The bar has been raised

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2009)

There's literally no point to watching this movie in the standard 2-D format. The movie is special in 3-D because only then will the audience see all the nuance details and effects that were intended to be experienced by Cameron. The story is nothing special, albeit more realistic since the bad guys aren't really "bad" in the traditional Disney movie, cookie cutter sense. There are some environmental issues that one must wrestle with during and after the movie, but perhaps this is not a bad thing. That is not to say the movie's story is bad, it's quite good that I believed in the emotional depth of the characters who were essentially figments of someone else's imagination projected into digital reality. However, it could be better, and improving the content is a task that future filmmakers must face if they are to truly push the frontier. With that said, the main innovation of this movie is the 3-D storytelling which significantly enhances the movie-going experience. In Cameron's other work Titanic, there was a great "sunset." With Avatar, I hope this is the "dawn" of a new era in cinema.