Movie Review - Avatar

Going into a movie with 3D glasses on my face I wasn’t sure if an added dimension would make or break a movie. For Avatar, the third dimension (giving you the sense of depth) definitely paid off. However, it clearly wasn’t just the special effects that made Avatar a record breaking film. (Winning three Oscars and earning over $2.5 billion worldwide, a world record) Its storyline and characterization made the film exiting and personable.

Set one hundred fifty years in the future, the premise of Avatar is centered on a new program in the United States Military. After recently conquering a new planet, Pandora, they have discovered an affluent, rare mineral: unobtainium. A problem occurs; however, when the military realizes that the indigenous people of Pandora -the Na’vis- have built their entire civilization over the location of the unobtainium. The military is focused on finding a solution, so the government initiates the Avatar program. The program hires Jake Sully to be recreated as a Na’vi using advanced technologies. He has been told to make friends with the natives; his mission is to ultimately convince them to move off their lands. Jake Sully, however, has fallen in love with the Na’vi’s attitude of harmony with nature, and the people themselves. As he becomes more and more attached, he is unable to distinguish imagination from reality: “Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world, and in here is the dream.” He says. Sully now must make the decision to keep loyal to the military’s request or to risk protecting the Na’vi from certain death.