Going Native: AVATARA visual feast: fantastic film...SPOILERS

Rating: 10/10 (17 December 2009)

Well, after months of waiting ,i finally got to see Avatar, a film all about going native... with a vengeance. My worst fears, from the trailer: hackneyed dialogue, didn't materialise, and tho the script was excellent, it was the actors who brought it and Pandora to life. Subtle, tender, sweet, brutal, menacing:cameron doesn't do things by halves. The tenderness of the two leads is as convincing as the initial menace of the na'vi and the growing menace of the humans. Worthington and Saldana are splendid as the two leads...Worthinton making his slow and painful transition from human to navi credible by digging into his character and finding the heart. The direction, script and running time allow space for this transformation...
NO: Its not necessary to have a completely new idea...but it is important to make it come alive. In this Cameron and his crew have succeeded...much of this is due to the SFX teams and the actors. Saldana may have been as much of a chance for Cameron as Worthinton(who made me think of Russell Crowe), being little known, and having #150,000,000 riding on her slender form but she gives life and passion to elven Neytiri: as the princess, teacher friend and lover to the initially wild Jake: going from a wish to kill, contempt slowly shedding these as she recognises Jakes worth(pun!) and teaches him the ways of her people. The spine of the film is his transformation, which is one of the highlights. Lang as Qaritch, is also terrific as the brutal Qaritch, with his single vision, and dark alter-teacher to Jake...Marked like Ahab, has only made his character the more ominous..he's like a bomb waiting to go off. Sigoruney Weaver is terrific as the tough principled scientist, who stands up to the corporate mercenaries. I liked the idea where jakes 'emptiness' was used to his advantage over the scientists in bridging the gulf between human and Navi. Interesting irony, this scene echoes the tea pouring scene in that other fabulous epic: 2012. Notable feature of the film is nits use of parallels: esp the robot transports who counterparts to the Avatars: the mechanical/scientific vs the natural/mystical embody the confrontation we see in our world. Ironical. The world itself is loving rendered: almost it looks as if cameron has been to pandora and filmed live. But we can see where much of the money went! From the great trees, to the luminous seedpods, flying beasts and snarling dog things, floating mountains and calling waterfalls the world is rendered in marvelous detail. Beautiful and dangerous. Avatar is the furthest anyone has gone in rendering alien worlds in mainstream life action films...only European animation (Fantastic Planet) has gone further.
And tho the people are blue, there's not a smurf in sight...