Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Sigourney Weaver
Release dates: December 18, 2009 (United States)
Running time:162 minutes
Country: United States
Language: English
Budget: $237 million
Box office: $2.923 billion
IMDb Rating: 7.9/10 (1.3M)
The first Avatar movie, which came out in 2009 and was directed by James Cameron, is getting a new release. It was a big, bewildering epic sci-fi fantasy that at the time was solemnly hailed for its introduction of a new and better immersive 3D technology. This was his folie de grandeur. And for some time after the initial release of Avatar, 3D became the standard for all high-budget action films. But after that, 3D was quietly phased out, with nobody saying a thing about it. It's possible, and if so, that may make it the massive financial success at the box office that the exhibition industry insists the movie industry so desperately needs. Positive feedback has already been received on its utilization of high frame rates.
Since 2009, it is indisputable that Avatar 1 has not held up exceptionally well with time. This is the strange and convoluted story of Planet Earth a hundred years into the future, attempting to solve its energy security issues (as we have learned to say in 2022) by mining a vital new mineral called "unobtanium" from a distant planet. This crucial new mineral is to be found in the centre of a lush tropical forest on a planet whose indigenous blue-faced inhabitants are called Na'vi but look like Smurfs. The human race has devised a scheme to construct "avatars," essentially remote-controlled Na'vi bodies that can be flown into the forest to plead with the native Na'vi population and inquire what it could take to convince them to leave voluntarily on their own accord. Jake Sully, a disabled war veteran who uses a wheelchair and is portrayed by Sam Worthington, is thrilled to be given the liberating opportunity to inhabit one of these avatars. As a result, he ends up going native and falling in love with one of the Na'vi, Neytiri, who Zoe Saldana portrays.
The sheer painstaking silliness of Avatar feels like stricter work than it was the first time, and the game's fundamental flaw is more noticeable this time. This movie was released in 2009, right at the political crossroads; it couldn't quite decide whether it was a gung-ho shock-and-awe action movie; it was a film from the era of George W. Bush that had entered the more caring world of Barack Obama. Ultimately, it decided to be neither. Introducing new technologies in the film industry might appear to be, if not outmoded entirely, at least less of a compelling reason to feel excited. Titanic and Terminators are two of James Cameron's most successful films, and fans continue to praise their narratives. It still needs to be determined whether the grandiose but cutesy Na'vi will be able to demand the same amount of attention.
