FEATURE FIEND: AVATAR

In 1997, James Cameron shattered records, broke hearts, and landed himself a multitude of awards including the Oscar for Best Director for Titanic. He backed away from features after that, filming a couple of documentaries while developing new CGI technology and hatching out his comeback. He clearly loves science as much as film making and that obviously comes across in his latest work, Avatar, a movie that combines his new motion capture technology and his studies on "alien" environments under our own seas with his own well-nurtured storytelling abilities.

I won't beat around the bush to tell you this: Avatar is a fantastic piece of science fiction cinema. That said, it isn't a wholly original story. The story, set over a hundred years in the future, revolves around a corporation mining a planet for their Unobtanium, an ore that will make them billions on an Earth that's exhausted their resources. The problem is that the indigenous locals live in a giant tree that sits on the biggest deposit of it. They've tried to get them to leave peacefully, but are now on the brink of doing it by force. Their last ditch effort revolves around sending a team of human controlled avatars, living beings comprised of human and Na'Vi (the blue locals) DNA. When one of the team, a former marine who is now a paraplegic, is separated from the team, he encounters and becomes one of the Na'Vi. This sets up all of the conflict in the movie. Sure, the plot is heavily mined territory, but that isn't at all important, and just offers Cameron a recognizable structure on which to display his work of art. And, wow, what a work it is.

Cameron went all in on creating the world of Pandora, layering each indigenous species into one complex ecosystem that is codependent and fully aware. The lengths he went to making us believe Pandora is a real place is completely awe-inspiring. I could question nothing, because it all made sense. Every creature moved and just felt right, and the relationships the humanoid natives have with every other creature and plant fills me with uncontrollable jealousy. It all looks wonderfully magical and has a beauty that is 100% unique and original. His time off had obviously been put to good use!

Each human character is also filled with nuance and layers, a true testament of Cameron's direction. Sure, they may spew out some cliched line or two or ten, but that is Cameron at his purest. Go back and check, he's not really known for being smart! You can totally see this movie as a continuation of what he did in Aliens, amping up the military and corporate entities and reforming them as one. His ideas of what our future holds are so realistic it's scary. This is what made Aliens so good, and it is also part of what makes Avatar equally as good. The tech and armaments can easily be looked at as realistic advancements to where we are now. The plights of the corporation make sense, too, as they're just doing their jobs and there is no emotion in it, while the Na'Vi and Pandora, as a whole, are all about emotion. It is this major contrast that drives the movie.

Tech vs. Nature is just one of the themes present here as the movie recognizes many past human plights and rolls them up into one. You can easily see Native American influences bandied about. Greed, and doing what's right vs. doing what is best for you is another big factor. There is also an overwhelming sense of desperation present in this film. The corporate humans are desperate to mine the planet for their ores, the militaristic mercenaries are desperate to kill every "blue tree hugger" in sight, the Na'Vi are desperate to preserve their way of life, and main character Jake Sully rides a tidal wave of alternate desperation. First, as a paraplegic, wanting to walk again, then desperate to make sure that all out war doesn't break out, and finally desperate to do anything to fight off his human side. It's a pretty interesting transformation, made more so by the context of his consciousness guiding his Na'Vi-human hybrid avatar.

The acting is pretty decent throughout, with no real bad performance to speak of. Sigourney Weaver looks so perfectly at home in Sci-Fi movies, and with the added bonus that this is a Cameron movie she just blends right into the scenery. The big, awesome, ham-fisted performance goes to Stephen Lang as Col. Quaritch. He's just so menacing here and the perfect "bad-guy". You can't help but love that he's drinking his coffee while his warships incinerate the Na'Vi's World Tree, and many of them in the process. Acceptable losses indeed. And what can be said about Cameron's motion captured CGI Na'Vi? This is magnificent work, a crowning achievement for Cameron and a future Oscar for sure. They just look and move and act completely realistic. It's an amazing feat that will surely change the course of CGI in film. The motion capture essence is an amazing technology that is actually completely allegorical to what the avatars in the story actually are. That in itself is incredible!

The action is just so well done, too. This is an area Cameron has always excelled at, and it's just pitch-perfect in this movie. The final battle puts most large scale Sci-Fi battles to shame, and the eventual rally moment is so sweet that it actually brought me to tears. Make no mistake, this is a flat-out fantastic movie, and another feather in James Cameron's hat. I urge you to get out there and see it, and if you can do so in IMAX 3-D, which I've failed to mention till now, please do. It is very well done. There's no gimmicky moments, rather it gives the film so many extra layers that you feel you are right there on Pandora. So check it out in 3D if you can, but definitely see it no matter what on the big screen, it's what going to the movies is all about.

Buy your tickets now.