Avatar 2009

When his brother is killed in a robbery paraplegic Marine Jake Sully decides to take his place in a mission on the distant world of Pandora. There he learns of greedy corporate figurehead Parker Selfridges intentions of driving off the native humanoid Navi in order to mine for the precious material scattered throughout their rich woodland. In exchange for the spinal surgery that will fix his legs Jake gathers intel for the cooperating military unit spearheaded by gungho Colonel Quaritch while simultaneously attempting to infiltrate the Navi people with the use of an avatar identity. While Jake begins to bond with the native tribe and quickly falls in love with the beautiful alien Neytiri the restless Colonel moves forward with his ruthless extermination tactics forcing the soldier to take a stand and fight back in an epic battle for the fate of Pandora.

Review

This film has nothing worthy of the box office receipts is has garnered. Any third grader can predict the outcome after the first ten minutes. The plot characters and themes are either one dimensional or blatant rip offs of earlier tales. Even those parts of the movie that are rehashing some of the great movies of history are delivered without any depth or structure. Consider the poorly constructed moral and it can be seen that it could have been stolen from ⋚nces with Wolves" and others before it but taken without the bones to support it.

Special effects were interesting but again lacking in any thought to character development. Creatures of this other world were clearly developed in an attempt to make them look Ȭool" without any thought to the evolutionary challenges that may have helped to shape them.

It is possible that there is an intended message relating to the tension between science and religion but it is hardly worth trying to evaluate the directors message. There is so little substance to this movie that the only possible conclusion that one could come to is that the analysis was not worth the effort.