Ok, first of all, I need to clear the air about something: yes, Avatar has the same basic premise as the 1990 Kevin Costner film Dances With Wolves. However, and that's a big however, pointing that fact out as if it were some sort of impediment to the movie and as if you were somehow clever and intelligent is completely false. The fact is that yes, this storytelling convention has been used several times before: outsider joins indigenous people to better understand them so they can be defeated, falls for tribe member/becomes engrossed in the culture and decides to switch sides (circa dances with wolves, the last samurai, the last of the Mohicans, the new world, etc.).
What the aforementioned fallacy illustrates is an inability to recognize that storytelling conventions are not always bad things, and used properly can actually make the story more accessible to an audience and save you lots of time on unnecessary exposition. Lets all face it, we could all do with a bit less unnecessary exposition in movies.
Alright, so that's out of the way. So what did I think of this movie? IT WAS FRIGGIN' AMAZING! The visual effects are stunning, immersive, and incredibly detailed. The environment of the film looks less like a special effects background and more like it was simply shot on site at some exotic location. I saw the movie in IMAX 3D, which is the best way to go in my opinion, and I'm not sure I even blinked during the entire movie. Yes, the movie is a bit on the long side, but it's so good you really won't notice the passage of time. When the movie was finally over and I got up, I couldn't understand why my legs hurt so much as if I had been standing completely still for 3 hours. I was genuinely confused until I looked at my watch =P.
So given that the movie is so gorgeous, one might assume that all the cinematography will automatically be great too, not so. But it is anyway. To clarify: a movie can look really good but still have bad cinematography, but in this case it has enough of both that if it were to be expressed in terms of gummi worms, half the continental united states would be drowned in a deluge of tastiness. Goofy metaphors notwithstanding, every shot is well put together and all the transitions are smooth with no detail left out.
The acting is also spectacular in this movie, with Sam Worthington becoming a fast favorite for me and old hand Sigourney Weaver putting in one of her best performances since Aliens (hey, another really good James Cameron movie =P). Even though a majority of the acting is performed via motion capture, there still has to be motion there to capture and the actors have done so very, very well.
Now for a little bit of shameless fan praise for James Cameron: this man is a genius. He has always been pushing the technical limits of the medium of cinema and this case is no exception. In fact, Cameron spent roughly the last decade and nearly $300 million to develop the technology to make this movie possible the way he initially envisioned it in 1999. Now I don't know about you, but that's what I call dedication.
In conclusion: This movie is absolutely amazing, go see it now, preferably in IMAX 3D because it really does make the experience come alive. So go see it now! What? You're broke you say? Not a problem! Just go knock off some convenience store and........oh........wait,
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