Avatar (2009, PG-13)

Rating: ***1/2

Avatar is a movie that you will never forget; it’s nothing short of experience, a feast for the eyes, no matter how clichéd it is.

            Directed by James Cameron, who has done lots of sci-fi films, returns to the movie director’s chair after the whopping success of his first film Titanic.  The film follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paralyzed marine who get his own avatar in the planet of Pandora, inhabited by the Na’vi, 10 ft tall blue people who live primitively in tribes and can hiss like cats.  Sigourney Weaver plays Sully’s new boss in charge of the avatar program; boy has Weaver been in a lot of sci-fi adventures.  Stephen Lang is Colonel Miles Quaritch, who uses Sully to break in to the Na’vi and find out the information.  Sully is accepted into the Na’vi tribe, but falls in love with the beautiful female warrior Neytiri (Zoe Saldana, who also stars in Star Trek).  Slowly, Sully becomes attached to the Na’vi and begins to see that he can’t let Quaritch destroy them.  Constantly, Jake is bullied by the other Na’vi warriors, but he shows them a piece of his own mind when he leads the fight against the humans.

            This is a downer in terms of storytelling and narration.  Cameron has chosen a generally poor and overused plotline to use for his movie, but it’s the groundbreaking visuals that take the spotlight and steal the show.

            The acting and the scriptwriting both aren’t that bad.  Worthington, an Australian actor, goes all out as Jake Sully.  While his Australian accent is noticeable at times, he gives it his all.  Lang is a far more experienced actor, recently starring in the crime drama Public Enemies, though most of the acting credit should go to sci-fi movie veteran Weaver. 

            The special and visual effects are some of the best I’ve seen, which is without a doubt the reason why people paid a lot of their money to see this.  Avatar is breaking records fast, and eventually surpassed Titanic to become the highest grossing movie of all time.  I think the era of Star Wars has passed.  Star Wars will be remembered forever of course, but Avatar is the new generation of sci-fi films.  Director Cameron has said that he plans to make a trilogy. 

              In its entirety, Avatar was a good though not great film.  Cameron could have put just as more effort into the storyline as he did the special effects, and Avatar truly could have come out as one of the best sci-fi films ever made.  Cameron knew and did his visual effects; the results there are extraordinary.  He also mainly knows his characters and how to work with his actors, but he didn’t get how to fill in the plot holes.