Avatar

This is a review of the IMAX-3D film (not digital projection) presentation of "Avatar":

Where to start?  I was totally wowed by not only the visuals, but the use of the visuals to tell the journey that marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) takes as he, through unfortunate happenstance, ends up being the perfect candidate to replace his identical twin brother as an Avatar operator on Pandora, home world of the Na'vi, 10 foot tall blue-skinned humanoid creatures reminiscent of Mayans.

This means Jake's mind is able to "jack" into a body that looks like one of the Na'vi, as it is a mixture of human and Na'vi DNA, but this Avatar body has 5 fingers/hand, while native Na'vi have 4 fingers/hand (perhaps the same goes for their toes/feet ).  Jake's brother was supposed to operate this Avatar body for a corporate mission, but with him out of the picture, Jake's DNA allows him the same level of neural sync with the Avatar body without hiccups and neural misfirings in terms of body control.

The film followed the well-trodden path of the Hero's journey.  Jake is literally a stranger in a strange land in a stranger body.  We swiftly find out why humans are on Pandora, and Jake's quick thinking on his feet enables him to be granted access to the Na'vi, with the help of Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), where Jake learns of many wonderous aspects of Na'vi life, milestones, attainment of tribal-like citizenship and of belonging.

Overall, I found the story to be overshadowed by the execution of the amazing visual effects, but I think for a big budget film, it's intentional to not get too bogged down in the details, but rather settle for archetypes between sympathetic and not-so-sympathetic sides in the inevitable confrontation between corporate ambitions by the humans and the Na'vi.  I don't think I'm revealing too much considering that angle is in the promotional trailers and commercial spots.

I will offer that for a film with a 150+ minute running time, it flew by, I think mainly because the visuals are so well done that you can't help but savor the attention to detail and it adds to the immersion into the world of Pandora, with the lush and bountiful new palette of alien animal and plant life on display. The IMAX-3D was very comfortable on the eyes, and in no way called attention to itself with silly 3D poke-the-audience schtick, the 3D simply provided a beautiful extra (almost essential) layer of visual depth to the film's presentation.

Director/Writer James Cameron provides the viewer with interesting "camerawork" in this adventure that takes place on Pandora, some of it is thrilling, exhiliarating, capturing the wide gamut of emotions from fear to joy through Jake's unintentional journey towards becoming Na'vi.  The care in its CGI "cinematography" has this way of selling this world to my eyes, and it's a testament to the care in getting it mostly right.  Every now and then, you still get a bit of that inertial lightness in the weight of the Na'vi character movements in action, but the motion-captured performances on the faces of the the Na'vi characters is a delight to behold, primarily because they get the eyes right, they move naturally and are never off-putting like previous efforts in this area of CGI character work.

In summary, I give the story a grade of B, while the visuals get a solid A+++, so that's an overall 3.75 stars or a grade of A-.

If you're a fan of fantastical sci/fi cinema, you owe it to yourself to see this film on the big screen, and in 3D if possible.