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Directed by James Cameron
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Avatar When
James Cameron stood up at the Oscars ceremony and shouted “I’m
the King of the World,” by Hollywood standards he really was. Now his new film “Avatar,”
something he’s been working on for decades, including four years of
production, is out in 3-D, and although it channels the elements of
“Dances With Wolves,” “Apocalypse Now,” and about a
dozen other features, it’s well worth seeing; it’s exciting, has
good people who simply want to be left alone fighting bad armies – in
this case the U.S. Marines – and unlike most American features the good
people win the war. What more
could we ask for? There’s
a moon, Pandora, which has unlimited quantities of, dare I say it, unobtainium, and why did Cameron, who gets sole
screenwriting and directing credit, have to use that name, I’ll never
know, along with wonderful 10-foot-tall creatures that are all blue, with
tails that have a chemical bond with the trees, and lots of flying creatures
in their jungles. Plus the most beautiful flying seeds that look somewhat like
floating jellyfish only more gorgeous.
Meanwhile the Earth is dying, and unobtainium
will restore life there if only they mine enough unobtainium
and bring it back. Unfortunately
the big deposit sits under a sacred tree, and you can see how the people are
unwilling to give up their tree. The
Marines are led by Col. Miles Quaritch
(Stephen Lang), while a lowly jarhead Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is
assigned to become an avatar of his body and mind, in hopes of helping the Na’Vi people to move away from their tree. Helped by Sigourney Weaver and a few
others, he finds love with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana)
and together she teaches him all about Na’Vi
life and love, just in time to repel the attack of Col. Quaritch
and his crushing ships. There’s
a lot more; Jake has lost the use of his legs in a prior U.S. war, and the
Colonel. keeps telling him that as soon as
he’s done here he’ll get the use of them restored back on
earth. But as an avatar he can
fly and leap with all his appendages, which is much better than going back
paralyzed. The way Cameron has
photographed the smooth and scary beauties of the Avatars’ travel
through the jungle is spectactular, even moving to
us earth-bound creatures.
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