Emotionally charged Scifi with a political message.

Rating: 10/10 (14 April 2010)

Avatar. A word of Indian origin means a new-body-life of God to save the people from a crisis. One of the vedic lords named Krishna said to have ten such Avatars, each occur in different occasions. Here Cameron's Sci-fi Avatar is of biotech.
Planets and Systems: In 2154, humans are able to travel to 'Alpha Centauri' a solar system closest (4.5 Light Years; Light travels 3 Lakh Km / sec. If Light travels for one year that distance traveled is called 'one Light Year'.) to our solar system. This solar system has two suns and Pandora is the fictional moon around a gas planet Polyphemus. As per the story this moon has earth-like ecosystem and inhabited by aliens called 'Navis' who look like humans but about 12 feet tall and have tails and bluish skin tones. Its atmosphere is not hostile to humans except that the air can be inhaled by humans using a mask that filters out the poisonous elements.
Bacground: A team of scientists and military security forces of a company called RDA, travel to Pandora to unearth a rare metal called 'Unobtaniam' that is very costlier than even Titanium because of its super-class properties. They travel for three years to reach Pandora. Build a ground-station there with all their giant earth excavating machinery plus helicopters weaponry, missile aircrafts. There they encounter the 12-feet tall local inhabitants(aliens) called 'Navis'. Navis are bluish people living greenish life i.e. they live blended with nature. Each Navi clan lives under a giant tree about 500 ft high. There are about 12 such trees in Pandora. The 'Unobtanium' reserve lies under these 'sacred trees'. Now humans want to drive these Navi tribes out of their trees so that they can excavate Unobtanium 'freely'.
The head of the Scientists group (Sigourney Weaver) says instead of using forces to tame Navis, humans should learn their language and ways and teach our ways to Navis and then make a cordial relationship. With this motive the scientists create 'Navi' bodies (called Avatars) by mixing the DNAs of Navi and humans and develop a way to teleport a human's consciousness into the 'Navi' and hope to make better contacts with 'Navi' people. Even some 'Navi' people learn and speak English but Navis are unaware of Human's actual intentions.
Story: A paraplegic marine (Sam Worthington) goes to Pandora to be an 'Avatar'. He goes as a Navi and gets a chance to live with them for about five months and learn their ways. He finally becomes one among them. However, the RDA determines that the scientist's efforts of 'peaceful acquisition' has become a failure and moves to straight attack of the Navi people. What happens next is the course of the movie.
James Cameron is a person of perfection. This movie reached great heights in motion capture graphics technology. They invented a new technique WETA for film-directing such a film with full of graphics images blended with characters. The Navis all are 3D graphic images. The story line is a very bold one. For e.g. see the dialog of the corporate's security colonel "We will fight terror with terror". It obviously was the statement of Bush on Iraq and Afghan war. Here it is Alien Tribes Vs Corporate Humans.
All the actors, editing, photography and music all were in place exactly. No place for great performances. But still the performances are all better. The wonderful thing is the idea and creation of the Pandora world, its people, its creatures and the territory. Very powerful imagination. Goto wikipedia page to find more elaborate details of this hard work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film).
This is another milestone in Hollywood Cinema laid by James Cameron. Imagine directing a scene of Pandora, a non-existing planet, visualizing it only in your mind. No original actors present! No surroundings exist! Too hard.