I rate it 10 but it deserves more!

Rating: 10/10 (29 January 2010)

First, I apologize for my not perfect English, I'm Italian :) I saw Avatar this evening for the first time, I had read a lot of reviews before, and many of them talked about a simple story, nothing new, a sort of "alien Pocahontas" and so on... Well, I found it quite new as a storyline, I had never seen a movie talking about a planet where all the living beings are connected as cells of an organism... well, the Navi DO look like the American natives, and their respect and love for nature is quite similar to theirs, while the bad guys are, again, the white men destroying everything that stands between them and the money. Already seen? Maybe, but, not enough, since white men continue to behave that way. As far as I know it is the first time that, in a movie, we are the alien invaders, until now we've always been represented as the good, peaceful inhabitants of a blue harmless planet, that is invaded by ugly bad hyper-technological aliens. Well, this time the ugly bad hyper-technological alien is US, invading and destroying other people's planets. And I think this is how the American natives should have seen us coming from the ocean sometime ago. Another very strong and innovative theme is the possibility to leave our goofy bodies to enter the Navi's very agile, elegant and strong ones(or better, the Avatar's) and return in Paradise Lost to live a life of pure freedom and contemplation. We feel the joy of moving, running, flying and jumping in spaces of huge immensity and beauty, spaces and beauty that we had on Earth and that we gave away for light beer and blue jeans. Perfect bodies we ruined together with our Mother Earth: the Navi are what human kind should have and could have been. The story of a virtual life lived through the connection between our brain and a machine is not new, but this time it's completely different: here Jack leaves a ruined body and a dying planet to enter another one as real as his own, for a life on a planet that is as real as ours, but healthy, intact and full of life. We humans are no more able to use the energy that we borrowed and that we shall give back one day, and we are non more able to live in harmony with Creation. Cameron underlines this quite well: at the beginning of his adventure inside the Avatar Jack moves like a bulldozer inside the jungle and he's heard by all the living beings all around, who try to catch him like a fat stupid pig escaped from the farm. In that moment we feel Pandora as the hell full of monsters described by colonel Quaritch, but here comes Neytiri, who teaches Jack, and us, what Pandora is, a wonderful world where danger is only for those who don't know it. You should watch this movie with your heart, otherwise you'll miss the core: there is a deep connection among all the living beings, and if we learn to feel it, the connection, and try to believe in a bit of magic, the tree of souls (did I translate correctly?) gets really powerful, it does things, such as sending animals of the forest to battle, move a soul from a body to another... Cameron has created something very strong and true, very alien but at the same time very familiar. For about three hours I've been a Navi, I have fought with them, cheered and cried with them, I felt quite normal being blue and with a long tail, so that when the movie ended and the light turned on, I wondered finding myself surrounded by so many strange, small, ugly, pink aliens with no tail and too many fingers in their hands :))) I call it masterpiece, if the word means "something that becomes part of you and that makes you feel as if the things happening are happening to you, something that keep your eyes open even when you are already at home, it's two o'clock in the night, and the movie is finished from many hours".
About the 3D and the effects all there was to say has been said: just amazing, breathtaking, wonderful and powerful. Keep on with the good work, James. Weta, you already stole my heart with LOTR, what can I say? You are great! I can't wait to see LOTR in 3D made by you, and the sequel of Avatar, too, of course!!!