The dawn of a new era in entertainment

Rating: 10/10 (8 January 2010)

Avatar is James Cameron's science fiction epic that has broken the mold for movie making. For years we have been hearing great things about the progress and set backs for this film. Since 1997, Cameron has yet to release a feature length film, excluding some of his work with IMAX and his documentary/3D films like Ghosts of the Abyss. 12 years after he broke all of the box office records with Titanic, the most successful film of all time, Cameron has come back with a bang. A big bang. Possibly the biggest bang in cinema history.
Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic Marine, is sent to a distant planet to follow up in his brothers footsteps. The planet is Pandora. A world filled with strange, magnificent fauna and flora. It's a world filled with vibrant colors, breathtaking landscapes, and a tribe of intelligent life called the Na'vi. Underneath their village lies a rich deposit of a very rare and profitable metal. In order to avoid a hostile takeover, the military has permitted Dr. Grave Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and her Avatar program to try and persuade the locals through education, compromise, and good will that they are not to be feared. The program takes the DNA from the Navi and humans and combines them to create Avatars. These Avatars allow those whose DNA is in the Avatar to plug in and
Dr. Augustine's science department is at wits end with Colonel Miles Quatrich (Stephen Lang) and Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), the forces driving the drilling and military presence. They share one thing in common; an interest in Jake Sully. Sully and has his hands in both pots. He is the only person who can operate his brother's Avatar and he has an obligation to serve his military superiors. Sully is put in the difficult situation of making contact with the Na'vi and giving information to both Dr. Augustine and to Colonel Quatrich.
I don't want to go into too much detail about the plot and the characters. That was the one part of the movie I wasn't too excited about at the onset of the film, but as the story played out, I became more and more involved and grew to accept and understand the story. It sounds and looks almost too ridiculous, but trust me, it works.
I have seen a lot of science fiction movies. I have seen a lot of 3D movies. Never before have I seen a movie like this before. The clarity in the depth of vision Cameron creates is astounding. A friend of mine compared it to looking through a window, rather than the movie popping out of the screen towards you. I couldn't agree more. Needless to say, Cameron waited just the right amount of time to make this one.
What make the visuals so outstanding is the attention to detail on each individual effect. Everything from the mountains and tree tops in the background all the way through the foreground is so clear and detailed. It's astounding! From the very first moments of the film when Sully is lying down and water droplets surround him, every scene has something to wow the audience.
The cast has a wide variety of actors, the biggest of which is Weaver. I expected a solid performance from her but I was surprised by Worthington, whose only screen credit I had seen prior to this was Terminator: Salvation. Lang and Ribisi too give excellent performances. Even Michelle Rodriguez does a fine job. The actors that we can't see, like Zoe Saldana and Wes Studi, do a fine job as some of the the Na'vi leads.
I felt a certain enjoyment that I hadn't experienced in a long time. It was like watching Batman or Jurassic Park again for the first time. A kind of thrill that you experience on a roller coaster. There is so much to fall in love with here. I would have no problem saying that this is the best movie of the year. It's almost in a class of it's own. Avatar is the dawn of a new age in cinema. Where we are not bound by the constraints of technology. It's proof that if you can dream it, you can do it. James Cameron sought out to create a mesmerizing, groundbreaking film and he accomplished just that and more. The doubters who thought he would fall on his face are now the ones picking themselves off of the ground.
The future looks bright for big budget movies. With this new technology and new way of story telling, audiences can expect more high quality entertainment. James Cameron goes all in with each movie he makes. His next movie is called Battle Angel, another futuristic tale about a female cyborg rescued by a scientist. Sounds crazy. I can't wait.