Throughout the last month or so, I’ve been hearing a lot about James Cameron’s Avatar (words such as “revolutionizing”, “awesomesauce”, “epic”, etc. come to mind). So I finally got to see it last Friday at West Edmonton Mall’s Scotiabank Theatre. I’d say the movie lives up to its hype. 
The first thing I found out was that the entire movie is in 3-D. I was never a big fan of wearing those funky glasses (and indeed, they’re pretty annoying for anyone wearing actual glasses) but it’s a minor issue for me. Perhaps one day we’ll have true 3-D in the theatres (think holo-projectors). I can dream, right?
Anyway, the movie starts off with Jake Sully – a paraplegic (former) marine – joining the avatar program on Pandora, an Earth-like moon with its own unique environment. The goal of the program is to improve relations with Pandora’s natives so that a human mining operation can continue in peace. Throughout the movie we see Jake slowly preferring his avatar’s lifestyle to his own (Jake’s avatar is a biologically-engineered version of one of the natives, the Na’vi). One major recurring theme is how damaging human tendencies can be on an environment (in this case, making war on the natural inhabitants all in the name of profit); in this aspect I was drawing comparisons between Avatar and Princess Mononoke.
The visuals and animation were mind-blowing. I expected nothing less from a movie whose official budget of $237M makes it one of the most expensive ever made. The 3-D aspect was interesting and really brought out Pandora’s natural beauty; throughout the movie the atmosphere seemed realistic, the native species lifelike. I’d say Avatar is one of the few movies that can truly be comparable to a high fantasy novel. It definitely had an impact on my imagination in any case. 
Most of the major characters were well-developed. They each had their own beliefs and act accordingly no matter the consequences. Trudy – a fighter pilot – best summarizes this when she abandons the first human-Na’vi conflict with a “fuck this” and subsequently aids Jake and the rest of the avatar team in the second. It was very possible to relate to them (which adds to the emotional factor when some of them die).
All in all, I’d say Avatar is one of those movies that everyone should watch. Heck, I wouldn’t mind watching it a second time if I can find an IMAX theatre near me.
Tags: Avatar
everyone seem to dig this movie >.>
Probably because it’s better than all the shit that’s been masquerading as movies in the past few years.