Avatar – blue is the new black

 

There have been many epics in the movie industry - starting with Gone with the Wind and ending with Emmerich's 2012 - but Avatar pretty much obliterates everything that has been done before. There are very few movies about which I really get excited. There are glitches, there is poor acting, the director is not Stanley Kubrik, but after seeing Avatar I have butterflies in my quasi-movie-critic stomach.

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is an ex-marine who lost the ability to control both his legs and is sent to the planet of Pandora in order to participate in a program called Avatar instead of his twin brother, who dies just before the story arc begins. With the help of Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and other scientists, he is able to transfer his consciousness to the body of an avatar, a genetically engineered creature that imitates the looks of Pandora's native population, the Na'vi.

Sully finds out that the main reason he was sent to Pandora is to persuade a tribe of natives to move from a city that rests on a gigantic deposit of unobtanium, a precious metal that sells for $20 million per kilogram back on Earth. He embarks upon an adventure during which he is accepted as a member of the native tribe and falls in love with the tribe chief's daughter, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). The main antagonist is a military general (Stephen Lang) who is determined to destroy all natives; he delivers the best role in this movie. It all ends in an epic battle of good versus evil, with evil being represented by humans and good by the Na'vi.

Maybe the story has been told in various forms before and maybe it is not the most compelling story ever written, though it reaches the Top 10, but the visual representation is magnificent from every single conceivable point of view. This is the movie 3D was invented for and if you do not see it in 3D you will miss some of the most interesting aspects. The shots of the new universe that Cameron has envisioned are awe-inspiring and 3D puts you right in the middle of the action.

If there are still doubts that Cameron is a genius, Avatar will squash them all. In terms of cinematography, the shots are consistently perfect and the special effects are unimaginable. I have seen thousands of buildings destroyed in a plethora of movies, but seeing a gigantic tree fall into pieces, its timber fibers slowly giving way to a series of bombs, is something that has never been done before. I thought that after 2012 such special effects will possibly never appear in another movie for a long time. Guess what? Not even two months later, Avatar blew everybody away, and is set for the most incredible box office run of all times, crippling Titanic's $1.7 billion record.

Avatar is a movie you cannot miss. It is a story that fits a wide audience: the animation part combined with bloody action may make some kids have nightmares for the next six weeks; the battle between the evil humans and the ecologist aliens will make Greenpeace members think they're changing something with yet another rally; and the love story between the two blue creatures will definitely excite all kinds of people. All in all, it is a movie you definitely have to see in 3D and if you live in Blagoevgrad, go no further than Cinemax.