Sci-Fi Action adventure doesn't get much better than this.
"Avatar" takes us to a spectacular world beyond imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on an epic adventure, ultimately fighting to save the alien world he has learned to call home. James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of "Titanic", first conceived the film 15 years ago, when the means to realize his vision did not exist. Now, after four years of production, AVATAR, a live action film with a new generation of special effects, delivers a fully immersive cinematic experience of a new kind, where the revolutionary technology invented to make the film disappears into the emotion of the characters and the sweep of the story.
We enter the alien world through the eyes of Jake Sully, a former Marine confined to a wheelchair. But despite his broken body, Jake is still a warrior at heart. He is recruited to travel light years to the human outpost on Pandora, where corporations are mining a rare mineral that is the key to solving Earth's energy crisis. Because the atmosphere of Pandora is toxic, they have created the Avatar Program, in which human "drivers" have their consciousness linked to an avatar, a remotely-controlled biological body that can survive in the lethal air. These avatars are genetically engineered hybrids of human DNA mixed with DNA from the natives of Pandora... the Na'vi.
Visually, the movie is magnificent. To have technology catch up to a director's vision and to be able to deliver that vision the way it was intended is truly remarkable. I enjoyed "Avatar" from beginning to end as it gave me so many reasons to stay interested. The only drawback is that the plotline is not a completely new story. Flicks like the classic "Dances with Wolves" and the recent "Battle for Terra" come to mind. I kept having the feeling that the Marines stationed on Pandora were representative of the United States and the Na'vi race were Native Americans about to lose their land to progress.
Even still, this movie has a little bit for everyone to enjoy, so I highly recommend seeing "Avatar"
3.5 buckets
