Nigh perfect entertainment

Rating: Null/10 (9 January 2014)

There have been perhaps two or three films in my lifetime that have been so good that I went back into the movie theater to see them a second time. This one's one of them.
Director James Cameron has been one of Hollywood's most successful and most prolific film makers for a long time. My personal theory is that he's just so good at giving the audience exactly what they want to see in order to be pleased, shocked, rejuvenated, excited and entertained. After the box office miracle story that was Titanic, he moved away from the central stage and only returned back to full-length feature film with this one: Avatar, the highest-grossing film of all time, managing to surpass even Titanic. And thus Cameron has directed the two highest-grossing films of all time. That's pure talent.
So what makes Avatar so interesting and so engrossing? Well, on the technical side of things, at the time of its release, Avatar was THE best looking film we had ever seen. Four years have since passed and it has withstood the test of time remarkably well, and I think that it will continue to do so. It's an utterly breath-taking film. The foreign world of Pandora opens in front of your eyes in thousands of shades of colour, each individual plant, creature and mountain a miracle to look at in its own right. Gorgeous, beautiful, majestic, awe-inspiring are all words that this films easily earns.
This artistry alone would warrant me to recommend this film, but I also happen to like the story and the characters a great deal. Avatar has been accused of rehashing old "white man amongst natives" story lines. It has been accused of being just a ripoff of Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, Ferngully and countless other similar films. I don't get these people. The stories have similarities, yes, and Avatar is a bit predictable, but do these people really claim that if a particular story has already been told, you are not allowed to try and make a better version of that story, your version? Because that's what Avatar is. It's this generation's "amongst natives" story, told with gorgeous imagery, great characters and exciting storytelling. So what if you can predict how the story's going to end. The same holds true for all the romantic comedies, most of the action films and all the sport films, yet people don't complain when those have a storyline that's similar to previous films. Well, okay, some do, but not as vehemently as they did in the case of Avatar. Backlash against its success, maybe?
Avatar's story is just fine. It's the visuals, the world, the music and the characters that make an adventure film like this work, and all four of those are great. I've already stated my opinion about Pandora and how it looks on screen. James Horner's score fits the mood and style of the film perfectly, being grandiose, little bit foreign and dramatic. Likewise with the actors that all do a really good job. Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana have great chemistry together as Jake Sully, the crippled marine, and Neytiri, the princess of the Na'vi. Special mention should also go to Stephen Lang and his character Colone Miles Quaritch, one of the most badass soldiers in recent cinema history.
Longish review, but that's because it's a movie that divides opinions. Some people seem to hate it because of its seeming unoriginality, others focus on the good sides and absolutely love it. I belong to the latter camp and thus Avatar belongs amongst my favourite movies of all time. See it, if you haven't already.