Avatar

I'm not going to be doing movie reviews on here all the time as I watch a heap of films, total geek for it and there's not enough time in my life for going into detail about everything I watch. It's hard enough to get the effort together to watch them sometimes! Out of the 570 odd DVDs I own there's a good 50 I have yet to watch, some I saw at the cinema, some I have yet to see!

But I thought I would make an exception for Avatar. As Ron Burgundy might say..."It's a pretty big deal".

Set in 2154 on a distant planet called Pandora the film is about a mining corporation who want to mine Pandora for a substance called 'unobtainium' which to them is worth a pretty penny. Unfortunately the main source of unobtainium is underneath this massive tree which is home both spiritually and literally to the inhabitants of Pandora - the Na'vi. Who are blue but not like the Smurfs. Have a look above at them.

Anyhow to get in with the natives the scientists (one of whom is played by James Cameron alumni Sigourney Weaver) create a kind of Human/Na'vi hybrid, called Avatars. One of the avatars is filled by Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex- Marine. Wasn't originally intended for him though this avatar. It was for his twin brother but he got himself murdered before they were due to leave. Careless.

So after a routine trip to the planets dense forest leaves Jake stranded he is taken in (eventually...they are right hostile at first) by the inhabitants and is trained in the way of the Na'vi and he slowly starts to fall in love with the planet and one Na'vi in particular Neytiri (Zoe Saldana).

But the mining company still wants the unobtainium and will go to any lengths to get it...

So that's the general gist of the film but the key question (and why I am writing this blog) is "Is it any good?"

Visually speaking it is one of the most amazing looking films I have ever seen. No - scratch that - it is the most amazing looking film I have ever seen. It was actually filmed in 3D using 3D cameras and so forth so naturally the only way to see this thing is in...you guessed it...3D or even better in IMAX 3D. Even though cinemas are showing it as an option, there is literally no point watching it in 2D. Would be like watching another cinema release on a bootleg.

During one scene where Neytiri and Sully are high up in the trees I actually felt a bit of vertigo as you looked down and could see every detail -it was that good.

The action sequences are also superb, the end battle was just jaw dropping. James Cameron doesn't make a major film in 12 years and he comes back and makes every single action director - Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich, the lot of them - look like children. Or a guy who is having his first bash on his Super8 camera.

But like most things there are some negatives. Mainly the plot. For a movie that took so long to make the plot -'Man goes to planet to work for company, loves planet, falls in love, there's a big ruck at the end' is really, really flimsy.

Also whilst I enjoyed Stephen Lang's performance as Colonel Miles Quadritch his 'hard bastard marine' character did seem more suited to an 80s action movie. At times I was half expecting him to get cut, wipe the blood from the offending area and say "I ain't got time to bleed".

And whilst I found most of the dialogue OK, the rallying speech before the final battle sounded as if Sully was going to segue into "They can take our lives but they can never take our freedom!" or worse "Today...we celebrate...our Independence Day!" But its a massive film and I guess you need a massive speech.

Not so much of a negative I guess were all the similarities to Aliens. There were some obvious references like Sigourney Weaver getting out of the pod at the start and of course the walkers, but it all just seemed a bit familiar to me. Evil company wants something...in space.

Hell, you could easily swap Giovanni Ribisi's character from Avatar and Paul Reiser's from Aliens and no one could tell the difference.

And leaving the biggest negative till the end...why did they feel the need to put that Leona Lewis song on at the end? I couldn't get out of the cinema quick enough!

I would probably go with what a lot of people saying as it goes to rating it...

*** plot

***** experience

Looking forward now I can't help but wonder what will become of it on DVD and Blu Ray? I know it won't look as good as the big screen sure, but how good will the 3D be? Time will have to tell I guess.

Till next time.