by Joe Molale Rating: 8 reels
"Avatar" takes place in the distant future (2154 to be exact) on the planet Pandora. Pandora is rich with a mineral known as "unobtainium". Unfortunately, the largest deposit of this mineral is located directly beneath the sacred land of the planet's native people, the Na'vi. The Na'vi,, who are 10 foot tall aliens, that resemble a human but with a tail, and are blue and have some pretty astounding athletic abilities, are what the main story is about.
The humans want the minerals. The Na'vi don't want to give it up, because to them the land is sacred along with life of all living creatures and the trees. Everything is connected on Pandora. The main character, ex-marine Jake Sully (who is played by actor Sam Worthington… you know from the new Terminator and in a lot of films now) takes his brothers job as an Avatar navigator (the Na'vi creatures) which is a military program run on Pandora to try and "get to know" the aliens and get them to "trust" them in order to relocate them so they can get at the mineral. They do this by linking up to man made Na'vi / Avatar bodies that look exactly like the real Na’vi. This "link up" control and take over of the body is done by the Avatar controllers who happen to look just like the human people controlling them. It's a little strange but pretty cool stuff. A controller, gets into a coffin like device, and then mentally links up and goes into a sleep state, while their mind takes on the Avatar body, experiencing and feeling everything the Avatar does. Being that Jake is paralyzed from the waist down, he is more than excited to experience running and walking again in his new Avatar body.
Jake takes on the military job, to find out "data" on the Na'vi but after a while then finds himself falling in love with the forest, the people and one of the Na'vi warrior women, Neytiri.
I will say that the story is pretty simple after getting to understand the main issues and people involved and back to a basic good vs. bad, which is nice. I was excited to see this film since it was James Cameron's first film since his blockbuster hit "Titanic" which was done 12 years ago! I have heard that this film will change how CG is done in the future and after seeing it, I believe that. This movie is visually stimulating to say the least! The effects and realistic CG will blow everyone away. It was so intense that I will definitely need to see it again to pick up on a lot of things I am sure I missed, now that I know the story. My only issue was that it was really long. Way too long. 2 and a half hours which could have been and should have been cut down to 2 hours.
A lot of the film is watered down and not really necessary, but the film overall works. The simple, yet, interesting story, the characters and the development between them and the visual effects make this a film worthy of seeing. It has some good "moral" issues and if you can get past the "Mother Earth" and "green" undertones, which I wasn't too keen on, but didn't let it bother me too much, it's worth seeing. I enjoyed this movie the first time around and will probably like it more once I see it again, since there was way too much to take in the first time!
So, if you want to see a solid, fun and exciting movie…. grab a large popcorn (you will need it) and some of your favorite candy and your favorite beverage and enjoy! 8 out of 10 stars!
