Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel Moore

Directed by: James Cameron

New Line Cinema

The Official Site of Avatar

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So here’s the problem with Avatar (great way to start off a review right?): It’s a beautiful masterpiece that will be remembered for its advancements… none of which have anything to do with the story it has to tell. After taking more than a decade off from none documentary feature films, James Cameron brings us a film spotlighting huge leaps in the fields of 3-D, motion capture and computer generated craziness but not the narrative structure.

And that’s fine. It’s an exciting time for film and part of that is due to Cameron and crew’s technological marvels. Avatar is certainly a must see for anyone and everyone not because it’s a great story but because it gives us a glimpse at the bells and whistles a generation of filmmakers will lovingly emulate. Wouldn’t it have been something if it were worth seeing for both reasons though?

That neglected story is a classic one. A soldier battles with the dualities of the life he came from and a new exciting one that promises freedom, adventure and love. All the while bad guys slaughter innocents for the almighty dollar and we all learn a little bit about ourselves. Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully, a paraplegic and former marine that has come in to fill the shoes of his recently passed brother as part of a scientific expedition to study a new moon. He will explore the globe inside an avatar body grown from a combination of human tissue and tissue from the native population the Na'vi - blue-skinned giants with feline features and an eco-friendly message. The avatar allows Jake and his fellow scientists to explore the world from the safety of their lab but still experience the wonders this world has to offer first hand.

The human’s are there not so much to learn about Pandora’s luscious eco system but instead mine a precious mineral that will save a dying Earth. We follow Sully as he learns the culture of the Na'vi and comes to see the error of the human’s persistence in forcing out the natives.

Cameron is a purest in how he tells his story. These are classic themes that audiences will understand if not straight out recognize from past works of art. I take no issue with this. A good story that we’ve heard before is still a good story. What we then have to look at is how it’s told.

There is an emptiness to the characters. The story’s structure is so focused to Jake’s journey that we get only glimpses of the opinions and motivations fueling the supporting cast, characters we’re supposed to sympathize with when their lives are threatened and even martyred in the name of what’s right. In the film’s finale, as they explode, we appreciate not the lost life but how spectacular it looked falling from the sky.

A well-paced, leisurely journey through the strange new world leads us to the grandest of grand finales. The nearly hour-long action between the humans and Na'vi is astounding. One of the finest epic battles of its kind ever committed to film. I recognize that the stunning visuals were only part of the reason I enjoyed this sequence. It is the climax of all that came before it. The difference though between a good movie and a great movie is that a great movie can make all that set-up just as momentous.

People are being moved by the advances Cameron has introduced to the medium instead of the adventure his characters are enduring. People will call Avatar one of the greatest cinematic experiences of our times and it’s absolutely accurate… sort of.

Rating: 8 out of 10 - This is not an experience to be missed. There is much to love about Avatar no matter how much my review may accentuate the negative. There’s also much to discuss with the film including the visuals and performances strong enough to break through the guise of a complete makeover but this is the spoiler free, going in blind review. Don’t expect a masterpiece of storytelling but prepare yourself to journey to a new world. It’s a fantastic trip.

Nope. Not until we all have HD 3D TVs and that’s at least a few years off. I know they’ll be on the market soon but how many of us will be able to afford them out the gate? If you’re one of the lucky few then dig in and enjoy Avatar as it’s intended to be seen.

We were out in the burbs of New York during the blizzard of 2009 waiting for our Avatar line to move as the previous screening let out. A guy in our line quickly through up a thumb and began loudly urging those coming out to give us their verdict on the film. We quickly started referring to him as “Thumbs Up Guy�.

The majority of the crowd was willing to mirror his hand gesture though they couldn’t quite match his enthusiasm. I’m sure he chalked it up to the long run time but he had gotten what he was looking for – confirmation that Avatar was worth the long wait.

My buddy Ersal called him out as a Cameron-head almost immediately, guessing that the guy has poured over and cherished Cameron’s catalog for years probably going as far as to wonder if Bill Paxton was hidden in there somewhere as one of the background Na'vi. (Game over, tree!) This stereotyping is not so derogatory as you could nearly describe Ersal the same way. T-2 freaks - They can smell their own.

Anyway… during dinner afterwards we wondered how “Thumbs Up Guy� reacted to the film, if it met his expectations, if his thumb was still in fact “up�. As we dusted the snow off my car and flipped on the lights, we were greeted by a personalized license plate staring us in the face. (Yeo convinced me not to post the picture we took of the plate so as to protect Mr. Thumb’s privacy. Suffice it to say though it spelled out with letters and numbers a certain company from a certain Cameron film responsible for a certain destruction of man kind.) Phil and I looked at each other and wondered the same thing – “Thumbs up Guy�? Anyone passionate enough to harass a crowd of people with hand gestures would conceivably go as far as to immortalize his vehicle. It at least makes for a better ending to our evening.

Tune in tonight to the Triple Feature to hear the guys and us discuss Avatar and a bunch of other films more in depth.