Derek Dixon (doubled21711)

I really liked James Cameron's "Avatar or: I dare you not to blink for 2 hours and 40 minutes or else you will miss something spectacular". A lot has been said about the visuals in this film, and I'll get to that in a minute, but what really sold me here was Cameron's assured hand at story-telling. Sure the concepts and ideas are one's that you have seen before in a variety of different movies, but Cameron manages to not rip them off, but make something new with them. I really hate moments in films where the screenwriters have a character explain some vague device sitting on the sidelines only because at the climax of the movie the main character will need to use that device to save the day. Cameron makes a reason for these devices to be used inherently in the story before they need to be used in the climax. Both the *spoiler alert* death of Sigourney Weaver's character *end spoilers* and Jake and Neytiri being chased by the bigger flying dragon come to mind when I talk about this.

And keep in mind that the film is called "Avatar" not Pandora. There is something going on beneath the surface of the visuals, they are not simply used to create a new world to play on, they represent this idea of being an avatar in certain situations. Make with that what you will, the point is, there are deep themes here that Cameron is not just saying but bringing to life in everything that happens in the film.

On the point of the direction of the film, I really loved the way that Cameron creates a sense of space in his action scenes and just about all of the visuals. He doesn't go shakey cam to make things up close and personal and not understandable, he takes wide shots and big shots and gives you a sense of scale and what is going on. My favorite stylistic choice in the film was to make the Na'vi about twice the height of the humans and make everything on the planet dwarf the human characters. It really highlighted the out-of-placeness of everyone and provided for some great perspective.

Not all is perfect in "Avatar" though and a few things didn't make a whole lot of sense. Cameron paints his characters in broad archetypes here and just about everyone delivered. I felt a bit like Giovanni Ribsi and Joel Moore didn't have quite enough screen time to capture the heart of their characters. Also the conversion of Michelle Rodriguez's character to help the scientists didn't make a whole lot of sense and was more of a device to get the good guys away from the bad guys. But such things were kind of steamrolled over by the visuals for the film.

Cameron basically invented the technology to make this world so believable. I will say this, after a certain moment in the film my brain stopped registering the fact that what I was watching was CGI and due to the incredible 3-D, just believed this was really happening in front of me. It is crazy to see that and believe that, though I'm not sure how well this would have worked in 2-D. This film is exactly the opposite of the hollow visuals of something like "Transformers". Everything mattered and it had to be this detailed for everything to make sense.

The last thing I have to say is that the motion capture work here was superb. All of the actors, especially Zoe Saldana, really understood what they had to do to make their Na'vi characters both believable and real characters. The people over at WETA also deserve some credit for making some of the best animated eyes for characters ever. Truly stunning work.

Since I do feel that this is the best film of all time, I thought I should say a few words about it. This movie literally contains every genre, sci-fi, action, adventure, drama, romance, comedy, horror, one of the most epic twists of all time, and the best ending to a movie ever. Period. We see here the benefit of taking George Lucas's ideas and letting other people add focus to them through writing and directing his unique vision and world. The performances all around are wonderful and the actors take away the little bit of cheese that they added to their performances in the first film. This movie just feels so un-Hollywood to me, I mean, the good guys lose at every turn. So anyways, the best movie ever made.