Avatar: A world well built

Rating: 10/10 (4 June 2019)

If you like fantasy or science fiction, then you will love avatar. This movie is a perfect blend of science fiction and fantasy, and they are thematically tied together wonderfully. The world is well built, and it shows. The effects are impossibly well polished and has perfect cgi animals, so good that you don't notice.
In Avatar, the plot centres around using science fiction and fantasy to show how wonderful James Cameron is at worldbuilding. At its core it is a very good excuse to show off how well built it is. However, just because it is good for showing off James Cameron's worldbuilding prowess, it still manages a flawless romantic subplot, tieing it back into the main story, as well as an epic climax, and a perfect display of the Even in the climax, James Cameron beautifully drives his worldbuilding unintrusively into every second.
My favorite scene is when Jake follows Neytiri towards her village, and when he is standing on a branch, the seeds of the sacred tree all cluster on his chest. The thing that makes this so special is that is showcases how magical James Cameron's world is. Despite magic not actually existing, he manages to weave it in. The effects are there, but not obvious. It is only because these drifting pollen things cannot be controlled in such a way that we even notice that they are there. It exemplifies the fact that Avatar is a CGI movie, and the amazing possibilities that it allows for. This scene could not be achieved with practical effects, but it does not overdo CGI, by not pushing it too far, and it shows how it can be used in a profound action-free scene which can require it.
In Avatar, one of the best written characters was Parker Selfridge, the guy in charge of the corporate part of the company that sends humans to Pandora. He is very dismissive of the idea that the Na'vi have any benefits at all. His character shows frustration with the Na'vi and this is at the core of his character, and his perceived uncooperativity of the Na'vi makes him very relatable. He is clearly stressed, and projects blame, something that we all do, onto the Na'vi, who he calls "flea bitten savages". He is also not quite a clear cut villain, at least until Grace gives her speech to try and get him to turn, and without consideration says "what have you been smoking" and this shows his single minded obsession with keeping doing what they are doing, regardless of the natural internet beneath their feet. His true centre is his closed-mindedness.
Avatar is an incredible movie with perfectly subtle CGI, beautiful worldbuilding, and a well structured plot. Through his wonderful blend of science fiction and fantasy tropes, James Cameron, with full creative control, brought these two genres, both birthed in the romantic movement, together to build a wonderous world and wrote an incredible plot to flow through, and serve it. With his immense ability to explain things just enough, he strikes a good balance that shows that while Pandora is basically fairyland, it is a realistic fairyland.