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Director: James Cameron
Genre: Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Thriller
Year: 2009

It is rare that Hollywood manages to give us something that balances the mainstream with the intellectual, the entertaining with the insightful and so, when it does happen, it is bound to be noticed. This holiday season, people have taken notice of Avatar which is a pleasant surprise, because it is rare that I hinge hopes upon a film that will actually carry them nicely. Most of the time, the scenario looks a lot like me crossing my fingers, hoping a film will do well and then, watching it all crash and burn to the point that I do not even bother seeing it — Transformers, I am looking in your direction!

Needless to say, given the rumors of overrun budgets and the new techniques — untried and untested — being utilized on this film, I had that little butterfly in my stomach insisting that I do not put too much of my hopes on this one, just to be safe. And to be fair, I also had my own personal misgivings. Having seen some exclusive footage at the San Diego Comic-Con, some of the character designs were not exactly winning me over (for the record, by the time I was done watching the movie, I took back every bad thing I said about the Na’vi character design). Having seen it, however, I would venture to say that, while this is not the perfect film, it is pretty much everything the hype is saying. Those that like to pick apart films the way my friends and I do, will likely find something to bitch about — there always is — but when you look at it as a whole, the flaws and errors here and there amount to nothing more than a divot in an otherwise very well executed film.

As far as plot goes, it sounds really complicated, when in truth it isn’t. Mixing the fantasy genre, with the adventure genre and the historical genre (circa the early 1600′s in the Americas), Cameron has put together a thinly disguised retelling of the Pocahontas story, with bigger, more bad-ass ships, and bigger, more bad-ass horses. This has led me to describe this film to people I have talked to as the more mainstream and easily accessible version of The New World. The beautiful, poetic cinematography and fantastic landscapes replaced with equally inventive and interesting, CG landscapes which are easy to admire.

There is no doubt that tremendous man hours were spent in thinking up the details to create this world and this creatures. From the smallest little animal to the largest plant, there seems to be a common thread that allows for this world to be easily welcoming and believable to the point where you can lose yourself in awe of your surroundings (particularly if you watch this in 3-D) without even thinking about it. A consistency has been applied to all life forms, so that they appear to belong in the same world and have some purpose and do not come across as nifty puppets pulled out of a hat ‘just because they would look cool’. A large amount of the fun in this movie, in fact, is watching these animals behave, or move, or even breathe!

The title of Avatar is taken from the concept that is at the core of this film, in which humans are able to transfer their consciousness into the bodies of the Na’vi, an extra terrestrial intelligent life form with a keen sense for cohabitation and love for the land, while also making for savage warriors when cornered. It is a scientific project that is riding on the coat tails of a privately funded project which aims to draw highly coveted minerals from beneath the village and the grand tree in which the Na’vi live. Minerals which serve as energy so efficient it will translate to obscene amounts of profits…enough to perhaps validate the hiring of private militias to do the necessary dirty work once the diplomatic means seem to have completely stalled.

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington; Terminator: Salvation) is a former marine who has lost the use of his legs, trying now to fill in the shoes of his smarter, science driven brother who has suffered an untimely death at a crucial point during the relationship establishing process between the Na’vi and the humans (whom they call the Sky People, or often the dreamwalkers). Blindly stepping into the Avatar program, largely owing to a need to feel useful again and an ego that is hardly hindered by his handicap, Jake dives head first (almost literally) into this fantastic world, where he meets Neytiri (Zoe Saldana; Star Trek, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl), a native who reluctantly takes him under his wing to teach him the ways of the Na’vi, in the process, teaching Jake a number of valuable lessons that allow him to see the world and life, with a new set of eyes — not necessarily his avatar’s.

Considering the scope of this project, the execution is rather impressive! And given the fact that it is truly trying to be as wide as possible when it comes to audience, it is also very well balanced, with enough action to please the bomb-heads, enough romance to please the heart-throbs, enough eye-popping cinematic wonder to entice the younger groups and humor to keep it from spiraling into dark territory — which it very easily could have done. Aside from a bit of language, this film is actually pretty accessible to just about anybody in most families and likely to please them all.

Thankfully, there is enough intellect fodder to get the mind gears rolling; enough concepts and ideas to provoke discussion and enough of a visual feast to ENTIRELY make you forget that you have just sat through a movie that runs an ERT of three hours and fourty minutes (that is without counting the unavoidable trailers and ads that come before the movie)! All in all, this is probably going to be one of the best movie going experiences you will have had during 2009, or a good one to start 2010 with. Either way, this is a film you must not miss.

Rating:
Comments: There is a bit of language, they drop a few s-bombs and they also hint at some ‘mating’ between two Na’vi characters, though that is kept tastfully tame. Really, it comes down to a good amount of action sequences which use implied violence more often than not and some adult themes regarding politics, and cultural clashes.
Quote: Jake Sully: Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world and in here is the dream