Avatar
Year: 2009
Rating: PG-13
Length: 162 minutes / 2.7 hours

For being 10 times the amount of money I would normally spend on a movie, I had hoped that this would be worth it. As per my previous stance on 3-D, I was hesitant on going to this film when it first came out. However, since I did some reading up on what forces went on behind this film, I decided to give the 3-D experience a try. What an experience it was! I can see why the film industry was really pushing for more movies to be in 3-D because it is spectacular. The glasses weren’t uncomfortable, and if you took them off for a second, it wasn’t a terrible color-shifted image, it was just slightly blurry. Although, one thing that 3-D cinema is going to have to fix is to have more things in focus. You can’t rely on previous film-making techniques here.

At any rate, if you can get over the blatantly anti-corporation and anti-military message, it’s really quite a good movie and should be seen due at least to the fact that this is the reason James Cameron got into making movies in the first place. We can all blame him for ripping off Dances with Wolves (1990) or Pocahontas (1995) but if you can get past that, there’s a great movie here, regardless.

What really stands out with this film is its visuals. Despite the amount of CGI used to create the fictional world of Pandora, it’s incredibly difficult to tell what is CGI and what is merely a human in front of a green screen. Just by the strength of these visuals alone, this film should be viewed by movie aficionados. Not only was the 3-D technology used to film it revolutionary, but the facial mapping techniques really helped bring these actors to life in their blue, alien bodies.

A stunning visual treat that has yet to be matched, I give Avatar 4.5 stars out of 5.

    1/2

This film appears in the following posts:
Cinema Connections #129. Blue Beings
Cinema Connections #130. James Cameron