James Cameron’s Movie Avatar Review
Director James Cameron’s long-awaited Avatar paints an alien race with a delicacy for bows and bolt, but keeps the 3-D jutting clichés under control. Even when bloody arrowheads stick out at your face, Cameron ensures the stunts don’t distract from his otherworldly story.
Like those (very different) movies, ‘Avatar’ stretches the bounds of the cinematic imagination. It shows us something weve never seen before: an entire alien world, a new and complex ecosystem rendered in three dimensions with dazzling fluidity and detail.
Welcome to Pandora, a distant planet and one of the most valuable outposts in the solar system. Here, earthlings mine a rare mineral and try to maintain equitable relations with the indigenous people. The Navi are 10 feet tall, blue-skinned and increasingly pissed as the humans encroach on their sacred lands.
While they send one of their men (Sam Worthington) to Pandora by turning him into a Na’vi avatar so that he can understand the way of the natives and talk them into handing over their land, they also nurture a plan of their own. With round of talks merely being a cover to understand how Na’vis feel and react, there is a deadly operation brewing in the background that would has a single point agenda of destroying and winning.
# In allowing everything to be part of a greater whole, Cameron truly created a world of his own, which makes you truly feel as if you’ve been transported into a new world while watching the film.
# The Acting: To both the actors and director’s credit, the performances came through extremely well. It’s amazing how much of the actors emotions you could see through their Avatar characters. Zoe Saldana gave an especially emotional and strong performance, and you never even saw her real face.
The Story: Cameron came up with a lot of original ideas for this film, but the story was not one of them. Although it was well put together, clean, and everything played out like clock-work, there was no originality to it. As everyone realized as they were walking out of the theater, the film is Dances with Wolves but with blue cat-like aliens.
Early Footage: Although it was fun to see early footage of the film a few months ago, it screws you over in the long run. The first 45 minutes of the film is all about being in awe of the environment. It’s about reacting to everything around you, for the people who have seen the footage the experience isn’t fresh and therefore it doesn’t carry you as much as it should. For those of you who have abstained from any footage, you’ll soon be rewarded.