A movie with a soul.

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2009)

When I first heard about Avatar, earlier this year and I saw the trailers, I didn't had high expectations. I thought it was a movie filled with special effects, but with no original or interesting story, a movie where I could not care about the characters, like "King Kong" for example; I was mistaken. Visually, the movie is unlike anything I've ever seen in a cinema. And it's not only that, the movie has a soul.
The story focuses on Jake Sully, a paraplegic U.S. marine, who in he future, travels trough space to the planet Pandora, a planet inhabited by the Na'vi, an indigenous alien race( although they have blue skin, they are very similar to humans). There he becomes involved with the Avatar project, and he submits himself to a process in which his consciousness is transferred to a Na'vi body. The military on Pandora are interested in a very rare and precious material, a sort of mineral, called Unobtanium. There are large quantities of this material in the place where the Na'vis live. Jake, in Avatar form, infiltrates the Na'vi, in order to gather Intel for the military, and if possible, convince the Na'vis to relocate. While living with them, Jake learns about their culture, their way of life and he starts to see the world trough their eyes. He practically becomes one of them, and he also falls in love with a Na'vi woman,Neytiri. The military are about to launch an attack against the Na'vi, and Jake is going trough an identity crisis, he has to find out who he is, and he has to choose a side in the imminent battle.
James Cameron outdid himself with this movie,the motion capture technology used to create the Na'vi is just as good as the one used to create Gollum, in "The Lord of the Rings". It's hard to believe that there were no shootings done in a real forest, it all looks incredibly real. The movie is visually extraordinary, and as I said before, it has a soul. While watching the movie, you come to care about the characters, the Na'vis specially. This movie got to me in a way that only " The Lord of the Rings- The Return of the King"( my favorite movie of all time) had got before. In the scene where the military launch their first attack against the Na'vi, destroying a part of their forest and killing some of them, I had to make an effort not to cry, my eyes were full of tears, and that is something that rarely happens to me, REALLY, rarely. The movie has a strong message of love and peace, it is an anti-war and anti-military movie, and also has a strong spiritual side. The way the Na'vis respect the nature, the animals and above all, life itself, is a lesson to all human beings. James Cameron had done great movies in the past, but never something as bold as this. To my eyes now, he is just as brilliant as a filmmaker as Peter Jackson is, and that's saying a lot. This movie is certainly going to be remembered as a milestone in movie making.