Review of Avatar

When Jake Sully’s (Sam Worthington) twin brother is killed in a mugging, he is recruited to travel to the planet Pandora. There he join RPA’s scientific team and will use a genetically engineered hybrid ‘avatar’, which resembles the native inhabitants, known as the Na’vi by humanity. The rapacious corporation has a massive mining operation on Pandora, extracting unobtainium, which is key to an energy and economic crisis on Earth. The corporation's scientific team is trying to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the natives, while at the same time employing heavily armed troops to protect themselves from both the natives and the violent wildlife on the planet.

While on his first mission outside the mine, Sully is separated from the rest of his team and forced to spend the night in the harsh jungle. While fighting off a pack of vicious predators, he is rescued from the wildlife by Neytiri, a Na’vi hunter. She is convinced to bring him back to her clan’s home, the Home Tree. There, he is given a chance to join the tribe if he can complete the same rituals as other warriors. As soon as Sully informs his superior, the ultra gung-ho Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) of this event, they expect him to spy on the Omaticaya clan’s home, as it sits on the biggest deposit of unobtanium in the area.

Neytiri takes Sully under her wing and begins to show him their way of life. At first, he is both skeptical and reluctant, but over time, both Neytiri and the simple pleasures of the Na’vi way of life lead Sully to question his mission. The question soon becomes, to whom does Sully owe his allegiance?

Avatar has been compared to other films like Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves. For sure, the metaphor of ecological collapse and industrialism run amok is heavily presented in this film, with references like ‘Earth is a dying planet’ and ‘where the humans come from, there is nothing green’, and so on. Certainly, the RPA corporation shows that it is much like some greedy corporations today, in that profits are more important than the indigenous people or their rights. Even hiring heavily armed (and loosely regulated) mercenaries to protect their mining investment is simply considered good corporate policy. And of course the Na’vi are nothing more than thinly disguised Native Americans who believe in a Gaia-like deity and worship every living thing on the planet.

This is film that took Cameron 15 years to make, and his Herculean effort shows in almost every minute the film runs. The special effects are spectacular, and they will influence films in much the same way that Star Wars and Terminator 2 both revolutionized special effects. It might also have the effect of putting some high priced actors and actresses out of work, because with special effects like this, the actors and actresses become secondary in many ways.

Despite some minor flaws, this is the movie of the year in my book, even better than Star Trek and that film was truly amazing. Just make sure to see it in Imax or 3D to really enjoy the incredible special effects.

10 out of 10