Finally…Avatar was released on December 18th all over the world. I had to wait for two days to get the ticket. But in the end I believe the wait was worthwhile after all. Mesmerising 3-D effects, breath-taking special effects, wonderful characterisation and most important of all (surprisingly) great story.Was all the hype justified? Almost you could say. However I felt that that the 3-d effect only managed to take away the spotlight from the story. I was truly surprised by the anti-imperialistic message of the movie. Not something you expect from a Hollywood movie – certainly not a big budget one like this.
The story wasn’t one that was unique – but had an epic quality to it. It has parallels in many classic movies, especially one of my all-time favourites “Dancing with the Wolves”. But James Cameron has certainly managed to infuse new life and dimensions to a story that is so much relevant in today’s world – that of an indigenous population being forced to relocate or become refugees under the threat of force in the name of development.
The action scenes were superb. And the audience were so sympathetic to the Na'vi, the sentient humanoid indigenous inhabitants of Pandora (a fictional planet) in their fight against the (naturally) American armed forces who use lethal weapons to safeguard the interests of the Military Industry Complex trying to exploit Pandora’s reserves of a fictional mineral called ‘unobtainium’.
All in all I would give 9 out of 10 for Avatar more for the message and the story telling rather than the 3-D gizmo because this is one movie that has an epic quality about it even without the (truly superb) special effects.
