it’s terrific to see Sigourney Weaver back in a Cameron film after her superb role in the landmark SF/action/horror film Aliens.
The visual effects work in this film is stunning and, more importantly, completely immersive, especially in 3D. Cameron and his effects team from WETA have done what no other SF/fantasy film has done–created an imaginary world from the ground up, in astonishing layers of detail. After a short while, the awareness that I was watching a film dropped away, and I was simply there, jacked into the cinematic fever dream of the movie. Avatar is visionary, groundbreaking stuff, tapping directly into the well of wonder. Like personal milestone films such as Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, this brilliantly crafted epic represents most of the reasons I love cinema.
