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Avatar (2009)

When a film brashly asserts that it will change moviemaking forever, one feels the urge to either take its “king of the world” arrogance down a notch or hail it as the masterpiece it claims to be.

Hey friends, no I won’t be the one posting the review of Avatar today, we got a guest writer to share her thoughts and review. Please welcome my U-Dee

After taking his audiences in a world oozing with water everywhere in Oscar winning movie  Titanic, James Cameron has proved it yet another time that ‘Imagination has no limits’ and He could be called the King of Imagination. James Cameron’s 3-D “Avatar” has all the smack of a Film Not To Miss, a movie whose effects are clearly revolutionary, a spectacle that millions will find adventure in. But it nevertheless feels unsatisfying and somehow lacks the pulse of a truly alive film.

“Avatar” takes place in the year 2154 on the faraway moon of Pandora, where, befitting its mythological name, the ills of human life have been released. The Earth depleted, humans have arrived to mine an elusive mineral, wryly dubbed Unobtainium and they could go to any limits to achieve their aim, even if it is killing all the inhabitants of that planet. They develop ultra modern weapons, robots, explosives, spies and ‘Avatars’ for entering and destroying Pandora.

The Resources Developmental Administration, a kind of military contractor, is running the operation. At the top of the chain of command is the CEO-like Carter Selfridge, who’s hellbent on showing quarterly profits for shareholders. His muscle and head of security is the rock-jawed Col. Miles Quaritch, who curses Pandora’s inhabitants (the Navi) as savages and considers the place worse than hell.

In fact, it’s a paradise. In Pandora, Cameron has fashioned a sensual, neon-colored, dreamlike world of lush jungle, gargantuan trees and floating mountains. Its splendor is easily the most wondrous aspect of “Avatar.”

Cameron, like the deep sea diver that he is (his only films since 1997′s “Titanic” have been underwater documentaries), lets his camera peer with fascination at the glow-in-the-dark plant life, the six-legged horses and – especially beautiful, the nighttime frog-like creatures that, when touched, open a bright white sail and spiral into the air.

It’s this sense of discovery in Pandora, in the wizardry of the filmmaking, that makes “Avatar” often thrilling.

Our main character is Jake Sully, a brawny former Marine who lost the power of his legs in battle on Earth. His scientist twin brother has just died and Sully, having a matching genome, is invited to replace him in a mission to Pandora.

He joins a small group of scientists led by Dr. Grace Augustine who are attempting to learn more about the Na’vi by conducting field studies and doing a bit of undercover science. They’ve created avatars of themselves to go about Pandora as a living, breathing Navi, while their human bodies lie dormant in a sort of tanning bed (they return to them when their avatars sleep).

The Navi are a 10-foot-tall species with translucent, aqua-colored skin, 3-fingered hands and smooth, lean torsos. They have long, neat dreadlocks for hair and wide, feline foreheads. The smart freckles on their brow faintly light up like tiny constellations.

With beady headdresses and skimpy sashes, the Navi are clearly meant to evoke Native Americans, as well as similarly exploited tribes of South America and Africa. They pray over slain animals and feel at one with nature. Their tails (oh, yes, they also have tails) even connect like nature’s USB port  to things like mystical willow branches, horse manes or the hair of pterodactyl-like birds.

It’s no coincidence that the Navi chief Eyukan is played by the Cherokee actor Wes Studi, whose credits include “Dances with Wolves,” perhaps the film most thematically akin to “Avatar.”

“Avatar”, which Cameron wrote as well as directed, is essentially a fairy tale that imagines a more favorable outcome for the oppressed fighting against the technology and might of Western Civilization. Sully, who quickly takes to life as a Navi, begins to feel his allegiances blurred.

Though he has promised Quaritch to spy on the Navi (their home lies atop an Unobtainium deposit), he begins to appreciate their ways. He also falls for Neytiri, the Navi princess and the one who introduces him to the tribe.

Many Navi are suspicious of Sully  ”a demon in a fake body” but they eventually embrace him. They accept him as a leader, even though he occasionally goes limp and vacant when his human body isn’t connected.

The inevitable battle has overt shades of current wars. Quaritch, drinking coffee during a bombing with a cavalier callousness like Robert Duvall in “Apocalypse Now,” drops phrases like “pre-emptive strike,” “fight terror with terror” and even “shock and awe,” a term apparently destined to survive for centuries in the lexicon.

These historical and contemporary overtones bring the otherworldly “Avatar” down to Earth and down to cliche. The message of environmentalism and of (literal) tree-hugging resonates, but such a plainly just cause also saps “Avatar” of drama and complexity.

Avatar is a movie of coming generation.The director actually takes your breath away with the ultimate beauty of Pandora, surprisingly shown in flora and fauna.The landscapes,the flying mountains,the animals which are more dangerous than the Dinosaurs, the shining insects and plants, and every single thing that is shown in the movie is just amazing.This movie not only gives you a treat to watch all these out-of-the-world scenes, but,it even contains a meaningful and believable story within it which you can connect easily with. This movie also provides you with an idea that how developed our world would be in the coming years,where taking an X-Ray report would be a just-a-minute task.

Therefore, if you really want to visit that breathtaking world of Pandora and you are wanting a movie which is ‘zara hatke’, then Avatar is a movie for you.