Reinventing the genre

Rating: 10/10 (7 August 2017)

Avatar was born from an idea by director James Cameron in 1999, with an idea to advance that genre called science fiction, with special effects, according to him, never seen before.
First of all, the world of Pandora is absolutely amazing. Every plant, animal and environment is incredibly imaginative. James Cameron familiarizes and gives a new focus on it to create an incredible totally realistic world feeling. It is quite evident that his deep exploration of the sea during the last years had a huge influence on the world of Pandora. Plants look and act like coral, creatures float in the air, like jellyfish, and everything is bioluminescent. It's visually stunning and makes you think that you could possibly be there in space waiting to be discovered on another planet. Many people complain about excessive use of CGI, but this is a case in which it is done well. Soon you will find yourself immersed in a world that forgets that everything is digital. I remember a scene where Jake (the protagonist) dives into a river to escape a creature that is chasing him. I thought, "Looks like it would have been filmed in South America," I realized. Every drop of water, every blade of grass, every ray of light, and everything on the screen was completely CGI.
Fully CGI characters is a very risky business. They can fail horribly (Jar Jar Binks) or work perfectly (Gollum). This is a case where he is working perfectly here. Even though the ships are 9 feet tall and blue, you quickly forget that you are seeing a very detailed drawing. Capture the facial expressions of the actors and actresses perfectly. This is especially the case of Zoe Saldana as Neytiri. When she is angry or nervous, she accurately captures her performance. They are incredibly expressive. On the side of the "human" performance, the cast is excellent overall. Sam Worthington really gets to shine like Jake Sully. It has the right combination of ingenuity, hardness and arrogance. While Zoe Saldana is completely CGI as Neytiri, she is no less impressive in her performance as mentioned above. Sigourney Weaver is always one of my favorites, and is great playing her character Grace. The other outstanding performance within the cast is that of Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch. The only thing that can be blamed on Avatar is that the story is a little predictable and some dialogues are kind of corny, but it deserves to be seen.