I gotta say one thing for the movie Avatar, it completely immerses you in the lush green and phosphorescent world of Pandora and the culture of its enormous blue inhabitants, the Na’vi. After 160 minutes of flying through the Pandoran flora on the backs of banshees, and enough vine swinging to make Tarzan’s arms fall off, director James Cameron has made you forget all about those 3D glasses you’re wearing and believe there is a planet with nine-foot natives and floating islands.
So upon emerging from this mammoth of a movie I’m struggling a bit to remember what people and places in my world look like. It’s coming back slowly. The bottom line is I highly recommend seeing this movie in a theater in 3D; it’s incredible and I really hope this caliber of 3D catches on. (On the down side I feel my 2D TV becoming less and less impressive.)
As for the plot: I read the whole thing on Wikipedia beforehand and knew what to expect. Not that I’ve seen either of these, but it’s apparently quite similar to Dances With Wolves and Pocahontas. There’s the natives who’ve never heard of the seven deadly sins; they live in perfect harmony with nature, seemingly unmolested by disease, natural disaster, famine, animal attacks, harsh weather, or anything else that might inspire inventions like the wheel, fire, or rudimentary commerce. Then there’s the humans, who’ve destroyed Earth and now have their sights set on mining every last ounce of precious material from Pandora. They bring greed, guns and enough heavy machinery to build a parking lot over the entire planet. In case it isn’t obvious, they’re the bad guys.
But it looks great. So see it. As I heard from multiple sources beforehand, the 3D isn’t the gimmicky duck-before-the-low-flying-object-hits-your-face special effect we all know and hate, it’s a pervasive enhancement to the movie’s photography (and CGI) that makes each shot a little more real and convincing. I want more of that.
