Avatar Movie Review:

Avatar is the much-hyped and much-anticipated return of James Cameron as director of a major feature film after an extended hiatus — he has not directed one since 1997’s Titanic. During that time he focused on documentary filmmaking, a couple of television shows and he helped develop the digital 3-D Fusion Camera System, a technology he used to film Avatar.


In the movie, Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully, a U.S. marine who is paralyzed from the waist down. Sully is recruited to travel to a planet called Pandora, a beautiful moon covered with deep forests and magnificent waterfalls and inhabited by a wide array of incredible life forms including the planet’s indigenous population known as the Na’vi. Sully will participate in the Avatar program, whereby he will inhabit the body of a genetically-engineered Na’vi hybrid known as an Avatar.





When Sully transforms to an Avatar, his life changes. He is blue, he is 10-feet tall and he can walk freely around the planet (humans cannot breathe Pandoran air). During his initial rendezvous on the planet, Sully meets a beautiful female Na’vi named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and for different reasons, he is accepted into the tribe. The Na’vi are fully aware that Sully is a hybrid so obviously not everyone in the tribe is happy about his presence. But Sully is not there to cause problems. He has simply been asked to observe the Na’vi, to learn about their culture and their habits.

It turns out that the main Na’vi camp is situated on top of the largest deposit of a rich mineral that the humans are there to extract. With Sully’s help, the humans are hoping to move the Na’vi off the land peacefully. Unfortunately, this is sacred land for the Na’vi and when they refuse to cooperate with the humans, they do what often happens when it comes to greed, power and money. They decide they are going to forcefully move the Na’vi. This leaves Sully caught in a war between the group of humans who brought him to Pandora to help them out, and Neytiri and the rest of the Na’vi, to whom he has quickly grown very close and attached. An epic battle ensues and the fate of Pandora and the Na’vi rests in the hands of the Americans who have invaded the planet.

I had the opportunity to see Avatar in 3D, a technology of which I have never been a huge fan. I find it sometimes makes the film appear dark and at times, a bit blurry. With Avatar the 3D, for the most part, worked quite well. Where this movie triumphed was in the special effects. The CGI in Avatar has to rank as the best ever in a movie — simply unbelievable. Watching this movie you would never guess it was taking place on an imaginary planet and you actually might believe the Na’vi are a genuine culture. The visual effects in Avatar are outstanding.

As for the acting, well, Sam Worthington is pretty much perfect for the part he plays. He narrates a good part of the movie and has a voice with a bit of an attitude — yet still calming — that was needed to fit the bill. The other actor that stands out is Stephen Lang, who plays the tough-as-nails Colonel Miles Quaritch. If I were to picture in my mind the type of person who should have played Colonel Quaritch, it would be Stephen Lang. I found Giovanni Ribisi to be an odd choice to play the corporate weasel heading up the project.

He just seemed a bit young for the part. Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Michelle Rodriguez all did a fine job but none of them were called upon to go over and above what you might expect from them. I had totally forgot CCH Pounder was in the cast and when I saw her name in the final credits, I still couldn’t picture her in the movie. I’ll have to look out for that the next time I see it.

The story of Avatar was okay — but probably the weakest part of the whole production. If you step back and look at the basic premise of the movie, it was all pretty simple. The corporate bullies, with the help of the army, step in to take something valuable and they don’t care who they are inconveniencing by doing it. We’ve seen this a million times before on film and probably more times in real life. The only difference with Avatar is that it is happening on an alien planet, with a race of which we have never heard and with some of the best special effects we have ever seen. I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t feel as much emotion as I thought I would feel during the movie.

Cameron has done it to me before. I’ll admit I had a tear in my eye when Jack died in Titanic. Hell, I even think I felt a bit sad when the Terminator died in T2. Avatar seemed to be really lacking in that department. Deep down I was cheering for the Na’vi, but I just didn’t feel that raw emotion that you sometimes feel when you are at the movies.

With all that being said, I did immensely enjoy Avatar. It is an outstanding movie to watch and well worth the price of admission. As I just mentioned, the story is decent, but it wasn’t exceptional. The characters are okay but besides Sam Worthington’s Sully, no one was very remarkable. Where this movie is head and shoulders above anything I have ever seen is in the special effects and in the imagination that it took to put it all together. For that, I have to tip my hat to James Cameron and friends. They really did some remarkable work on this film that should impress millions of movie fans around the world.