Review of Avatar3D

Update 18 Jan 2010: Avatar won best film (drama) and James Cameron won Best Director at the golden Globe Awards.

Someone once said that every movie ever made was a 'religious movie'. That covers Avatar to a degree but I'd say it had a strong spiritual element. The visuals are breathtaking but when choosing your seat make sure that you get the best experience by filling your vision with the screen. If your seats are lettered front to back of the cinema then think about getting seats around L,M or N - check first don't rely on my suggestion!

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is an ex-marine, a common enough character in movies, who has been paralysed and is now paraplegic. He takes the place of his dead brother on a mission to a distant moon called Pandora. The name is suggestive of the horrors to be found there. Set about 150 years in our future we gather that Earth is in a poor state and that big business can make a great deal of money from obtaining Unobtanium from Pandora. Jake's mission is to find out how to remove the somewhat angry natives, the Navi, from their home on the prime piece of real estate over the massive Unobtanium mineral deposit. The Avatar of the title refers to a human-navi hybrid created to cross the barriers of culture and allow the humans to interact with the native people. Through some movie science we see that Jake is able to link to his avatar and embark on a wondrous adventure amongst the Navi people.

The story does rely on the viewer to fill in here and there and along with all good movies a few liberties are taken. The visual effects from WETA are totally stunning. A lot of care has gone into crafting a new world. It is no wonder that the film has received many accolades already. The direction is pretty good but you can get a sense that the actors were not totally 'pushed to the line', however they were clearly committed to the film and well supported.

This is a very violent movie as we see the militaristic side of the human race represented by Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). He hates the planet and he hates the Navi because they're in his way. He also hates the scientists because they are getting in his way as well. There is a great deal of death and destruction, we're well set up for the time the natives fight back. If only the indigenous people in the Amazon Basin had had the backup of an ex-marine.

In juxtaposition to the military horrors we learn, at a gentle pace, that the planet is an organism and everything on it is linked together. It's a bit like the Gaia hypothesis with extra bits added on.

Jake Sully has to deal with resentment from all sides and gains the respect of the scientists and the Navi, eventually. The ending is none too surprising as we see Jake-avatar battling with Quaritch to the death. The naive death dealing humans are sent away and Jake gets his girl, in the form of Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and gets to keep his super-duper human-navi body.

Overall well worth seeing. Very exciting and has lots of memorable, enjoyable scenes.