If you don’t go see this movie AVATAR in 3D, you're doing yourself an injustice. It's one of the most beautifully made 3D cinematic works I've seen so far. This science fiction story reflects a lot of what is happening on our planet Earth in this time. The word Avatar, unless you already know the meaning of the word is a spiritual being who comes from heaven to earth and is incarnated in a human form. Then they will understand why in the film world anything is possible.

In the future, Jake, a paraplegic war veteran, is brought to another planet, Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na'vi, a humanoid race with their own language and culture. Those from Earth find themselves at odds with the local culture, which is not surprising since on the whole we are not a very accommodating people.

The goal of the Avatar program allows humans to walk around in genetically engineered Na’vi bodies, which they then use to explore the planet of Pandora and pursue diplomatic relations with the indigenous population of the planet, called the Na’vi. They are very tall humanoids with blue skin and mostly cat-like features.

For me the real magic of the film comes from the enhanced motion capture work used to turn the human actors into their Na’vi counterparts. Since so much of the film is spent among the Na’vi, it was very important that they look like real people. It goes a long way towards making the whole film believable.

Every story element is predictable and can be seen coming ten minutes before it arrives on screen. You can always see the subtle emotions on people’s faces and you soon forget that the characters don’t really exist outside of a computer. The film rests entirely on the audience identifying with the characters, so if they had failed to make these aliens look believable the whole thing would have fallen apart.

The Na’vi.are very in tune with the land, and their village is sitting on top of a large amount of valuable metal that a large corporation wants to get their hands on. Jake is able to take his brother’s place on the team because they are genetically duplicate, so he is shipped off to Pandora, even though he’s not a scientist. The company wants to put his military training to use by having him infiltrate the Na’vi village so they can invade and remove them in due course. Of course, Jake is able to gain a place in the Na’vi tribe, but when he comes to identify with them and live with them and be taught by them their spiritual values, he eventually seeks to protect them.

The film has definite anti-war, anti-exploitation, anti-colonialism themes, so there is a political statement being made. The use of certain phrases in the dialogue, “fighting terror with terror” remind us throughout the film of the destruction of the native Americans, the African cultures and lately the destruction of the ancient culture in Iraq. The war scenes reminds us of Afghanistan, Iraq and all the other lesser wars that are being fought. Visuals of attacks reminded me of news footage from Vietnam, or the congo and the scene after the attack on the Na’vi’s home tree was a visual reminder of 9/11.

I think there’s a moral responsibility for us to look at ourselves as human beings in a technical society with all its skills, part of which is the ability to do mechanised warfare, part of which is the ability to do warfare at a distance, at a remove, which seems to make it morally easier to deal with, but it's not. Seeing the destruction of Pandora on a movie screen, knowing that it is not for real will evoke questions for many, and the answers may vary from individual to individual.
For me the very word Avatar represents in itself a creative move; to send a message out into the world that would cross any racial or religious barriers. Illusions often have the knack of blending truth.

When one paints an ideal, one does not need to limit one’s imagination.

Yours truly

Trevor