Avatar: Where Can I Get One of Those?

Rating: 8/10 (21 December 2009)

For any person living in the eastern part of the United States, taking that long trek to the local movie theater probably was the last thing on your mind, while the thoughts of hot chocolate, and watching the snow was a higher priority. Yet even with the weather arduously not helping, Avatar starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, and Sigourney Weaver, still flashed onto to silver screen with something to prove.
For anyone walking into this movie without any prior knowledge other than prime-time trailers, they will be dazed and thrilled with the kaleidoscopic world brought from the reaches of the universe. Which is why it becomes no surprise to hear that Director James Cameron had been waiting to produce this movie for over fifteen years, only being stopped by CGI and limitations. However, once a $500 million budget was procured and graphics were to his visionary standard, everything was golden.
And golden it was. Right from first ten minutes you get the essential story: Worthington was a Jarhead that was hurt, had a brother that died and got the chance to take his place on a science expedition on Pandora, a Earth-type moon with natural inhabitants, the Na'vi that are not happy with what humans are doing. From there the stage is set to meet the rest of the cast, and learn that Worthington job is to run an Avatar, a human-made version of the Na'vi to help learn their culture and get to know them better.
However there is a hitch in the scientific plans in the form of Stephen Lang's character, the officer in charge of the defense and mining of an important ore on Pandora. Lang's only goal is to remove the Na'vi so that they can mine the hell out of the planet. Thus it is the fate of Worthington's character to be stuck in the middle, battling with his conscious.
The plot flows effortlessly between a steady dose of character development, action, and humor, which guarantees that most will be enthralled with the world presented. Worthington's character Jake Sully, who has always been a solider, keeps the motto of speak only when it really counts. This makes him a good pair along Weaver's character Grace, who is the lead scientist for the Avatar program. Cameron takes a lot of what made Weaver's character amazing from Aliens and brought it back here, keeping her snarky and to the point.
Yet the large selling point for the mammoth was it's CGI and how they incorporated it. I'm not going to try and sugarcoat it here; there's a lot. About 80% of this movie is based purely on the computer renditions of the actors while they are scurrying around out in the dense tropical forests of Pandora. And while the concept of it caused a bit of a ruckus before opening, they pulled it off flawlessly. Everything from the luminescent trees to the exotic creatures in this Utopian world looked and fit perfectly into place.
What's more is that the facial and body structures of each character really made you feel like they were meant to exist. Especially watching Saldana's character Neytiri and how each movement in her face looked perfectly natural is an accomplishment. In fact, in most of the Na'vi, you could see almost the exact actor or actress behind their character's eyes, and know that they in fact were doing those exact movements.
Cameron does an amazing job bringing you a masterful story, yet at times he almost loses both himself and the viewer in what he was talking about. The fanciful plants and pictures everywhere, the almost Bay-ish humor that would spring up on occasion, (which I feel is at no fault to Cameron, rather a ploy to get younger viewers more involved) you could have the potential to forget what Cameron is trying to get across in this episodic fantasy; and that's everyone and everything has a life. You observe as the Na'vi savor every twig, every leaf, pray to every kill they hunt for food, never enjoying what they do.
It is a concept that stems from the 90s, yet has followed Cameron and has become a bigger part of today's world, with the threats of global warming and movies like The Inconvenient Truth. While Cameron's intent was not to preach and to bring about the age of Utopian society with nature, he walk back to the screen with a carpet of glowing moss under his feet, and nobody heard him coming.