First and Foremost Avatar is less about the story and all about the special effects; the story is a patchwork of Dances with wolves, Brave heart and Surrogates with a little bit of Cameron’s own Aliens Mech suit thrown in for good measure all told on an Alien Planet with massive CGI.

The first two hours is the Dancing with Wolves portion with a little bit of Surrogates mixed in,  where Jake Sully utilizes his Avatar (a genetically engineered human-navi hybrid body) that he can control from a lab. Within his Avatar he is able to earn the trust and learn the ways of the Navi; while at the same time fall in love with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) his teacher of the ways of the Navi and the daughter of the clan’s chief.

Where the film truly finds its way is the last 40 minutes where Jake gives the Braveheart speech and rallies the different Navi Clans together to fight the evil corporation looking to destroy the Navi’s home and strip mine Pandora for the mineral Unobtanium. This is the point in the film everyone has been waiting for and Cameron really shines.

Besides the story which nobody is going for anyway the only weak aspect of the movie is the truly awful Michelle Rodriguez. If you have seen her in any other film, then you have seen this character.  Rodriguez plays Trudy Chacon a helicopter pilot/ tough girl who doesn’t play by the rules. From what I saw it appears that she was able to convince James Cameron that she should be able to write her own dialogue including the contractual obligation of calling someone a bitch.  There is no other explanation on how this character that died in Resident Evil and then died again in Fast and Furious was able to be resurrected once again only to die in Avatar.  (Please make her go away she has cursed my retinas for far too long.)

This is a film that must be seen in the theater and preferably in IMAX 3-D,  The visuals of Pandora are phenomenal and the 3-D is done in a wonderful way enhancing the film rather than going for cheap gimmicks. I don’t think it will translate well onto a smaller screen at all primarily given the scope of Pandora and the attention to detail put into creating this world. I cannot stress enough how well the effects are done Cameron does everything with CGI that other Hack directs (I am talking to you George Lucas) have failed so miserably at. You completely buy into Pandora as a world and are given a sense of wonder and believability that no other film has thus far been able to capture.

Grade-85