Avatar

It doesn’t get to be the highest grossing film ever if it’s not well done.

Avatar is incredible – especially in the 3-D version

The visual feast is so spectacular; it’s not easy to focus critically on the plot. While the scenery covers every colour in the rainbow, the plot is very black and white. The invading humans (or most of them) are bad and the locals, who live in the remarkable forest, are good. The local aborigines lead an idyllic life as hunter – gatherers ,in an amazing environment where everything has long, sharp teeth, but harmony seems to reign. Or it did until the humans arrived and started mining the forest.

While it’s a straight forward good verses bad plot, it is well done and the characters are believable. The chief baddy – the macho ex-marine Colonel, gives a strong performance and it’s surprising that he hasn’t been seen more often in other action movies.

The undoubted stars of this movie are the hundreds and hundreds of technicians and special effects people. It took over 5 minutes for all of them to be mentioned in the credits. The special effects are so good it’s hard to believe that the mini dragons that the locals fly around on, aren’t real. The scenes when they hurtle around the sky like fighter jets, are some of the best in the film.

It’s a long movie – 3 hours, but it seems to take no more than one and most of that was sitting on the edge of the seat. It really is a “must see” film, but make sure you see it on the big screen in 3D.

Peter Michaels

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