Avatar, Chills, Thrills, Spills and Incredible Eye Candy !

James Cameron's dream becomes our reality in Avatar: a delight to audiences and a great leap forward in movie making. Packed with some of the most thrilling special effects in film and with an attention to detail that seems pathological, Avatar brings to life a world new and fresh and as complete as the Earth herself. This attention to detail is what made such films as Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings legendary and will do the same for Cameron’s film. Avatar will forever change the way films are made!

Pandora, Cameron’s imagined world, is breathtaking. A beautiful, stunning and thoroughly real as any world ever made real on film but nearly all designed with and through the magic of computer graphics. Amazingly it doesn’t take a thing away from the delight of falling thousands of feet on the back of a dinosaur-like alien beast or facing an enormous panther-like carnivore. Pandora is as real as any world brought to the screen, including ours.

Avatar is based about 150 years in the future, the Earth is dying and humans desperately need energy and it seems that Pandora is the only source great enough. Unobtainium, a brilliant source of energy, is selling for 20 million dollars a kilo and the Na’vi’s Home Tree lies directly above the richest source ever found.

The corporation, headed by Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), is in charge of convincing the warlike Na’vi (a 10 foot tall race of indigenous peoples) to peacefully move out of their homeland. Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) is charged with educating the natives and introducing them into modern culture and finding a key to moving them. Only the armed forces of the corporation have little patience and have killed many of the Na’vi angering the tribe and forcing them to break off relations.

Enter Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), marine and paraplegic and candidate for the avatar program by accident of birth, his twin brother was a PhD, and signed up to be an avatar “driver.” Sully, a warrior, manages to be simple enough to the Na’vi that he might be taught the ways of The People where all the PhDs have failed. Of course he falls in love with the daughter of the tribe leaders and the culture of Pandora and “goes native.”

I imagine most of us could have written the plot because we’ve seen it so often: Dances with Wolves being the most prominent example. The comparison between Wolves and Avatar is hard to escape, even while watching the film, but the magic of Avatar lies not in plot but in the crystal clear visuals and fascinating action. Avatar shatters moviegoer’s ideas of film and its limitations. James Cameron broke the barriers and look for filmmaking to take advantage.

I strongly recommend every movie fan see Avatar at the theater, don’t wait. If you’re close to an IMAX theater head there, if not, Avatar is available variously at 3D and 2D at theaters everywhere. My rating is based on both the incredible graphics and the, unfortunately, overused plot. Rating: Avatar 4.5 out of 5.

(Two personal notes: First, I can finally forgive James Cameron for Titanic. Titanic happened to win Best Picture over my personal favorite: LA Confidential. Avatar clearly is superior to Titanic and, hopefully, will finally knock its ponderous predecessor out of number one at the box office. Second, I am an avid gamer and Avatar should break the gaming industry free of many of its present graphics limitations. Thank you, Mr. Cameron.)