Wednesday 6th January 2010

Avatar (3D)

Director: James Cameron
Year: 2009
Stars: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi

I have to admit, I wasn't expecting a lot from this. I wanted to see it at the cinema as I thought it would be the only place you would get the complete experience - and judging from the sold out theatre, I wasn't the only one with that opinion.

I have to say, I was quite pleasantly surprised. Now, this may well be due to the fact that I was expecting a pretty awful plot, but it wasn't actually all that bad. It's a long movie (2 hours 40 minutes), but there is enough plot in there so that the running time feels justified. Basically, human beings travel to Pandora (another world) to try and access that world's resources - but the natives (Nav'i) aren't willing to let them take it. It's Jake Sully's job to "become" a Navi and convince them otherwise... resulting in a love story, lots of blowing things up and some moral dilemmas.

The best thing about this film is how it looks. Perhaps that was always going to be the case, but it is stunning. The world of Pandora looks simply beautiful, and it's clear why this took so long to make. Without that (which is, of course, amazing in 3D) this would probably just have felt like a run-of-the-mill action type movie to me. But the look of the film gives it at least one extra star.

Rating: 4 out of 5