James Cameron Returns With ‘Avatar’

It’s been 12 years since James Cameron‘s last theatrical film, Titanic, swept the Oscars, so no matter what, his follow-up film was bound to have certain expectations to live up to. Rather than meet those expectations, Cameron blew them away with Avatar, the most expensive film ever made that is most definitely a memorable epic and a cinematic achievement. Sure, it’s a familiar plot, a twist on the hero’s journey, and the actual bare bones of it are quite similar to The Last Samurai. But despite a plot we’ve seen before, now set over a thousand years in the future on an alien world, Cameron manages to make everything about Avatar surprisingly real and believable.

In 2154, Earth has set up a military operation on the planet Pandora, hoping to use the planet for its resources and industrialize it. Their problem is the indigenous race called the Na’vi, who they have been unable to negotiate with or build any relationship with whatsoever. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a now paraplegic marine, arrives to replace his twin brother on a mission. Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and the humans pioneered a way to harvest Na’vi bodies, avatars, compatible with a particular person’s DNA, so that person can get a full sensory link to their avatar and gain insight to the Na’vi. At first, Sully maintains loyalty to the gung-ho Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who is hellbent on finding weaknesses to the Na’vi and exterminating them, but as Sully spends more and more time learning from the Na’vi, particularly Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), he grows more sympathetic to their way of life.

Yes, this is absolutely a sci-fi epic, a fantasy, but what makes it so much more than that are the finer details. Avatar is 40% live-action and 60% CGI and motion capture, and the elements of the film that are CGI are beautifully colored and detailed. Cameron does not create a movie that depicts an alien world, Cameron creates an alien world, complete with a diverse range of alien species and inhabitants and impressive, large-scale battle sequences. Cameron manages to make an otherwise unbelievable movie become quite believable.

The cast certainly adds to the film’s believability, in that despite the setting and circumstances, these characters are all very real. Worthington is convincing as he journeys from a dedicated and loyal marine to ultimately sympathizing with the Na’vi race. Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang are excellent in their own respects and play perfect foils to each other, one as the sympathetic but tough scientist and the other as a hard-boiled marine. The ever underrated Giovanni Ribisi is also present, as a businessman and acting head of the project, determined to industrialize Pandora for profit. Then there’s of course the only major cast member who spends the entire movie entirely as CGI, Zoe Saldana, a Na’vi and Worthington’s love interest. Rounding out the cast are Michelle Rodriguez and Joel Moore, as a gutsy pilot and nerdy scientist, respectively.

Ultimately, the thing about Avatar that makes it so exceptional is that Cameron and the cast manage to take something we’ve seen, but still make it refreshingly new and unique. Furthermore, from the characters, to the creatures, to the landscapes, to the action, so on and so forth, everything becomes real and believable. Needless to say, James Cameron has once again set the bar for himself…and the rest of Hollywood.

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