When I first saw the Avatar trailer, I thought it looked really strange and far out, but after seeing it for the second time and learning more about it, I could hardly wait to see the movie.
“Avatar” is a film about Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington), an ex-marine, who travels to the distant moon Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na’vi, a tribe of tall, blue, almost cat-like aliens with their own culture and language. Jake is sent on a mission to get the Na’vi to trust him using his Avatar, which is a byproduct of himself in Na’vi form, and try to convince them to move their tribal location so the Americans can get the valuable minerals under their home.
Jake soon finds himself falling in love with the amazing planet and its inhabitants while the human colonel schemes to take the natives ancestral home over by force. Jake must choose sides between his own people and his new life as a Na’vi warrior.
“Avatar’s” director, James Cameron, also the director of “Aliens,” “The Terminator” and “Titanic,” has worked with amazing new CGI equipment to create an entirely new world that’s completely digital. It’s made up of strange, beautiful or menacing creatures, like the flying banshee that all Na’vi’s must tame and create a bond with to become a warrior, and many other new creatures we discover living in Pandora.
Despite all the big action battles between the humans and the Na’vi, “Avatar” is also a love story between Jake and the tribe leader’s daughter, Neytiri (played by Zoe Saldana, who was also in the 2009 Star Trek). She deeply cares about the planet and all its creatures, and tries to teach Jake that nature is all interconnected and important to the overall balance of life in the forest and the planet as a whole, which she believes is something humans need to understand better.
The movie is shown in IMAX 3D, and you’re wearing 3D glasses the entire time. It really puts you right into the truly enthralling story, making you feel like you’re there along with the Avatars, experiencing this new planet and it’s characters.
The things I liked most about “Avatar” were the amazing and breathtakingly realistic special effects in almost every scene, especially in the “Halo Mountains” which are basically floating cliffs, and, of course, the brilliant 10-foot-tall, blue, CGI-created aliens themselves. Whether you are a science fiction fan or not, this film is groundbreaking and worth seeing.
Aran Kirschenmann, 13, is a contributing writer for the Bellevue Reporter and a eighth grader at The International School in Bellevue.
