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As far as special effects are concerned Avatar is a great way to end the 00s and begin the coming decade. I wasn’t alive when Star Wars originally came out in the 70s, but I would wager to bet that if I had been, my experience would be very similar to that of seeing Avatar now: utterly blown away by the expansiveness of modern filmmaking technology. Avatar spares no expense (between 250 – 300 million budget) or amount of time (10 – 15 years in the making) in producing cutting-edge CG to impress movie goers, and for me it completely pays off. I can’t say I’ve ever SEEN anything like it.

Keep in mind, the keyword here is SEEN. I haven’t seen anything like Avatar. That is not to say the film is entirely original. In fact, Avatar is essentially a combination of the plots of Dances With Wolves and Fern Gully – The Last Rainforest. Yet, it is the fact that director James Cameron made the film look like a two hour cut sequence from Final Fantasy (floating mountains) and a Roger Dean YES album cover come to life that makes the film worth seeing. What more is that Cameron is not simply being ironic or audacious here, Avatar goes for broke (it’s in 3D for christ-sakes), with a striking allegory against the Iraq war and corporate greed ,disguised as an epic science fiction fantasy.

Surprisingly, this conglomeration works, and Avatar is more than just special effects and explosions. It is an affecting film, regardless of if the lead characters look like giant aborigine Smurf cats. Sometimes it’s this type of film, not a bore like An Inconvenient Truth, that is what it takes to get the masses to pay attention to a broader social comment. Maybe Al Gore should ride a dragon…

-Jon

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